Making Progress!

Sorry Blogger, you certainly have been on the back-burner lately! Drew and I have been adjusting to both of us working, he has been an awesome helper which has been great for me :) My kids don't start until Aug. 25 (in case you do not realize.. that's REAL soon..) but I have been very busy attending workshops, new teacher orientations, oh and working on my classroom! I have made a lot of progress though since this. So it is nice to walk in there and not just want to climb in a cabinet and hibernate. (yeah, I seriously felt like that a few weeks ago, haha) I also had about 50 to-do lists going and I am down to one, consolidated list! AND things are getting checked off on it like crazy! Anyways... here are some pictures!





When you walk in the door this is what you see! One of my grandma's friends made my curtains, and next weekend I am going to make pillows out of the same fabric for my kids to sit on at the library station. (take note of the pink bookshelf to the left, I have a story about that...)




Well, that is the progression so far! I can't wait to be finished with it, although I know it is such a work in progress since I will prob. change a lot once my students come and I figure out what works for us and what does not! If you notice some of my walls are bare its not because I am boring.. haha. My school really encourages us to build our classrooms with our students, so my library is empty, and all my other walls are blank besides this one and my calender. As we make stories together on chart paper and sentence strips I will put those on the wall (so yes I get to see my handwriting.. EVERYWHERE.) But it really gives the kids ownership, and they can look at something and remember learning that! So I had to part with a lot of cute posters, signs, etc. But I def. see how important it is that the kids have ownership!


So now my pink shelf story, to the left of the bookcase is all cabinet space (you can see it in my first post..) Well tonight I had Drew come up to the school and help me organize some stuff in my storage room. Anyways.. I found this border my teacher left that says "Reach for the Start" and is really cute! I wanted to hang it above the TALL shelves... so I climbed up there with the stapler as Drew handed me pieces of border! I had a tiny crawl space and got it all done, but was terrified to get down and Drew had to spend a good 2 minutes convencing me I would be ok. Yeah... you prob. "had to be there", but it was pretty funny. I will take a picture of that super cute border soon, it was totally worth it to me :)

Well, that's all from Mrs. Pennywell. Have a great week :)