My classroom

I have been promising pictures of my classroom for a long time. I have taken pictures sooner than this, but then I always change something. My room has undergone five or six major rearrangements. It is very time-consuming to do this, but always so worth it because the whole classrooms functions better. Plus, it's much more fun to rearrange furniture and decorations than do any real work! This picture is the entrance to my classroom, room 205 (same as our apartment, strangely).



The first glimpse. The children's lunch choice is in front of you: fish nuggets or chicken sandwich, mmmm. Basically every kindergarten teacher starts in this room. It is the one no one wants. It has become quite home-y to me though, and I don't see myself moving even if another room becomes available. I've worked too hard on this one already!



Elementary classrooms always seem so cluttered to me. Now that I'm in one everyday (again) though, I see why. Every square inch must be used as efficiently as possible to make things work:). This is my desk area, the art center (foreground) and our carpet for large group times.



The chairs are up because it's time for Christmas break (yayyyyy!!). Sorry they block your view a bit. This is our math board, which we use every day for calendar and all kinds of counting. The blue table is my teacher table for guided reading, students who need a "special concentration spot," and temporary storage of junk.



On the back wall is our word wall. I just redid it this way so the whole alphabet could stretch out in one line. The posters above it, Grandma, are from a Mary Anglebreit calendar you gave me a long time ago. They are so cute, with great sayings, and I put them up first thing when I started in this room.



The monstrous box in the back corner is "the cage". It's actually called a study carol, but Matt calls it the cage. It's basically a desk with three walls. I have a student who's had to live there (thankfully not anymore), and sometimes students go there when life is just too overwhelming.

I have lots of great windows. We get so much light in fact that it blinds us during phonics and we have to close all the blinds. We keep the lights low to keep our cave cool.



Storage and cubbies for students occupy the back wall, along with two bathrooms (one of which works without flooding- at the moment). When I first arrived the cubbies in the back were all the nasty yellow color of the ones in the corner. They were also falling apart from past bouts with termites. I have been warned (by everyone) about the termites. Apparently they didn't come out last year, but they've heard they can remain dormant and come out any time. It happens in the spring, at which time we may have a several-week-long in-depth investigation of termite behavior. I managed to get the maintenance staff to replace and paint (a decent color - the yellow is gross up close) the middle set of cubbies. Maybe one day they will return, as promised, to do the others and add some in the left corner.