Welcome to the Jungle!

It's time.  It's done.  My class is put together, and I am actually ready for back to school night and the first day.  I'm so excited.  I love looking at other classrooms, seeing how other teachers set up their classrooms and different ideas they have to maximize the usage of their space.  So, here it goes!

TA-DA!

I'm SUPER happy with how my room has turned out.  I think it will be just enough fun and lots of functionality.  Here is a more in-depth look at some of my centers:

Playdoh and Fine Motor 

I got really smart this year and laminated my giving tree, because it is something that I do every year. I also labeled spots where to put the apples with different letters, so that way I know which apples have been taken.  This helps me mentally plan for what I still need to get.

My cute dramatic play kitchen.  Check out my cute kitchen labels here.

My bulletin board.  Wanna know my favorite part?  I am leaving it up ALL YEAR LONG!  I'll hang student art work up there, but I'm not changing the border and whatnot.  Nope.  Not this year.  Not this girl!

Puzzle fun.  I have puzzles, legos, and some small group games.

This year, my school is following some models from Sue Kempton.  She is fabulous.  I want to be her when I grow up, or a hybrid of her and Dr. Jean.  One of the ideas she shared with us was having books around the classroom in different centers.  This makes sense once you think about it.  If you want your students to have their hands on books, you need to give them more opportunities to do so.  This book shelf is between my dramatic play and puzzles, so on this shelf I have books about food, people, holidays, and buildings.  I LOVE the book labels that I got--you can look at them here.

This is my area.  To the left, you see the science cart.  Our school is fortunate enough to have one for each team.  These have some really great science activities on them.  And, of course, i have my coffee on the table.  What's a classroom without coffee?

Story time easel.

This is my calendar area.  You can see the differentiated calendar cards.  These go with my Jungle pack,   I think they are super fun.  

Here is our schedule and my small group pocket charts.  I have one for reading and one for math.  I will get more into how I run centers a little bit later.  One thing at a time.  

These shelves are essential in my classroom.  I'll explain more when I go over centers.

The next two pictures are my science area.  As you can see, I have some books on the bottom.  These are all of my science books, such as weather and animals.  On the middle shelves, I have a coloring making set from Lakeshore, which was part of our science cart, and I have a pony bead sorting station.  

So this color wheel what a little tricky to make.  I wanted it to be perfect.  I think it turned out fairly well.  Thank goodness for awesome coworkers who help you out when you want to make a 36 in color wheel.  

This is the back of the story time easel.  I will use this for the writing and tracing center.

This is my math wall.  The number cards go with my Jungle pack, and you and find the number puzzles here.

The word wall cards, birthday cards, alphabet cards, and number line are all included in the Jungle pack.

This is one of my favorite handy tricks that I learned from some awesome coworkers.  We have a cork strip that runs the length of the classroom on the wall in the hallway.  I hot-glued a clothespin to a thumbtack, then glued my small labels on the front of that.  This is another great way to display student work that doesn't take a long time.  

Whew!  That was fun!  I am super sleepy now.  Tomorrow we have open house and I get to meet all my new little students for the first time.  It's so exciting!

Have a great day!