Classroom tour!!

Linking up with blog Hoppin for their classroom tours linky today.
 Once again a day late and a picture short but I did get it up! I love looking into everyone elses worlds!
I currently have 24 students on my roster for the year. I had 25 last time I was in K. Hoping to have less than 9 behavior students this year though!
So since I have kindergarten screening this week my goal was to have my classroom all done and I almost completely succeeded. I have a few small things to do but it is a huge relief to see the end of the tunnel. I stuck with the Seuss theme again this year and I am so glad that I did! So without further ado here are the pictures of my classroom. I will post update once I get the last bookcase in at the end of the week.

LeapPads. 

House Keeping Center

Wall behind small group table

Birthday board. Still trying to decide what to put the students name and birth date on to stick on each hat

Entry board. The page protectors I hung are to put the lunch menu, classroom newsletter and not sure what else in.

These clocks have been update with titles on the other ones as well. 

So this picture is deceiving. It makes my classroom look gigantic. I will try to take another one to give better perspective. I am standing by the end wall on my whole group carpet area. All the stuff on the tables is gone now too. 

Let's talk about me!

I decided to join the linky over at blog hoppin this week. Very excited! So let talk about me! I will do this in list form. (Because I love lists!)

1) I am about to start my third year teaching. My first year was spent in kinder, second year in first and I am VERY excited to be going back to k this year! I have been told that now that my principal has me in k I am stuck for good (just fine by me). 

2) I have wanted to be a teacher since the first day of first grade. I had a fabulous teacher and wanted to be just like her. I have never changed my mind about this either. 

3) going with # 2 unlike most young teachers who have been gathering stuff for their classrooms for a couple of years I have been gathering things since I was 6. Lol

4) I am 24 years old. I still get carded ALL the time. Ugh! I know eventually it will be nice to get carded but now it's just annoying. 

5) I live at the beach. My house that I have been living in has an ocean view. I'm moving at the end of the month though-no more ocean view but it's only 3 blocks away. 

6) I have a 3 year old lab retriever mix named Napili. I love her even though she is a little nuts. Her name comes from my favorite bay on Maui. 

7) I play tennis twice a week (most weeks). We are lucky to have 2 indoor courts in the area with a pro. I'm usually the youngest  one there by about 20 years. We have a blast though!

8) When I was a baby I ate sand. By the handful! And I was not a small baby (9lb 13 oz when I was born) so those were not small hands.

9) I hate drinking milk. On cereal I can stand it in small amounts but just drinking a glass of milk? That is GROSS!)\

10) I hate it when people touch my feet! I had the second pedicure of my life this summer because I was going to wear sandals to a wedding. It tickles and I just think it is gross to have people touching my feet (especially summer feet, I do live at the beach).

So there you have it. It's a day late but I finished. I think I will try for the whole week but with screening today and tomorrow I may have to do a double day. But I will say my classroom is basically done minus one bookshelf that will be added this week!
(oh and I will try to add pictures to this later. They my phone was having trouble uploading my post)

August Currently and classroom update

Is it really August 4th?! YIKES! I have kindergarten screening in 8 days. My room is nowhere near ready. I have books EVERYWHERE!
Here is my currently.

Listening: Shark week started today. I am enjoying it today while I am somewhere with a tv, unlike my own house currently.

Loving: Who doesn't love spending the day in their pajamas.

Thinking: I keep telling myself that I will have my classroom as close to done as possible before the 13th... But I can't have it all the way finished until my grandpa comes to help build a bookshelf.

Wanting: So I have mentionedd before that I am moving. Well I'm moving into the family's cabin but I have to wait for my mom to move into her new place first and the closing date keeps changing. Makes me nuts!

Needing: See thinking and wanting. The rest of my summer revolves around those two things. Oh and can't forget that my little sister turns 21 in 21 days! YIKES!

Must Haves:
1)Comfortable shoes-I prefer Toms. I may need to order another pair.
2) Organized classroom-I need everything in it's place to start the year.
3)Smiling Students- They make my day!

Go link up with Farley!

Now for the promised updated pictures from school last week.

semi close up of my birthday board. I still need to decide what to write the students names and dates on. Any ideas?

Look who got to come to school with me for the day! My dog Napili. Notice the mess of books she is staring at!

If you are a teacher and you don't have your own personal laminator I suggest you go get one. I bought this one at Costco. Works great! Only one person is allowed to operate the big one in the work room so this has been my friend.

kept telling myself I would do this last year and never got around to it.

I have a cute dog and I like to take her picture.

L-O-V-E

Seuss alphabet!

seuss alphabet and my lists of things to do...

 

back wall. Not done yer. There will be a tall bookshelf on the right that will be where those carts are.

Its been busy around here!

So first off I officially get to move! (I may have already said this but I'm so excited that I don't care how many times I tell people!)
The only bad part is that I am waiting on other people which can be frustrating.
Last weekend my roommate moved out. Very sad because she was the best and easiest roommate ever. We decided to make a late evening trip to the beach. It was cold, starting to drizzle and getting dark. A little scary on the walk home hoping we didn't see the neighborhood bear. Here's a picture for you all. I'm the one in Orange.

Moving on. 

I have no TV until I move. So I have been keeping up on the computer which means that I am a day or more behind on everything. It's killing me to not know what happens on The Bachelorette tonight! I must know what the first part of the "most dramatic season finale" will hold! 

I have been at school today. (I wasn't allowed last week because they were tearing up the front entrance flooring to fix it.) I got to meet our new special education teacher. She is very very nice. A bit overwhelmed but that's to be expected. 

I have SOOOOOO much more to do! I'm a bit stressed because I have kindergarten screening on the 13 & 14. Oh and that's the same days that I will hopefully be moving. It will be nice to get all settled at school and home at about the same time though so that I can focus on curriculum stuff. Here are the small things that I completed today. 

