Printed Duct Tape LOVE



While picking up my 10 cent composition books at Staples this week, I needed at least 5 dollars worth of items to buy to get the extreme deal. {They sure know how to sucker more money out of us, don’t they?}

Anywhoos, I saw these beauties on a display and knew I JUST. HAD. TO. HAVE. THEM.

They’re zebra and leopard print! PERFECT for my jungle/safari theme!

So I got them to my classroom and was just staring at their beauty, pondering what in the world I could do with them. And then it hit me. Why don’t I jazz up my book boxes? So this is what I did.

I took my book boxes that I had purchased last year from Target's dollar spot {have I ever mentioned how much I love that place?} and simply added two pieces of the duct tape to the end! They turned out so cute!

Here are all of the boxes together sitting on the counter. On the first day of school I plan on taking each student’s picture and then adding them on top of the animal prints. This will make it quick and easy for them to find their boxes.

Don’t you just love the simplicity of it? I think these are my new favorite items in my classroom! :o)

 



Classroom Pictures...So Far

So life has been pretty hectic the past few weeks. I have one last final week of summer break before going back for a 3 week “boot camp.” I’m not going to complain though, because one of those “boot camp” days includes a special speaker - - the one and only RON CLARK!!!!!! (I CAN’T WAIT!!!)

Anywhoos, I have spent many hours in my classroom already, but feel like I have SO much more to do! A little bit of background on my school: it’s a charter school in Cincinnati. There is already one campus (K-12) on the west side of town and they are opening up a new campus (K-6) on the east side. I was lucky enough to be able to go to the new campus. I can’t wait until all of the kiddos arrive on September 6^th!

On Tuesday this past week, I decided in the afternoon to head out to get some things done in my room since the hubby got home from work early.  BAD IDEA! I should have just stayed home because not even 5 minutes away from my house, this happened:

I know, right!? And I had JUSt gotten these tires last September for my birthday too!

Well, enough griping. How about some pictures of my classroom? I am doing a jungle/safari theme this year.

This is what my classroom looked like the very first time that I saw it  - completely blank!

After a few hours here and there, this is what I have so far:



This is where the student mailboxes are located. The cute little animal trash cans are fm Target’s dollar spot (last spring). They are going to be the “scrap bins” for each table whenever we have a cutting project. I hate it when kids are out of their seats to throw away little scraps of paper. Such a waste of time. The students will put all of their scraps in their table’s bin and then the classroom helpers will empty them at the end of the day.

 

This is the beginning of the library. All of the items here were also found at the Target dollar spot last spring.

I have an ENTIRE wall of windows in my classroom and not even close to the amount of wall space that I need, so I decided to turn each window shade into a different bulletin board!
This is the first one. It is for our weekly mystery reader. I got all of the items that I needed for this from Mrs. D at The Silver Lining. Here is the link to her post.





I found these “Bucket Filling Essentials” that Hope over at 2^nd Grade Shenanigans created from Ron Clark’s Essential 55. LOVE!

I can’t take the credit for this behavior chart. I about fell out of my seat when I saw this posted here on Queen of the First Grade Jungle. I just knew that I had to use this for my room!

 

“Treemendous Words” Can you guess what this is? Lol!

This is the front of my room. I’ve already banged my head on that blasted tv at least 20 times!

This is a picture standing where the tv is.

As you can see, there is still a LOT of work to do, but not too bad for starting with a clean slate! :o)