My Classroom in Pics!

My classroom is set and ready to go for my precious kiddos to come in for their first day tomorrow! It's hard to believe that it is already here! Like many of you the last couple of weeks have been busy with preparations. As promised, here are some pics of my classroom. Beware of picture overload! :)

I truly believe that a warm and inviting classroom helps set the tone for a learning environment that allows students to feel safe to learn and grow. As discussed in one of my earlier posts (click here to see it), I love to decorate and also love adding personal touches both to my house and classroom. What is the first thing that guests see at our home? The front door! I made this pinterest inspired wreath (which kind of was a collaboration of a couple of different pictures I pinned here) to help make our front entrance warm and welcoming!

The classroom is the same way: the entrance is the first thing our students see. So, I like to spend a little extra time making it welcoming with warm colors and personal touches! Of course the decor of our classroom is not the only factor that contributes to a positive learning environment (there are truly so many other factors!), but another one of my favorite personal touches is that I also stand at the door each morning and personally greet each of my students by name everyday when they arrive and also bid them farewell when they leave. One morning last year I wasn't able to get to the door in the morning to greet my students due to a phone call and when my students came in they said "Oh phew! You are here! You weren't at the door so we thought we had a substitute!" Here's the entry that I will stand at to greet my fabulous students each morning:

The owls that I made and can be found in an earlier post here look great on the hand painted trees and I used the awesome Cricut to punch out my welcome sign over the doorway! Who doesn't love owls?! Here is the other side of my entryway:

I was loving all of the ideas on Pinterest to create a way to easily hang student work, so I turned this blank wall:

into this!

I love displaying student work and since we don't have a lot of bulletin board space, I had to become creative! My amazing hubby helped me hang all of the blue paper! I don't know what I'd do without him! We have such a blast together! I was my Forest Work sign didn't show up so shiny in the picture, but lamination does that. He and I have this joke about lamination: it's makes everything more official! Have you ever seen this video clip from Daddy Day Care on lamination?

So funny! Our joke is that projects aren't official or impressive until they're LAMINATED!

Once you step inside my classroom you are welcomed by this:

The cute welcome sign was made by one of my best friends! And my sweet mama helped me make these adorable curtains:

LOVE LOVE LOVE! Seriously, one of my favorite personal touches in my classroom and whenever they go up at the beginning of the year it just makes such a HUGE impact on the room! I used tension rods to be able to hang them in the windows.

This year my hubby and family helped me make these awesome pinterest inspired crate seats:

We used a great tutorial from What the Teacher Wants found here

I like to stay with a similar color theme throughout the room, so we used some of the same fabric from the curtains on the crate seats! I love the crate seats because not only are they so cute, but they are also practical:

These ones will be used for my listening center and hold all of the books and tapes that the students will use. Since I'm the only one that will get into them, I didn't put a tab to pull the tops out. Instead I can just put my hands through the opening and lift it up that way.

I also am using crate seats for my computer center:

The computer center is behind my desk at the front of the room:

Here's my word wall without the back to school words up:

Can you believe that before I got the Cricut I used to draw and cut ALL of my bulletin board letters out by hand?! Oh my goodness: it took SO much time! But it was so worth it and one thing that we teachers know how to do is how to make the most out of the resources we have! I have to include a close up of Nutty the Squirrel? Isn't he just the cutest thing you've seen? He's also our class mascot and the kids adore him!

The other side of the front of my room is my meeting and calendar area:

My kiddos always LOVE that green chair! For everyday use, it is where I sometimes sit, but whenever we have secret readers (parents/grandparents that come in to read to us), shining star of the week (my student of the week), writers circle (writing share time), or other special occasions, the green chair turns into the beloved "Green Chair of Honor!" A lot of the blank cabinets and wall space in my room will soon be used for anchor charts and hanging lots of student work! I'm also going to be using my SmartBoard for most of calendar time, but still have some components up front.

I'm loving my cute schedule cards from the fantastic Cara Carroll!

Get Cara Carroll's FREE schedule cards here!

Don't you all just adore her! Whenever I read her blog, I feel like I'm out to coffee with a kindred-spirit friend! And all of her ideas and TPT units are FABULOUS!!

The back of my classroom hosts my small group table and mailboxes:

I heart the owl job chart that I got from A.C. Moore my first year of teaching:

Can't wait to fill up my shining star of the week bulletin board with pictures from my kiddos each week! 

Last year I spent a lot of the summer leveling all of my classroom library books. Any of you who have done this know what a task that is, but how WONDERFUL it is to have leveled books for your kiddos to read so that they have books on their level! We do the daily 5 so having good fit books in my room is so important. Confession: one of the things I was oh so excited about when I first got my own classroom was having a classroom library!! It's still one of my favorite parts in the room! I love seeing my kiddos blossom in their love of reading and can't wait to teach my new students how to use our classroom library:

Just got these clocks from Michaels for about a $1 each on sale and am excited to have them up for those regular questions of: "when is recess?"

And what's a forest without some bugs?! These guys will hang from my ceiling until student work will fill their place!

Can't wait for my room to be filled with the smiles of my first graders tomorrow! Looking forward to another great year in Foxwell Forest! 

How do you like to set up your classroom? Do you have any favorites that you'd like to share?! I'd love to hear them!

I love sharing ideas and seeing how other teachers set up their room! It's always so inspiring! So I'm linking up to the "Where I Teach" Teacher week linky from Blog Hoppin 

and I'm linking up to the "Show Off Your Space" linky party from Swimming into Second Grade!

Be sure to hop on over and check out all of the great spaces!