A cart FULL of LeapPads, headphones and books. There are 3 more leappads and books in the cupboard but they just plain don't fit. Excited to use these though!

Home living center. Sorted all of the parts into those 3 bins. Hoping to make a small storage shelf to hold them just to make cleanup easier

Home living center

Hoping to get lots more done tomorrow. Then a training out of town on Wednesday. 

Oh and when I left in June my class size was sitting at a lovely 19. The secretary informed me today that we have gotten 3 or 4 more kinders... Wonder how many I will end up with. 

I can't go to school...

So I start school September 3rd. But I begin testing students August 13&14 for our kinder assessment program called WAkids. Any other WA kinder teachers out there? Or other kinder teachers who use teaching strategies gold?

It gives good data but it is VERY time consuming. I have a refresher training on the 31st. 

Anyway this means that I want to have my classroom ready by the 13th. But I can't go to school this week... They are tearing up the entryway floor tiles and fixing them so they don't trip students (and teachers) anymore because they were all buckling. 

So I have decide that this week is a good time to pack up my house because I think that I will be able to move come the 12th. (Nice timing right?) I am sooooo excited to move though! It means a house to myself and getting to have my dog there. Oh and did I mention that I can walk to school if I want to?! Yep! A big difference from the hour commute I started my teaching career with. 

Here is a new classroom picture from last week. (I don't think I posted it yet) and a couple other random ones from life recently. 

Back to the real world

I was in Vegas for 4 days. It always amazes me the things people do, say and wear. Wow. 

Here are a few pictures of my trip.

I did get to watch my second cousin get married though... Mostly. I actually ended up taking care of the brides little 3 week old brother. He was adorable and well he and I got way too hot at the outdoor wedding so we went inside about halfway through the ceremony. Right behind us came the bridesmaid who passed out... And didn't remember it. She was ok though. 

Got back just before midnight on Monday. Meaning I just barely missed all the bloggers that are there now:( 

Yesterday was spent driving home and just plain relaxing. Today I went to school. I went with the intention of laminating the schedule cards that I finished cutting and coloring yesterday. Got to school and I can't find my personal laminator anywhere! I went through ALL of the boxes. It's driving me crazy. I did make some labels for my classroom library. I also hung some things up and started my big bulletin board. Here are the pictures. 

I gave in...I went to work in July.

Here is the drawing I left on the board for the custodians. They take all the furniture out an when they are done with the floors they will put it back wherever you draw it. If you forget to put it on there they will just put it where they can. I was pretty detailed :)

My KCDA order came!! It was like Christmas in July. New individual white boards that are lined on one side and blank on the other. I am SO excited! And the new electric pencil sharpener.

Here is what my classroom looked like when I left today.

I began the book sorting. I have all my teacher read aloud books sorted but I needed to sort my student library. I realized today that I have a TON of books!

Here are the categories that I started today. I still have about 3 boxes worth in addition to the ones on the table and the ones you saw stacked on the shelf in the previous picture... And these don't include the teacher read aloud books or the ones that I have for student check out...

Beginning of the word wall. Can't wait to get some words up there! Almost as much as I can't wait to put away that stuff that looks so messy up on top.

Here is the panoramic of the room today when I started.A

Happy 4th of July-Stay Safe!

Fireworks.
Sure they are pretty sometimes. But I really don't understand how people can spend so much money on them! I spent my day working in a fireworks stand basically on the WA/OR border.
Fireworks are mostly illegal in OR but not in WA. It is absolutely insane how much people will spend to blow things up for 15 minutes.

I also live in a house with an ocean view... Well for the last 4 days or so this means I spend my nights listening to people blow things up... It feels like there are people blowing things up on all sides of my house (they basically are). Completely insane.

I prefer the small town parade mid day tomorrow. It's quiet and cute. And we have an AWESOME shopping cart drill team.

Happy 4th of July everyone! Please be safe but also enjoy the day with your family.

Tic-Tac-Toe and Breaking the 1 blog a day rule

OK so I saw this linky before I saw the currently today. And I just decided that I needed to do both of them. So here it goes.

 

So it is a tic tac toe linky. I have chosen the left vertical column. 

So here goes...

I went to College at Washington State University's Vancouver campus. GREAT teaching program! I think my favorite memory was probably the day that we made puppets in art class. Everyone's puppets were so different. Here are a few pictures.

 

My first year teaching:

Hmmm where to start. So I Applied for the job as sort of a joke. I knew where I wanted to live(and wasn't going to budge on that) and this job was 55 miles away. I NEVER thought that I would get an interview let alone a job. So I applied. Interviewed. Had lunch with my dad after the interview (the job was literally 1/2 way between where he lives and where I live) then drove home. Pulled up in front of my house and my phone rang it was the principal offering me a job teaching Kindergarten. I went into the interview with NO idea what grade it was for and left the interview with the same question-they were actually hiring 3 of us K, 1st and 2nd. 

I of course said YES. Even though I knew that it was going to mean some difficult decisions. In the end I decided I really was NOT going to move. So I commuted 1 hour each way to work. I had THE class, you know that one that NOBODY wants... yeah. But in the end I would have traded any of those kids for anything. I loved that quirky bunch! 

My favorite grade to teach: This is a tricky question. Since the first day of 1st grade I have wanted to teach 1st grade.  I student taught 1st grade and loved it. Then I taught a year of kinder. Then last year I was back in 1st and I missed kinder! This year I am headed back to Kinder and I absolutely can't wait! I LOVE KINDERGARTEN! Never thought I would say that growing up. I have been assured by my principal that I can stay there a while :) 

There you have it. Enjoy the sunshine!