Welcome to room 4!

Happy Hump Day friends! We have officially made it through three days with our little people, and we are STILL tired! Man these kiddos have some energy! Our classes are as big as they've ever been this year, and we both have 28 first graders! We continue to teach, model, practice and teach again. We've done some really fun stuff so far, and will share some of that later. Right now, we'd like to share some classroom pics, FINALLY! These are from Erin's room. It's never going to be cleaner than this, so I had to share now. Leslie's pics will come later... So grab a treat, and relax as you join us on our classroom tour!

Welcome to room 4! As a first day treat, I made these signs for all of our pod members (K-1). Our school is separated into three areas, or pods. We have the earth pod (K-1), the water pod (2-3) and sky pod (4-5).

Window with my student's names.

To the right of the door as you walk in, take-home folders, Eagle Eyes (school-wide behavior recognition system), box tops and bathroom passes.

View from the doorway.

Moving to the left, view from the left corner. My room is square shaped.

Colored tubs hold math activities, will eventually be math tubs. Behind my attendance chart is storage for supplies, and math materials.

Colors and shapes cards from our Colors and Shapes Pack. More storage, and filing cabinets inside.

Left corner, science area. Eventually this will have science themed posters and such based on the unit. Meet Mikeriley, our classroom guinea pig. Under the table is storage for science materials.

Classroom library. This is the first time I've had the books under our white board. So far I'm loving it! Shelve seem safer and more protected from little hands, and it freed up a lot of space in our calendar/group area. Books are organized into themes, and boxes are labeled. Our labels aren't the cutest yet, but they work. We made them before we entered the blogging world. We'd like to redo them, but it's not to high on our priority list. :)

Front of the room. Number cards are from our All About the Number Pack. SOOOOOOO jealous of all of your smart boards! Just last year they finally replaced our chalk boards so that we had 2 white boards. Someday....

Calendar area to the right of the calendar. Like our calendar set? Check out Pocket Chart Calendar Cards. The green, turquoise and pink squares (which are glitter paper btw, WAY too cute! I have it all over the room this year, and it makes me so happy!) will have our weather chart, weekly sound focus, and our poems of the month. Not starting those until next week.

Calendar area. Rug hasn't been brought back from summer yet. I've been busy, and it really needs to be shampooed. Green bin hold math journals (and after today apparently our special carpets, and reading comprehension beach ball).

Calendar/group area. Saw these chairs at Target, and had to have. Kids LOVE them! And of course my Oregon State pillow sits on my bench at all times. Go Beavs!

CAFE board, again with glitter paper. Download these HERE. (That border really isn't that crooked. It would drive me crazy. The picture just makes it look funny.)
Update 9/6: There was an error on our Accuracy poster, it had the same definition as the Comprehension. Oops, make sure to re-download it. Sorry for the inconvenience. :)

Saw these Daily 5 posters at KinderTastic (How cute is her blog design? Great blog!) and had to copy to make some to match my CAFE posters. Find these HERE.

Maybe my favorite part of my room this year, is my new word wall. I used our alphabet cards from our All About the Alphabet pack instead of just letter cards, and I love the way it turned out! I can't wait to start adding words. Above will go our Reading Strategies Posters, which I'll add after I introduce them. That picture to come later.

Word wall

My listening table. These bins hold my 5 iPod shuffles for Listen to Read. Read more about that in this post. Under the table stores stuffed animals, and pillows for Daily 5 reading.

My desk and small group meeting table.

Finally decided these needed to stay on my desk. Check out this post to see where I found these glitter gems. Glitter makes everything better! That's sort of my motto this year. I just wish ya'll could really see the glitter paper on my walls. It's amazing the difference it makes!

View from listening center.

New this year, our Hall of fame. Each child has a colored square (glitter of course!) that will display their work for the year. First grader's names are on the little black ribbons in the corner of each page.

My version of the behavior clip chart. Found the words HERE at Teaming Up To Teach. Aren't they cute? I just added some glitter paper on the background.

Here's Leslie's version of the behavior chart if you don't want to use ink. She just printed it on colored paper and it looks awesome. Click HERE for her posters.

Word work activities and games.

More word work, and writing bulletin board. Still waiting for a few anchor charts to be added later.

Writing center, storage underneath.

Back to the door.

Cubbies, and baskets. Like the labels? Get these and many others HERE and HERE.


Thanks for visiting! Hope you found some freebies or ideas that you can use. We'd love to hear and see how we helped you!

All clipart courtesy of Scrappin' Doodles.






We're Still Here!



Clip art courtesy of Scrappin Doodles

UPDATE: We have added an editable version as well!
Just stopping by to let you all know that we are still here! We had our first day with students today and we are so TIRED! We wanted to be sure and share a freebie with you that we send home with our students on the first day of school. After reading The Kissing Hand, by Audrey Penn, our students complete a beginning, middle, and end story retell activity. At the end of the day we send home this award with Chester the raccoon, with each of our first graders. Click HERE to get your copy of our certificate! Be watching this week for some of our classroom pictures! We've finally got our classrooms set up and can't wait to share our pics with you all! Also, beginning in September, we've got some great weekly posts that we will be sharing with you! Have a wonderful week and we wish you all a wonderful start to the school year!

