A New Year and a New Room Ready to Go!

Hi Everyone!  Well I am officially back in school.  I can't believe that the summer went so fast!  I have to say the best part of the summer was my vacation to Las Vegas.  We saw lots of shows, ate too much food, and stayed in fantastic hotels.  Of course part of the fun was attending the TPT Conference and then spending eight days with my husband and son.  Here is a picture of my boys....

The beautiful Venetian Hotel....  highly recommend this one!  Well worth the money!  

We finally got to do the one MUST DO on my list....  a gondola ride!  It was so fun.  This is my son Jackson....  only this kid at 12 years old could have a blast in Vegas!

So it might have taken me four days of moving and arranging things over and over, but finally my room came together.  Here are some pictures of my room so far.  It is truly going to be a work in progress this year, but I got enough done that I could welcome my new little ones.

One of my first projects was to make a safari print clock....  couldn't buy one so I turned my old one into one.  I took a regular clock and covered the outside with printed cheetah duct tape and BAM I had a fantastic clock.  One of my grade level partners loved it so much she brought me her clock and owl duct tape....  it looked adorable!  I highly recommend picking up duct tape when it is on sale...  it dresses up everything!

This is a finished project....  FINALLY!  I hate trying to find things fast, so I bought a bunch of tubs and everything from extra pencils, to math centers are organized into bins with labels on them.  I LOVE it and I can't believe how many parents commented how nice it was to see such organization.  If they could only see my closet at home....  HA HA!

This is a picture of my teacher book center.  All of the tradebooks are organized in the green bins by subject and the chapter books are divided by series.  My kids know that these are my special books and they have to ask to read them.

This is one of my book shelves in my student reading area.  It isn't finished yet, but I had to show you the repurposed old shelves.  I couldn't stand all of the old discolored shelves.  I was going to use duct tape, but I knew that would take forever, so I found safari print contact paper.  This was a two person job, but in the end they look fantastic!  I've covered almost all of the shelves.  It really has made the room into the safari theme that I was going for.  The only thing left is to create the giant forest of trees in the reading center.  I'm saving that for the next teacher workday!

This is my conduct chart area.  I was going to make my rules and chart, but I decided to look and see what was already on TPT....  Hotdog!  Not only already made for my theme, but they were FREEBIES!

This is my attempt at solving the NO NAME issue.  I've struggled with this for years.  This year I filled the bucket with highlighters.  After they finish a paper they come to this station and use a highlighter to highlight their name before they turn their work in.  So far so good....  only two no name papers so far!

Well that is the progress I've made so far on my room.

I hope everyone has a wonderful start to the new school year!

Happy Teaching!
Tracy