Return of the Teacher

Disclaimer: This post contains sponsored content, affiliate links, and review products. Regardless, these are 100% my own opinions.

I'm BACK! After taking a year off from working to stay home with my son, I have returned to the classroom for the 2017-2018 school year. I just finished my first week back and I am thrilled to be there. I miss my baby, of course, but I belong in the classroom and I missed it tremendously. Baby is home with work-at-home Dad and is growing like a weed! He just turned ONE and I can't believe it! Here's a collage from all his monthly photos. <3

A new year means a new bunch of kids and I feel refreshed and ready for this new start. I decided to change up my classroom this year and went with a fun and exciting Star Wars and outer space theme. I am excited with how it turned out! I got many of my decorations at the usual IKEA, Dollar Tree, and Target, but I also snagged some amazing goodies at Oriental Trading this year, too. Take a look at the photos I took of my classroom setup!

I made that long poster and sacrificed a LOT of black ink to make it a reality. But it is definitely my favorite classroom decoration! It was worth it! I snagged the Vader poster at a yard sale for FREE! And with it being at the entrance to the classroom, students are asked what their expression is for that day. Let's hope it is a good one!

The next classroom view is to the left of the door. You can see my shelving unit and some classroom seating. I have a "Paw Wars" poster also found at a yard sale and some cheap DVD shelves for some DVD case centers. If you'd like to store your centers in DVD cases, here's a FREE template to make the covers!

Here's a better look at my shelf. Some cases are still empty so they are blank, but you can easily see how the printed template wraps all the way around so you have spine label, too!

This view shows my Jedi Focus Wall! I am loving my sparkly blue border paired with the plain black border from Oriental Trading. I used black fabric this year, which is something new for me. I usually do paper, but I'm tired of the fade!

The next few photos are just a tour around the room.

Why, yes, that is a sideways IKEA bookshelf.

How adorable are these library pockets from Oriental Trading?! Paired with the space name tag labels, also from Oriental Trading, they are perfect for Exit Tickets on the door! They have a ton of designs of name tags and they come in rolls of 100! Click HERE to see what they've got. I'm sure they've got your theme, too.

Plain and boring now, but those cabinets will be covered with Science Vocabulary as the year goes on!

Hard to see, but those blue labels are the CUTEST Star Wars stickers of all time. The folders will house recording sheets or corresponding worksheets that go with the centers in the same color (and sticker label) bucket which are on the shelves to the right (not pictured here).

Those are the colored buckets mentioned above. They are the colored drawers from those drawer systems from Michael's... but sadly... the metal part didn't hold up.

Probably one of my favorite B2S purchases are these Star Wars buckets. Students who are seated at that area place their pencil pouches inside and their notebooks underneath. Nothing fancy needed and they LOVE the characters on them!

Here's what they look like up close:

I LOVE LOVE LOVE these star and moon garlands that I attached to tension rods for this huge window in my classroom. I got them on Oriental Trading and they are HUGE! I was surprised at the size of them. They go across the entire massive window with no problem and they are perfect for my Star Wars/space classroom this year. The cool part, too, is they are made of foam. Not cheap cardboard. They will hold up a long time!

The VIP Desk! This is the first time I've ever used a VIP Desk. Do you have one in your room? I have an awesome antique desk, which was a gift from my mom, cozy IKEA pillow, a VIP journal, and that box is filled with all kinds of special supplies... including the highly sought after "shuttle pens" which are super cheap on Oriental Trading right now:

Kind of reminds me of my childhood! These pens were all the rage! They come in a pack of 12, ya'll. Can you say, "epic rainbow write?!"

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you are having an amazing back to school season.

Five for Friday: July 8th!

What's this?! Am I doing a Five for Friday?? I absolutely love this linky hosted by Doodle Bugs Teaching, but every time a Friday rolls around I lose my mind and forget to post! Not this time, Friday! I got this!

Still pregnant. And melting. I live in Florida, by the way. Check out this weather forecast...

Yep.

But also look at this adorable Daisy shirt I got! Perfect for being pregnant. It's so soft and thin. And any time I see anything related to daisies, I have to have it!

Woah. #pregnant #34weekspregnant #babyboy #babybrutall

A photo posted by Amanda Smith - Daisy Designs (@daisydesignstpt) on Jun 30, 2016 at 1:14pm PDT

If you click the image above, you'll head to my Instagram page (my favorite social media site EVER!). Lots of images and updates on products, but also just real life stuff. :)

I have been having loads of fun with my best friend's 3 year old, Liam, this summer. He is spending some time with me while his mom finishes up her internship for her Master's program. If you haven't checked out the two posts I have up called "Learning with Liam," click any of the pictures below to go check them out! The activities we are doing are super fun and easy (I'm a giant pregnant whale. It's gotta be easy...)

I've been working on some products for my store and am pleased to announce the newest addition to the Reading Wonders series! SECOND GRADE! Unit 1 is available now and the growing bundle is really inexpensive at the moment and will increase in price as more units are added.

Click to go there now.

Click to go there now.

Are you getting ready for next year? I'm not returning to work this year to be a stay at home mom (just one year! I'll be back!), but I have to say when packing up my classroom, this storage solution was great and easy to move. I have a blog post all about it, so click the image below to see more photos. There's also a FREEBIE available for getting you started.

Click to download!

