Finally done!

YAY - Finally took pics of classroom in use.  We've been in school for a few weeks, and feeling as though I need to get in this weekend to revamp a few things. 

 This is the view from the front door of my classroom.

 Guided reading table with my pinterest seats... love them!

 This is where we do shared reading.  My leader of the day sits in the tall chair and I sit in my donated rocking chair (Thanks Mrs. Simon... you're the best!)

 Thanks Granny for my beautiful curtains... love, love, love, them!  Behind my leader chair and rocking chair is our Daily Five chart.  Trying this for the first time this year...

 In the corner is my job chart - we have daily jobs and bi-monthly jobs. I need to take a close-up pic of this - it's really working for me.

 One of my BFF's made this for me - these are the stuffed animals the students can sit with while they read to themselves.  Love it, Nicki!

 She also made these buckets.  We have daily tickets and weekly tickets.  The students get rewarded throughout the day with our tickets.  They put one portion in this bin and the other portion in their coupon holder at their desk.  With these daily tickets, students have the chance of being picked for the Caught Being Good bag that goes home nightly.  Inside the bag, is a stuffed animal of their choice and a book of their choice (one that I've read to the class already).  At the end of the day, the daily tickets go into the weekly ticket bin.  At the end of the month (I should have called it monthly tickets... my fault), anyway, at the end of the month we hand back all the tickets and whoever has the most wins a prize.  (My co-worker came up with the idea of a $5.00 McDonald's gift card...) love that idea.  Oh, forgot to mention, the students write their name on each ticket.  On Fridays, students use their tickets from their coupon holder to buy things from our coupon treasure chest.  It's working like a charm so far...

 These bins are all filled with different centers... I just introduced centers this week, and so far, so good.  I just have to buy a bunch of batteries, because most of this has been sitting in my old classroom for four years while I taught middle school.  The teacher that moved into my room uses different things for centers... so lucky for me, all my stuff is just the way I left it.  THANKS JENNY!

 In front of our windows is our writing center.  This has been the most popular center introduced thus far.  

 This is our library center.  I thought I had purchased enough books to get me started, but I'm afraid I'm way off.  Scholastic, here I come...

 I've always used a reminder chart with green, yellow, red, and orange... but after perusing Pinterest all summer, I thought I would try this clip up, clip down idea.  It's working great for me, I just need to remember to clip-up more often.  

Getting Closer

 This is our birthday chart.  Once students begin, I will take a picture of each student holding their date and then will place under the correct month.

 Tables are still not in... should be in tomorrow.  Keeping my fingers crossed! XXXXX

 This is my library center... XO it!

 This took me forever to decide on.  I wanted students to have jobs, daily and weekly.  Our school is starting Leader In Me, so I knew that having students greet guests and "run" the room would be an important part of this new endeavor.  I have four jobs that will change out on a daily basis.  Line leader, last in line, messenger, and light monitor.  The rest of my jobs will last between one and two weeks, depending on the task at hand. I attached ribbon to the jobs and will make cute little clippers to connect to the ribbon.  

 With not a lot of wall space, this word wall will have to suffice.  My co-worker gave me the idea of hanging down poster board from each letter and then attaching the words with paperclips.  I ended up using ribbon instead of poster board, and love the way it turned out.

 My mother-in-law is making my curtains... can't wait to see them.