A Work in Progress

I've so enjoyed seeing the wonderful photos of classroom progress in the bloggy world lately. This week has been crazy busy. We have a new nephew who was born late Tuesday night. He's a total cutie pie! I kept his sixteen month old big sister the night he was born and on Wednesday so I didn't get to work at school that day. However, I've spent nearly every other spare minute working in my classroom this week. I still feel like there's tons to do, but here are a few pictures of the progress so far. I really should've taken some before pics because it was a mess! It's still somewhat of a mess, but at least it's starting to look more like a classroom these days.

As promised in a recent post, here is a photo of my classroom library or more appropriately, part of it. I prefer to spread it out a little around the room so there's another section on the opposite side of the room that I'm still working on.

I'm going to look for a cute little cozy chair to replace the boring blue one. I already had my chapter book baskets on the tall bookcase as mentioned here, but I added the short bookcase for picture books. I purchased new picture book baskets for this year {Dollar Tree is most definitely my BFF!} so I haven't labeled them yet or finished reorganizing my picture books which is why the three baskets on top are empty. My plan is to display books for a featured author each month on top of taller bookcase. The dots poster will contain info for choosing books. 

My sweet momma helped me redo the long bulletin board above the white board. Loving the dots on black border and poster. I'm still working on organizing the bookcase behind my desk area. It looks kind of dark in this photo, but can you see the colored drawers next to my filing cabinet? Love them already!

My smart board is my pride and joy! I just got it at the end of last year and adore teaching with it. The doorway in the back corner is the entrance to my cloak room and closet. I'm lucky to have tons of storage back there. Still need to finish my reading focus bulletin board. (It's the green one.) I have a banner to hang above the bulletin board. I use the table in front of the bulletin boards for reading with small groups. My media cart is in the far corner next to the flag. Also, I usually arrange my desks in groups, but decided to try something different and I don't know if I'm going to keep them this way or not.

Our door is to the left. The apple pocket chart you can see part of on the right is used to do our attendance and lunch count. Our calendar and daily schedule are on this bulletin board. There's a gap in the pocket chart because my math schedule card is MIA since I didn't teach math last year. I've looked everywhere for it! This board will also have our related arts schedule below the calendar once I receive it. The makeshift table contains the necessities including assignment trays, lunch count forms, extra schedule cards, and hand sanitizer. Underneath the table is our recycle box. I laminated my new dots on black alphabet and added it above this board. Sorry for the glare.

Those of you who work in old buildings like mine {think 1890's} know the challenges that come with it. I love all our windows, but they limit classroom arrangements. I have three different radiators to work around. Also, the ceilings are extremely high. The fire marshal will not allow us to hang things from the ceiling. It tends to make me feel like the room is always empty. I don't like bare walls, but I don't like overkill either so I usually choose not to hang things super high....not to mention it would be hard for students to see. 

So that's it for now, folks. I will try to post more pictures once it is finished. T-minus 6 days until back to school night so it has to be ready to go by then.