One of my favorite times of the year is back to school and I won't be there to experience it this year. :( It is CERTAINLY for a good reason. Baby boy is due August 13th and the first day of school in my district is August 10th. I've made the tough decision to stay home for one year and go back in August of 2017. I adore my job, but I know this is the best decision for us.

My favorite thing to do is set up a classroom, though! I like to change things up every year as it makes things more exciting and fun for me and the kiddos. It also makes each year feel fresh and new and gives me great specific memories of students that I won't have with other groups. If you're looking for some classroom setup ideas, take a look at the pictures below! You can also click the My Classroom tab at the top of the page to see more.

All these pictures are from last year. The year before I was in a portable and I had a pirate theme! All the old images are in the My Classroom tab at the top of the page. Enjoy! And enjoy setting up your classrooms, teachers. I'll be enjoying my new bundle of joy in about 5 weeks! EEK!

Let's See Your Classrooms!

Share with me your blog posts about your classroom setup! I really want to see them! Leave a link to your blog in the comments below and I will view all of them and comment on all of them!

That being said, here's mine. I am extremely pleased with it! I'm even linking it up with Monday Made It over at 4th Grade Frolics because my mom and I totally raided The Dollar Tree for the materials for most of these projects! I am so excited for my #pirateclassroom !

This is a picture of my reading corner. I did hang a couple of small posters up to the right of the mast about picking a "just-right" book and the procedures of choosing a reading buddy (stuffed animal) and putting books back, etc. but I took this picture before I hung them. Oops! This project was so easy!

I found this beauty and bought them for $1 a roll! For this project it took 1 and a half rolls of the contact paper.

Also at The Dollar Tree, I found a white plastic table cloth and two pool noodles. I duct taped the pool noodles together and wrapped it in the wood grain contact paper for the mast.

This picture cracks me up! That's my mom under there! We cut a hole in the center of the table cloth the size of the pool noodles and put the noodle through it. For extra support we used Scotch tape to secure it in place on the noodle. We then just used packing tape to attach the bottom of the noodle mast to the wall towards the bottom (by the floor). 

I am fortunate enough to be in a room where I can staple into the walls. We stapled the top two corners of the sail into the walls on either side. Then we took some string which I had leftover from a project I did several years ago and tied a big loop on either side of the sail to make it look kinda bunchy. Isn't my mom cute with her nautical shirt on? She's so supportive!

This idea came later in the process. Originally, I wanted the letters attached directly to the sail, but as we were working with the plastic table cloth, we quickly discovered that it is hard to get things to stick to it. So since we used string to bunch up the sail, I had the idea of making a sign to hold the word "Adventure" in "Reading is an Adventure." We used leftover contact paper on some cardstock and attached the letters I got from a teacher supply store (on clearance!!). My mom chopped up the edges a bit to make it look like a piece of wood on a pirate ship.

We used a mini stapler and simply stapled the cardstock sign to the strings that were tied around our sail.

Using the same kind of string as the sail, we created a draping string of letters with some different letters I also got at the teacher supply store to spell out "Reading is an." We tied the strings of lettering between the two strings that bunch up the sail and they looked great!!

Here's another picture of the finished project but with my super cute chevron rug. I found that at the flea market brand new for $12, ya'll!! It looks like bright colored waves in the ocean!

Here's a breakdown of how much this project cost me:

1 white plastic table cloth = $1

2 pool noodles = $2

1 and a half rolls of wood grain contact paper (I used the rest in another project) = $1.50

cardstock (leftover from another project out of a pack of 12x12 with 100 sheets) = $0.05

Lettering (out of a huge pack that have a lot more letters to use) = approximately $0.75

TOTAL: About $5.30

MORE PICTURES of my classroom:

"Captain's Corner"

4 rolls of wood grain contact paper = $4

polka dot plastic table cloth = $1

1 pool noodle = $1

4 polka dot paper plates (out of a pack of ten for $1) = $0.40

red duct tape ($3 total and used for another project) = approximately $1

parrot cutout (part of a pirate classroom decor set for $10) = approximately $0.25

skull and crossbones printout (printed by myself onto cardstock) = approximately $0.10

2 leftover science fair display boards = free for me (but about $3 a piece)

TOTAL: $7.75

iPhone Job Chart:

1 oil drip pan for cars = $11

1 black plastic table cloth = $1

6 sheets of cardstock and color ink =  approximately $2

Mod Podge (a whole bottle cost me about $6) = approximately $1

TOTAL: $15

For more info on creating the red polka dot word wall with paper plates, click HERE for a previous post or click the photo above!

For a previous Monday Made It post on how to make the Teacher Toolbox, click HERE or the photo above.

This is an old DVD shelf that my sister-in-law gave me years ago that I have had in my living room for a while and then in storage for a while waiting to be used. Once we moved into our new house, we didn't want it anymore, so I repurposed it as a shelf for my classroom by covering the backs of the shelves with colored paper and some fish die cuts I had from a yard sale. The shelves are the perfect size for our reading series leveled readers and small things like flash card sets, dice containers, small containers of manipulatives, etc.

These are on each table. Each frame was 99 cents!

This is a rules poem I found online and loved. I typed them up and printed them to put into more 99 cent frames. They are hanging next to my white board.

If you love my classroom, I have bundled all of the printables and materials needed to recreate these projects into a Pirates and Polka Dots Theme Pack on my TpT store. There's much more included! Here are images of the preview which you can also see HERE.

Enjoy!