Classroom Tour 2013!

I've had this post as a draft for a long time! (Since last week!!) I figured it was time to just put it out there so that the world could see my classroom all organized and spiffy! I guess I felt bad just posting only photos, but I figure that you enjoy looking at them anyways. There's a fun video tour at the bottom, so keep that scrolling finger moving!

2012 word wall compared to 2013 word wall!

Cubbies, filing cabinet, and teacher work area! Love the openness of it.

Student supply area

Bookshelf organized by genre, theme, or author

My spiffy new bookshelf that I assembled all by myself!

View of the classroom listening station, tables, and other lovely things

Decently organized cabinet!!

Covered up my ugly shelf with pretty fabric.

Here's a quick video tour of my classroom in case you want to see a panorama!


2013-07-24 15.17.40 from Sarah Adams on Vimeo.

Hope that you enjoyed my tour. Leave me a comment letting me know what you think. When do you go back into your classroom to get it ready to roll?

I start back to inservice tomorrow...Pray that I can get up early enough!

Organizing Writing Supplies!

Just popping in to write a quick post about my plan for organizing Writing Workshop supplies for next school year! As you saw in my recent post about my Target haul, I bought some really cool mini-drawers to organize things.

Well...I decided to get a little crafty! (Shocker!! I'm not one who is typically very crafty...) Enter hot glue gun stage left.

 

 

The next step was to start cutting out each little tiny label from the "Supply Labels for Your Writing Center" pack from Teachers Pay Teachers.





I got each one cut out and then organized them by how I would glue them onto the drawers. I decided that three different colors in a drawer would work well. We will see...

I also decided to include a drawer for erasers, date stamps, glue sticks, and scissors, since the students would be using those items frequently during Writing Workshop. Speaking of date stamps, check these out!! (Ignore all the practice stamping... I couldn't resist!)

Okay, back to explaining my Writing Workshop drawers! After I organized them by drawer, I got my hot glue gun out and ready to go. Needless to say, I burnt my fingers at least twice. Okay, maybe three times. Don't judge me!

Here's the final product! Drumroll, please?

Yes, the date stamps one is wonky. I need to see if I can make it cute and matching. Ignore the date stamps one. At least I used my nice handwriting instead of making it too sloppy. And there you have it! Simple drawers for the students to use while they're working on writing their lovely stories of dogs, rainbows, and unicorns!

Thanks for reading! I am linking up with Tara's Monday Made It for this post, even though I'm late to the party. =)

Confessions!

When I saw #kinderblog13's most recent blogging challenge, I was not sure what to say. I don't feel like I have anything big to confess! After thinking for some time, I realized that I would post about things that I really love and don't share all that often. Here goes!

1. Blog designing!
I am now working alongside Erika and Misty at Honey Bunch Blog Design creating custom made blog templates AND premades! If you want to see some of my work, click this link or the image below. Blog designing has always been something I enjoyed doing for fun, and now I get to do it all the time!

2. Skype
I love Skype. I use it every single day, and don't know what I would do without it!

3. My journal
Last year, I started writing in my 5 year journal. It has one page for every day of the year with 5 sections in that day to write in. Every day, you write the year at the top of a blank section and write 3-4 sentences of what you did that day. It's really fun to go back and see all the cool things I did last year at this time.

4. Acer V5 Touch
I bought this laptop just a few weeks ago and cannot believe how much fun it is to use! It has a touch screen and Windows 8. I love the touch screen because I can flip through the open applications quickly and also click things faster than I did with a mouse. Fantastic little laptop!

5. Target and Dollar Tree
They have wonderful stuff there. Affordable enough for a private school teacher who doesn't make a fortune.

My last confession is that my inservice starts on July 31st...and I haven't even gone back into my classroom yet. The first day of school is August 9th!! Maintenance hasn't even cleaned our classrooms!! I'm getting a little desperate here. Scared and nervous that it won't come together in time!

A Room with No Bulletin Boards

I am faced with a dilemma. A major one that causes me much grief throughout the school year. Many times, I find myself staring at my walls thinking to myself, "This room looks so cluttered even though it is full of wonderful student work."

Oh my. This picture scares me.

I want my classroom to be eye-catching--a true representation of the students who work there. When I have to just staple a child's paper on the white bare walls, I feel it doesn't do that piece of work justice. It's like saying to the child, "Wow! You did a fantastic job! You worked so hard. Now I will NOT work hard in making your work stand out. I will just put it up because this spot on my wall looks a little empty."

End of the school year after everything was taken down

It's difficult to really centralize student work when I have no designated spaces for it. In a typical classroom, most people have bulletin boards to decorate which make it easy to replace old work with new. I'm really not sure how to tackle this problem. I'd really prefer not to have to spend a fortune on it, but I do want something that is year-long, meaningful, and a place where students know that their work will live. (And want to put it up there!)

What would you do in my shoes? Any advice or ideas would be wonderful.

My Passion for Teaching

My goal is to inspire. My love is to teach. My dream is to help children see that they are special, talented, meaningful, beautiful, loved. While teaching is my profession, I take it seriously. Each child that walks in my room is someone's baby, and for that reason I must do all I can to help him.

Teaching was not always my dream, but I have found a deep passion for it that helps fuel my instruction every day. This will be my second year of teaching, can I can't wait to begin!

This life we are given is brief. God has blessed me with purpose, with ambition, and with a love for the pursuit of knowledge. My hope is that I transfer the love of the Lord to these little ones and instill in them a love for learning that lasts a lifetime.