I seem to have lost a month

Wow! Where has the last month gone?!? Sadly, I could tell you where I have spent nearly every waking moment. Initially, I spent all of my free time getting my classroom to look like the previous pictures to look like this:

Thank you to Mrs. Amy Lemons for her super cute clock markers http://stepintosecondgrade.blogspot.com/ 

 Thank you to

Dear Blog

I miss you! I enjoy getting all of my thoughts out into the world wide web. I have been so busy since I have gotten my hot little hands on my keys that I have just not had the opportunity to update my blog. I have oodles of pictures waiting to be posted too! And there is so much fun stuff that I am learning about that I want to blog... but I have to get my stuff in order! Meet the Teacher tomorrow!!

10 years ago today!

Ten years ago today, I packed up a moving truck with the help of my friends (Edith and Joey) and moved out of Chicagoland. I moved to beautiful sunny, Albuquerque for school. Here I am with an Associate, Bachelors, and Masters degree later, married to the man of my dreams, mommy to the sweetest baby girl (who celebrated her 10 month birthday today) and a brand new teacher! Wow! A lot happens in 10 years!

Well, a lot happened today too! I checked out the keys to my classroom.

I marched my happy behind to my classroom. (Ok, so I got a little lost on the way... but I found it eventually!) I unlocked my door and this is what I saw: (The power was off in the school due to some construction so I couldn't turn on my lights) 

Good grief that is a lot of furniture! 

Hurray! My Promethean Board- I am so excited to integrate technology into teaching! 

The other side of the mountain of furniture.

I must have walked around the mountain of furniture 100 times. Did I mention that the power was out? Which meant there was no air conditioning. Thankfully, it did eventually come on although I hadn't thought to flip the switch to turn the air on in my room until the last hour I was there. (DUH!) 

I spent a good portion of my time trying to remember all that I had read in my Debbie Diller "Spaces and Places" book. I wish I could get rid of the rickety old teacher's desk as it was a pain in the you know what to move into position and I wasn't all that sold on it in the first place. So I had "Library, whole group lessons, small group lessons, listening center, and Computer table" spaces all in my head. It wasn't until I got home that I realized that I forgot a writing work station... but that is ok, I want to move a few more things still. 

I put up fabric and boarders on most of my bulletin boards already and I even borrowed the vacuum from the custodian to clean up all of the treasures the little one would be sure to find when I bring her tomorrow! I have decided to employ a young baby sitter to come with us tomorrow so that I can focus on getting more accomplished. My niece is going into second grade and I am hoping that seeing what teachers go through to set up a classroom will give her a little excitement for the upcoming school year. I was going to take some "This is what I did all day" pictures, but 5 hours in a hot classroom moving furniture can really exhaust an already tired mommy. 

Tune in tomorrow for more in "a day in the life as a new teacher"! 

Christy

I'm a blog stalker (sung to the 'I'm a Wheel Watcher' tune)

Darn you super crafty teachers! ;) I've spent my entire morning nap time (the little one's, not mine) surfing your uber fascinating blogs and following you on Pinterest. In the mean time, the dishes in my sink have gone unwashed, the trashcans have gone unemptied, and my floor have gone unmopped. On any other day, this would not be a big deal but the in-laws are coming for dinner tonight. Thank goodness my mother-in-law is also a teacher and understands the Back to School rush for ideas, setting up the classroom, and I'm sure she will forgive me for being a total scatter brain! 


Hi my name is Christy and I am a blog stalking addict. Whew! That feels good to get out in the open. 


BTW... before pictures of my room should be posted tomorrow! (Can't wait to see my room!)

The date I've been waiting for!

Hooray! I found out yesterday that I can go in at 9:00 AM on Monday to get the keys to my classroom. I am so excited to see my room! I'm not sure yet if I will be in a portable or not, but whatever I am given, I will make the most of. :)

Stay tuned for before pictures of my room!

Lamenating... Shamentating

So, last week, I went off to the local teacher goods store to pick up some of the essentials for any new teacher.... Fancy borders for my classroom bulletin boards, coordinating letters, and a few other miscellaneous items that happened to hop in my cart. I was fortunate enough to only have to pay $1.60 out of pocket thanks to my super sweet mother-in-law who has been giving me gift cards for the store every chance she could. :)

I came home and started punching out all 216 letters from each of the 2 packs of letters. This alone, took over an hour. They sure look pretty, don't they?

So then my dear husband and I were discussing whether it would be worth it to laminate all of my new loot. They do retail at about $8.00 a pack. I wanted to make sure that I preserved my investment so I insisted that I go laminate them. He felt that it wouldn't be wort all of the time it would take to cut them all out... something about "time is money... blah blah blah". What does he know? He is a CPA, surely he doesn't know anything about classroom materials. 

So this morning, I met my mother-in-law at the districts graphics department so that I could laminate. She showed my how and told me how to slow it down. Well, I had no idea quite how difficult this process could be. I ended up overlapping lots of my letters due to my impatience and lack of attention to detail. ARRRGGHHHH Oh well! 54 feet of laminating later and dealing with people from the district who have absolutely no concept of customer service. 

And then the fun begins! I am so thankful for my dear supportive mom who was wrangled into helping me cut out all of the laminate. She even let me leave half of it at her house for her to work on in the evenings when she wasn't painting her house. 

This is Just a day in the life of a new teacher. 

Super Technology!

Here is a fantastic e-zine that discusses different apps that can be used in the classroom. It also has a really fun idea for students to create an iPod like marketing picture to help learn verbs.



I am very excited to use so many of these ideas in my classroom!