Start of a New Year

As we approached the new school year, I was excited, nervous and scared all at the same time.  My emotions were running wild! 

This begins my 21st year of teaching and I was ready to change so many things!  I opted to change my classroom "theme" to emojis.  I was never a huge theme classroom teacher as I never found them to be something I could follow all the way through and I didn't like spending excessive amounts on money on decor.  That was thrown out the window this year!  I jumped into emojis fully and had a blast outfitting my classroom with the decor.

While working on redecorating my classroom, it was time to also rearrange the furniture.  This class has an odd layout due to a closet in the room.  I needed more student space where kids could move around.  The teacher desk needed to be moved...not an easy task to tackle!

Rearranging furniture turned into my next major change, flexible seating.  Throughout all years of my teaching I have allowed students to work in different areas and in different ways; however, I had never fully implemented a full class flexible seating environment.  This year that would change!  Desks and chairs had to be removed from my classroom while alternative working spaces were brought in.  Great timing to implement flexible seating as I was rearranging and redecorating the classroom!

Some major changes taking place this year that has had me working long days and nights preparing for the kids to return to school.  All this work paid off as the kids and their families came in for Back to School Night!  The room seemed to be received well and I was pleased with how it has turned out.

My favorite thing so far (mind you, it's only about day 4 of school right now!) is the purchase of emoji knapsacks for kids to use as backpacks!  Backpacks take up too much space and why do kids really need those big backpacks at such a young age?  I had the brilliant idea of getting knapsacks from Oriental Trading and give those to students to take their communication folder and library books back and forth from school to home.  So far this has been received well and I'm glad to say the kids are enjoying them!