Classroom Pictures!!

Well, I survived my first day as a 1st grade teacher! I am not changing my blog title yet though as there is still a chance that I will get switched back to kindergarten. So far our kindergarten classes are at 26 and 25 students,if we get more next week (which we almost always do) then we will be authorized a 3rd class again! Although, I am getting attached to my firsties, I have had 6 of them in class before!
Here are some pictures of my classroom - the only thing I did to change it from kindergarten to 1st grade was to take out my housekeeping center. I figured I could bump everything else up a notch to make it 1st grade appropriate.

My calendar area at the front of the class.

My listening center, with my theme words on the left. Not sure what to put on the apple tree yet.

My Vistaprint banner! Sorry about the lighting, it's much better in person!

Vistaprint car magnet for on my magnetic wall.

My magnetic Word Work Wall. There's a box of alphabet letters on the chair to use on the board.

My reading center. The little table was from my housekeeping center, but I figured they could read at it instead :)

Science center - I haven't added the hermit crabs or the frogs yet, they're still hanging out at my house for the weekend :P

The tree my "teaching-fairy godmother" gifted me with! I LOVE it! I had all of the owls displayed at our front door for our Back to School night. As the students entered they had to find their owl and come place it on the tree. This helped me keep track of who attended and also gave them a sense of ownership in the room.

My computer center - don't you love the chairs? They are great for students with ADHD or even those who just seem to have trouble keeping track of their bodies (the ones who fall out of their chairs 5 times a day!) The desk and chairs were Donorschoose funded items and the computers were donated by a unit on       Fort Sill!

My sink area. That's my sand & water table in the corner. It will be used for a lot more science related things this year, but I didn't have the heart to take it out entirely lol.

The view from my carpet area. That's my desk in the back left, I keep my area small because a) there's not a lot of room in my class for a big teacher area and b) my stuff seems to grow to fit the size allocated to it. If I have a small space it stays neater and more organized than a big space does!

The caddies on my tables. We do community supplies rather than individual because I end up buying 90% of the supplies anyways lol. I let the kids read the books whenever they have a minute between task, and the caddy keeps all our daily-used items handy too. I got these caddies at Walmart - when I bought them 2 years ago they came in all sorts of colors. When I saw them this year they only had blue, red, grey and black, but for less than $3 I think these are a steal. Note to self, peel off the sticker on Monday!

Two friends working. They were filling out a survey about each other and drawing a picture of their new friend. I love how they chose to come sit on my crates while they worked!

Alright, I am off to blogstalk all the 1st grade blogs I can find now. And I really wish I had printed out that great set of reading strategies I ran across last week because now I can't remember which blog it was on. It had animals for each strategy. I remember "Eagle Eye" and a frog to hop over words. Know what I'm talking about? Please let me know, I think those will be great for my firsties now!

Here are four wonderful resources for classroom pictures: TBA's Classroom Photos Party, a classroom photo linky party @ Curls and a Smile, and "What's Your Room Look Like?" at Empowering Little Learners and  Where it all goes down Wednesday at Blog Hoppin'! Hop over to all 4 to find some great ideas for your room! I love to look at everyone's pictures!

I'm also linking this up to Dragonflies in First for her classroom views linky party. To check out how I changed my classroom tree for the fall, check out this post.