It's Going to be a Seussical Year in 1st Grade!

My Our summer long project is officially complete!!

"Teachers are SO lucky they get summers off". "I wouldn't mind working 10 months out of the year if I got to lounge around the pool for the other 2." etc, etc, etc are comments I hear all too often being a teacher. I could write a whole post about how it makes my blood boil and my skin crawl when people say such things to me. However, instead of writing such a blog, I have chosen to post one about how my current classroom looks and how it got to be that way.

My mom and I started planning for my current classroom last year. This is my 4th year teaching and I have only LOVED my classroom once thus far. When I moved from my old school to my current school, I was devastated when I walked into my new room and saw primary colors plastered all over the floors, cabinets and counters. My old classroom was a bright and cheery one full of hot pinks, lime greens, teal blues and hints of brown here and there to blend it all together. As we all know, hot pinks, lime greens, and teal blues do not mesh well with primary colors... as a matter of fact, the completely clash. I literally cried to my mom about how much I hated my classroom last year because I was forced to store all the things I had loved the year before, and throw together a room last minute that I could "deal with" for a year.

All that to say, we have been planning and crafting since March to make this room what it is today. I will start by posting all of the finished product pictures, then I will go in depth about how it got to where it is today. If you are a classroom teacher who loves new ideas, this post is for you!! Enjoy!

Pano of room from door

View from door

 View from front of the room

 View from back of the room

 View from right side of the room

 View from left side of the room

Listening Area

Expectations, Rules & Consequences Wall

 

 Word Wall

  Reading Area

 Red Table

 

Yellow Table

 Blue Table

 Orange Table

Green Table

 

 

 Bathroom Door

 What it looks like now...

 

What it will look like finished

Wonderful Work Wall in Hallway

Storage Area in back of room

 Storage Areas to the right in room

 Curtains

Bulletin Boards in front of room

Bulletin Board to the right in room

 Back Conner/Writing Area

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen! Isn't is wonderful!? I am IN LOVE with my classroom this year! My principal's little girl walked in the the other day, stopped dead in her tracks, dropped her jaw and said "Oh my goodness.. its beautiful!" She will be in my class this year, but doesn't know it yet! I had a coworker say to me today, "I feel like if I was a kid in your class, I would just love coming to school." What a wonderful compliment to hear! We do what we do for the kiddos!!

Alright, so now that I've shown you the final product, I'll break down how this all came about for those who are curious/interested!  As I stated before, we have been working on this for months on end. So my dear, sweet, talented mother had the time and energy to create some amazing one-of-a-kind pieces for my classroom. I give credit where credit is due, and my mom has earned SO much credit!! Using our Silhouette Cameo machines, she designed, printed and cut everything for my word wall, name tags, place mats, the letters for the Wonderful Work Wall and pieces of card stock for the wonderful work clipboards. She also found 2 different curtain ideas on pinterest that we used to create the curtains in my room! Not to mention, she decided to dabble a little bit in painting and ended up painting 3 AMAZING Dr. Seuss characters for me to hang up in my room!

I glued the letters/boarder to a solid piece on construction paper, laminated them and hot glued magnets to the back for the word wall letters.

 The name tags are printed on a laser printer using laser printer ink and laser printer labels.

The place mats are cut out of vinyl and stuck to each table.

 The letters are cut out of card stock. The bows seen on the top of each clipboard were found in the rows near the check out lines at TJmax/Marshalls. The pieces for the clipboards were cut out of card stock using the Silhouette Cameo and then modge podged to the front of each clipboard in mix/matched designs.

 These are the two types of curtains we combined in order to get our final product.

 

Shout out to mom for being wonderful!! Wooohooo go mom! Love you!

I knew immediately, that I wanted to use tables this year instead of desks, so I requested to have my desks replaced with rectangle tables. This was a well thought out and organized plan in my head. I knew I would have to have a place to store all of the kids belongings since I was taking away their desks, so I wanted to find small bookshelves to go at the end of each table to store their things. I searched and searched for what I had pictured in my head, but quickly realized I could build some to keep from having to go out and spend too much money on some that are made very cheaply. So I built 6 adorable and perfect bookshelves for the end of each table. Once they were built, I went back the next day and spray painted them the colors I wanted them to be.

As for everything else in my classroom, the bins/crates are mostly bought at Michael's and Hobby Lobby. I spray painted a lot of them to get the exact color I wanted. The hanging lanters/fans/flowers are mostly from Hobby Lobby and Dollar Tree. The Dr. Seuss bulletin board boarders, sayings, posters and other decorations were bought at Michael's last year after Read Me Week. Although, I have since seen them at the Parent Teacher Store! I've tried to list everything I can think of on here, but if you get to reading/looking and see something I left out, feel free to comment and I'll replay to answer questions!

Here is to a "seussical" school year in Ms. Daniel's 1st grade class!!