Classroom Reveal

Yay! My classroom is finally mostly set up! I still have some details to finish, but the big pieces are all in place. Now, keep in mind that I am no Schoolgirl Style, but my mother does have an interior design degree, and every now and then I channel her just a little.

When I was hired a week and a half after the start of school last year, I was most grateful to walk into an already set-up room even though it was not "me" at all.  It was not bright colors and was very plain. This was it last year:

And here is what I started with this year. I took down all that red and brown in preparation of beach-ifying my room.

I started with that back wall. I used fadeless paper I bought at Lakeshore... I got one roll in lime green and another that was an ocean pattern. That ocean one was a steal... one roll did all that you see in the photos, and I still have some left over! For my borders, I used a combination of waves and sea animals. On the left of that back wall are my math posters. The top right has reading genre posters.

That part in the bottom middle is from the book Super Grammar. You should totally check out the author's blog. He has those free posters. It's pretty cool!

And here is my guided reading table and information board. It has the calendar, lunch count, agenda, and my favorite subject flip flops to post our daily objectives.

The front of the room needed some more beach, so I added wave border to the top of the board and some beachy accents of the hula skirt and sea animal cut outs.

Here is more of a close up on the Elmo area... I made some morning and afternoon procedure posters that I hung there.

The classroom library got organized by my teenage daughter. It seems they are quite useful occasionally. Ha!

This is my Leader in Me tree poster on the door to my closet and my behavior clip chart. Below it, I have the pencil sharpener and the buckets for sharp and dull pencil. On the shelves, I keep paper, white boards, markers, erasers, and the math kits.

I ended up with a blank wall, so I decided to "science" it up by adding some photographs I took during our Florida Keys vacation. They go with our science curriculum too.

These are my rotation turtles to keep track of what special class we have each day. It is a student's job to change it at the end of each day.

Even my closet is sort of organized to start the year. We'll see how long that lasts.

So, finally, for the whole effect, here is what you see when you stand at my door. Is it perfect? No. Do I love it? Yes!