Whew! The past three weeks have been CA-RAZY!! Going back to school, inservices, getting my room ready, meeting my new sweeties, and having a full first week back {who really thinks it's a good idea for the first day to be on a Monday??} have had me out of commission, but somehow everything magically came together and my room was ready for parent orientation. That was over a week ago, but I'm just getting time to finally show it off!
I don't really have a 'theme.' More of a primary color scheme, stemming from the chair pouches my grandmother made me. I call my tables by colors, so everything else is primary colored for the most part. 
Ready for a lot of pictures? ;) Excuse the lighting on many of them...I have great natural light in my classroom, but for some reason, it doesn't show in pictures!
Here's the outside area of my room...I LOVE my new rug from IKEA!

 Here are a few shots from around the room. The first is a picture from the door I snapped right before Open House.

View from the front of the room

 View from the back of the room

Now for the close ups...when you walk in the door, the writing table is in front of you

{Posters on the sides are from Lyndsey at A Year of Many Firsts and the posters and cards on the board are from Lori at Teaching with Love and Laughter}

This year, I decided to put three caddies at the center, so that each child had their own utensils. Hopefully, now I won't constantly be telling them to share ;)

Just past the writing table is my reading area. I also got this rug from IKEA and it is so soft! The bookshelf is one my granddad gave me my first year of teaching.

{Posters are from Lyndsey at A Year of Many Firsts}

Above my reading center, is my word wall. If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you may remember my ugly wall picture. I fixed it by buying a big piece of insulation at Lowe's, using heavy duty double sided tape to attach it to the wall, then treating it like a bulletin board. I'll use clothespins to attach our words. I love how it turned out!

In the closet beside this, is our house center. I love having an extra closet for this! It's nothing fancy, but it serves its purpose!

Beside that, I'm blessed to have a big sink area. Above it, is where I hang our "Wow Work."

On this wall, I have all windows, which is a blessing, but it looks out on one of our playgrounds. To solve the problem of my kids looking out all day, my sweet grandmother made me some curtains. It's hard to see, but they're black and white polka dots. Under the windows, is my art table. I love having a variety of tools for the kids to use and I'm so excited about the crayon jars I made! No more "I need a red!" The kids can just get up and get whatever color they've lost!

Next is my guided reading space and my desk area...I love my two canvas pieces in the windowsill {one was a Christmas gift and the other was a project done by the same sweetie's mom last year}. I'm working really hard this year to not let clutter take over!

{The banner is a freebie and my alphabet cards are in my TpT store.}

This little part of my desk area cracks me up! A mom gave this picture to me this summer that was taken during our field day...I guess you could say I get a little intense! That intensity and some motivated kids won that little trophy though ;)

A few more pictures of my desk area. I'm well aware that I have too many pictures of my child, but I can't help it ;). I love these stickers I got at Hobby Lobby...great for sprucing up a boring desk!

Past that is my whole group area...calendar, board, etc. My tubs underneath my board hold our workshops. When the kids aren't facing the board, they turn to the left and face my rocking chair/easel/teacher shelf.

I love having all my Pete the Cat books out to begin the year and I really love the little pails I attached to my easel with S hooks. They make it where I have everything I need when doing an example or making anchor charts.

Behind that is a big wall with 2 huge bulletin boards. One I use for work and the other I change throughout the year. In the middle is my birthday bulletin board. Our cubbies are underneath where the kids keep their backpacks and stuff. On the counter, I have my folder and snack baskets, and our files where we put finished work.

{Bulletin Board inspiration from Doodle Bugs Teaching}

And, last is this little area beside my door. It holds all my little trinkets I've collected over the years along with our emergency bucket. Beside the shelf is our how we go home chart.

All of my color, number, shape, and alphabet posters can be found here in my TpT store.
Sorry for the overload of pictures, but I finally feel like after 11 years, I've almost created my perfect teacher space. Now let's hope I keep it organized!
I *hope* to be back tomorrow to link up visual plans with Deedee..cross your fingers that it happens!

