Starting the Year Off Right...

Ok, so the pictures that I am about to post are not for the faint of heart.  Those of you who are super organized and bothered by clutter in your classroom should just look away (or skip to the bottom of the post).  This was what it looked like when I went in to work in my classroom yesterday:

 

See, I warned you.  I just heard you gasp!  I know, I know - you don't have to say it.  But, as I said before, I am a compulsive piler.   I tend to lay things down anywhere and not even think about it.  But I am really going to try hard in 2013 to keep my classroom clean and organized.  So, after working all day (nope, didn't even stop for lunch), here's what we have now:

 

Ahhhh - nice, huh?  I also changed my word wall and some other things around.  Here was my word wall before:

It was up under  my board with the calendar above it.  While I liked the idea of it being low enough for the kids to really get close, my teaching chair was always in front of it and I just didn't like the feel of it.  Plus, the black made the front of the room rather dark.  So, I moved the word wall to the wall above their cubbies:

This gave me more room to post the adorable spelling chunk cards I downloaded earlier in the year (I forget where I got them and I don't have them here to look at.  If you know where I got them, let me know so I can give credit).

I also straightened up our indoor recess games (you can see them on the left side of the first picture):

And I added shelves of "I'm done" activities (one shelf for reading and one for math):

Finally, my new calendar board:

 

So much lighter and brighter for the new year.  On the board now are Common Core "I Can" statements.  I got them here.  Below the board are where I am going to put their math station symbols so they know what math station they are going to.  The blue chart on the easel is for reading stations.

I was also able to straighten up my little writing station (yes, it had been piled on too):

The green bucket on the left holds my story starters.  These are pictures that I cut from magazines or colored from coloring books (am I the only one that finds coloring relaxing?  I love to color.) that the kids can use to write a story about - like this:

At Halloween, I allowed the kids to pick a picture from a Halloween coloring book which they colored and wrote a story about.  They just loved this, so I'm thinking that this might be a great activity for them. 

So now, aren't you proud of me?  My classroom is (almost) ready for the new year.  I still have the counter by the office to clean off.  Oh, and if I were you, I wouldn't venture into the closet...or into the office.  Hey, a girl can only do so much in a day!