And it begins!

Today was a glorious day!  I went into my classroom to begin some setup.  I LOVE setting up a classroom.  So much potential.  So many exciting things a person can do.  It was only the custodian's second day back to work, so no cleaning has occurred in my room yet.  But, I was feeling some anxiety due to our upcoming vacation.  Huh? Anxiety and vacation shouldn't be in the same sentence, right.  Well, when you plan a trip for the end of August and come back a week before school starts, and your room is mostly all in boxes, I think you are allowed to be anxious.  So, to set my mind at ease, I went in and did a bunch of things today with a teacher friend.  (Wait for some upcoming posts on her room setup too!)  The custodian at my new school is a lovely, cheerful man, who had no problems with us being there, which was great.  We got to work on a lot of the little details.

Before shot of my room.

Above is my room before I've done anything to it.  Well, not true.  I'd removed a lot of the junk from the room, but nothing of my own is in here yet.  Note the teeny windows and yellow wall.

I think I've posted this photo before......

I mentioned in this blog post how much I hate the open shelving for my teacher resources.  It's enough to make a person go spend $300 on all new matching binders.  To remedy that in a less expensive way, I purchased some beautiful fabric and made a curtain.  Today we hung it up.  I LOVE it!  However, I made have made a slight measurement error as it touches the floor.  It doesn't drag, but it touches.  I'm worried it will get dirty.  So I may bring it home again and bring it up half an inch or so.  It looks a little sparse in the photo below, but I know once I get my desk and things all setup it will be great!  I'm really loving the black touches in my room this year.  I think it helps to anchor everything.

All hung up!  No more mismatched binders to stare at.

Loving this!

As I mentioned in my last blog post about classroom plans, I wanted to put "Today is" vinyl on my whiteboard.  I decided to go with "Today's date is..."  We're having a debate about the "..."  I say they are fine.  My friend says they are crooked.  It's always nice having a friend who is slightly more anal than you are.  Love you Crystal! ;)

This was a last minute idea.  Last night I spent a few hours creating and cutting this out of vinyl as well.  I love how well it fits the door; I was really cutting it close.  I guess it pays to measure first, but when you decide to do it the night before you have to guess.  I decided to do it on the inside of my door as it will spend more time open than closed.  I also like to hang holiday themed wreaths on the outside.  I'm so happy I was able to find the font Dr. Soos for free to cut this out in.  A Dr. Seuss quote just has to be in this font, don't you think?

We ran into a slight hiccup with my word wall fabric.  My old classroom had a different sized bulletin board.  My new room has a size smaller and a size bigger.  We fixed the problem by tripling up the borders.  I think it makes such a great statement!  I'm so happy we were able to get this up there.  It sure took me a while to cut and sew 26 rainbow pieces of fabric.  There is a space on either end that is blank still.  When we go back to paper the boards I'll take a picture to show you what we did to fix that up.

It's more gorgeous than before!

I'll finish this post with a photo of some crazy laminating.  Crystal and I both had a ton of math stations created this summer.  Today we laminated our things.  Here's myself and her daughter holding up a portion of her laminating.  Took me 3 hours to cut mine out tonight. Yikes!

That's only part of it.

Can't wait to share more of our classroom decorating.  Both my room, and hers!