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Vickie

I'm so excited to be joining my awesome friends out there in blog world to bring you {hopefully} lots of great tips you can use! Hopefully, you'll find something here worth trying!
I LOVE to have student work everywhere in my room and in the hallway {I'm one of the ones with too much stimulation probably!} for a variety of reasons. I think it truly gives my students ownership of our classroom. They really do love to see their work hanging up and they love it even more when another adult comes in and looks at it. I'm also a little selfish and for some reason, can't stand blank space and have a need to hang something. At any given time, there are probably 4-5 student projects hanging inside and outside of my classroom.
I've been in a variety of classrooms the past few years and this year I'm lucky enough to be in the biggest room in the school. I have 2 really big bulletin boards I use to display work, but I also use other areas to hang work and anchor charts. Since I have cinder block walls, I had to think of a way to hang work without it constantly falling off over the weekend when the AC is turned off and it's 90 degrees outside. So, I decided to use rope and clothespins. I love this set-up because it's super easy to take work down and hang work up.
First, I hot glued command hooks to the wall...

 Then, I tied some thin rope to the hooks and added clothespins to hold work. I love the clothespins because it takes almost no time to change what's hanging. Easy enough, right?

I also did something similar to hang my anchor charts {sorry in advance for those of you with meanie fire marshals!}. I tied the same rope to paper clips and stuck the clips in the ceiling tiles. I added some clothespins and now I have an easy way to hang my charts! I also have student work hanging this way in the hallway, but I used yarn instead of rope.

Before this year, I was in the portable with wood paneling! I still had my clothesline hanging from the ceiling, but I displayed student work just a little differently. On one of my closet doors, I hung orange construction netting and used clothespins to hang work.

I also used bulletin board paper to cover part of the wall and hung clotheslines on it to display work.

To show some other examples, I snapped some pictures of some student work display areas around my school. A lot of the first and second grade teachers use the big construction paper to display work. The first uses names and clothespins, the second uses pictures and clothespins, and the third uses names and little mini clips. All super cute!

I kind of got carried away, but, I am serious about how much I love to show off student work!

Now, click here to continue on our hop and get more great ideas from Abby's post on small group writing conferences.
If you would rather, you can also check out all the awesome ideas, by clicking below on your topic of choice. :)

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Vickie

So, life threw us a bit of a curveball this weekend and due to some major flooding, we had to postpone our first day of school until tomorrow! Boo for rain!!
I did sneak up to school today to get some last minute things done and snapped some pics of my room to share (sorry about how dark some of them are...I moved to a new room and haven't figured out the lighting just yet)
My new room is actually in a building, but I haven't quite figured out exactly what I want to do outside my door, so I just put out my big apple and hung my door hanger. I also made a ribbon curtain that I'm in love with!!

 The view from the door {it's by far the biggest room I've ever had!}

When you walk in, to the left are my writing and reading centers...

The I can cards and mini picture cards are from Lori at Teaching with Love and Laughter and the conventions and punctuation posters are from Lyndsey at A Year of Many Firsts. I love the idea of hanging the cards with mini clothespins {Thanks Deedee!!}

Love this rug I found at Wal-Mart and my cute little shelf my granddad bought me my first year of teaching! We'll add anchor charts throughout the year to this space.

On the back side of the shelf in the reading area are my play center buckets. Beside that is a closet {don't hate me, but I have 3 huge closets!}, that I turned into a home center.

Our first homework assignment will be bringing in environmental print for this area

On around, there is a sink area that we'll hang good work above, the computers, and art center

Next is my small group area and teacher area, neither of which are super cute {I kind of ran out of time!}. My word wall is on the windows above so that a little bit of the PE playground could be blocked ;)

Endless stacks of beginning of the year forms!

Going on around to the front of my room, I have my calendar and white board, shelves with workshop and math tubs, and another shelf with my theme books.

Love this smartie jar a new sweetie gave me! It matches my Smarty Pants from Abby perfectly!

Love these Kid President quotes! You can get them here for free!

Still with me?? Told you this room is huge! On the last wall I have three bulletin boards...one is for work, one is for birthdays, and one is seasonal. Underneath is a long shelf with cubbies underneath and then beside it is a little shelf that I keep wipes, tissues, emergency stuff, etc.

A few more random pics...

Love my chair pouches my granny made!

Ready for the first day!!

Whew!! That was a lot to take in! All of the alphabet, number, color, and shape posters are in my Primary Punch pack on TpT. You've still got some time to stock up during the big sale, so hurry on over!
I'm off to bed to hopefully get some sleep before we start tomorrow!

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Vickie