14 Days of Summer # 14

Well it's Monday and our last day of summer vacation and our last day of our giveaway. After several classroom visits last week and getting our classrooms somewhat organized, we are very excited to finish up the decorating and finally get some planning time together with our colleagues. Today's Freebie comes from Denise at Sunny Days in Second Grade. Denise is sharing her version of a Spelling Contract called Spelling Star. She is including an informational page and scrabble letters in her download too! Click the worksheet above or HERE to download.

Below is her blog button. Just click below to head on over!

Thank you to all of the blogs that joined us in our 14 Days of Summer!
This was so much fun, and we had a great time!



14 Days of Summer #13

Morning! We've got a GREAT activity for you today! We can't wait to try it out in our own classrooms. This comes from Christie at First Grade Fever. Today she is sharing with us an activity from her new Wonderful Name Fun unit at TpT. This freebie is called "My Wonderful Name!" It is an activity that focuses on identifying vowels & consonants in the students' names. The finished name activity makes a "wonderful" back-to-school hallway display. She's even included a mini-poster to use as part of the display. Click below to grab your own copy!

My Wonderful Name

Make sure to visit Christie's blog! She has some adorable ideas!


14 Days of Summer # 12

Hope you all are having a fabulous Saturday! We have a few more days left of our summer vacation and those days are going to be all about family time. Spending time with our families and kids is what we enjoy most about our summer vacation!
Our Freebie today comes from Alicia at First Grade Factory. She is sharing reusable template pages to create student math journals. Below is Alicia's explanation of what's included in the download:

This download offers reusable template pages to create student math
journals. The pages include: mathematics journal page cover, higher level
craft stick question pieces, 100s chart, Today's Number page, Math
Vocabulary page, How I Solved the Problem page (constructed response),
3-2-1 page, thinking maps, graph templates, and student information pages
(shapes, money, and keywords).
Click on the picture above or HERE to download.

Don't forget to visit her blog! Just click her blog button below!

14 Days of Summer # 11

Morning folks! It is a lucky day for you today, because we have 2, that's right, TWO freebies for you today! Our first one is from new blogger Jamie from Teaching Little Firsties. She's got a great behavior chart to share with you, and guess what! It's in Spanish as well! At our school that's a big deal since we have about 25% speaking Spanish. Jamie also had an adorable birthday chart to share with you. For directions on how to use them, head on over to her blog! Click on the links below to get your copies!

Behavior Chart
Birthday Icons
Birthday Numbers




Our next freebie is from Mrs. Parker from Learning With Mrs. Parker. This is a great activity to use when working on place value, which she does at the beginning of the year. Click below to get a copy for you!

Place Value Math Mat

Learning with Mrs Parker



14 Days of Summer # 10

Happy Thursday friends! Today's freebies come from A Rainbow of Teaching. Sue's first freebie is a set of safari themed labels for organizational binders. Also included in the download is a letter explaining what each pocket is used for in the organizational binder.
Click the picture above or HERE to download!

If you are looking for a great informational letter to send home at the beginning of the year, Sue has generously provided us with one in an ABC format. She has provided us with a version that she sends home with cute letters that make the ABC's stand out. This one is a PDF, and is an example of what she sends home. Sue has also provided us with a word version so you can modify it to your needs and also include your own cute letters!
Click on the first handout to see her example, and the second to download the word version.

PDF Handout Word Handout
Sue is also sharing worksheets that would be great for word work. These would be great when introducing stamps as part of word work. Just click on the worksheet below to download. She is also having a giveaway at her blog for 2 sets of small alphabet stamps and 2 stamp pads. Her blog button is below and she is just a click away!


14 Days of Summer #9

Well, the progress in our classrooms had been amazing. We've got furniture set up, tables cleaned, everything put away, and most of our organizing is done! Yay!! We are now both going to head out for a long weekend to really end our summer. Lots of family time, and no school work! Next week when we go back we've got the fun stuff to work on in our rooms. New bulletin boards, and we'll be adding all of the great stuff we've been creating this summer. Don't worry, we'll post pics some time next week.

Today our freebie is from the fabulous blogger Mrs. Saoud at Primary Graffitti. So ya'll do class mascots that travel in your room? Have you been thinking about setting one up, but needed some inspiration? Then you will love this freebie! It's a great activity based on The Lorax. Click on the picture below and check it out!



Make sure to head on over to Mrs. Saoud's blog and check out all of her fun stuff!



14 Days of Summer # 8

Well even though we don't officially have to return until next Tuesday, we are headed back to our classrooms today to get lots of laminating done, and hopefully some things up on the walls. We'll definitely post some pictures of our classrooms within the next few weeks.
Today's wonderful freebie comes from Little Priorities. She is sharing her Number Stories Math Journal that correlates with Everyday Math for First Grade. Click either worksheet below to download. Don't forget to visit her blog. Just click on her blog button below and hop right over!