Progress!

I fell out of the loop for a few days because I was finally able to get into my classroom!  (Sorry for all of those who are still waiting to get in there...I would be getting super anxious if I were in your shoes.)  I'm very grateful that we can come and go as we please at our building.  I like to go in during the evenings to get work done because the building is usually free of distractions...aka chatting it up with my teacher friends.  Don't get me wrong, I like catching up with everyone but the downside is, I GET NOTHING DONE! So we had a little family party this afternoon and I decided I'd stop by school to see if I would be motivated to do anything.  After being highly disturbed by the person standing on a step ladder with one of those grabber claw things going through one of the school's dumpsters, I did accomplish a few things!  (She was putting whatever she was finding in her car...awkward!  Seriously...what was she finding in there that was so valuable?)

Here's my progress so far...

I'm really loving my black chalkboards!  They were brown and my sister and I painted them with chalkboard paint.

Our school colors are red, black and white.  I think it's really important to instill a sense of pride in my kiddos, so I use our school colors to decorate my room.  Our mascot is a pirate so there will be some pirates throughout our classroom too...eventually!

And then I have tables full of piles to be hung up or put away...somewhere!

I'm nowhere near finished, but I feel a little better knowing that most of my furniture is arranged and all of my bulletin boards are covered with black fadeless paper and red, black and white borders.

I also spent a lot...A LOT of time on my classroom library this week!  (Sorry this picture is fuzzy.)  Every book is sorted and I'm on the hunt for a few more red and black baskets.

I then made labels for every set of books.  A label for the book box and coordinating labels to stick on every book.

Ta da!!!  It's going to take a bit of time to organize my books like this but I think it will pay off in the end!  I'm hoping that this will make it easier for the kiddos to help shelve their own books after they're done reading them in their book boxes.

Really hope this works for us!

On another note...I am no longer permitted to use spray paint.  Enough said.
:)