Let's take a tour!

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.'" -Mary Anne Radmacher

My room is 9b. The best room to bee.

I have survived five days of five year olds! Just barely--my honeymoon period lasted the first 3 days of school, which were all half days. Now that it's a full week, with whole days, I'm being immersed in the joys of five year old boys thinking constant farting noises is HILARIOUS. Time to go back to rules and routines again...but first, pictures!

Hopefully I'll have a rug soon.

 My classroom really started to come together when I put the alphabet up--then name tags, caddies for supplies, and then, all my curriculum materials.

It looks dark outside the door because I was at school the night before day 1 until 8:45.

 Teachers are hoarders, which is super useful for new teachers. Older teachers, at the beginning of the year, often want to get ride of stuff. So that's where I got the paper cubby shelf (along the wall, to the left in the above picture). The bee hive where I wrote the Welcome Message was left in the staff lounge, up for grabs. My bulletin boards were also left in good condition, so I didn't have to put up new paper or borders. Huzzah!

Student work will go along the right wall, and I have lots of storage and counter space across the back wall.

As more gets added to the wall--such as our sight world caterpillar, or student work,  or various posters, I'll share some more pictures, along with some reflections of the first few weeks of school. Which are HARD.

I have to keep reminding myself that I am many of my students' first introduction to school. (Not to mention MY first year with my own classroom. I am also still learning). That it's all on me to introduce routines and appropriate behavior. The first week of school went just swimmingly. Yesterday and today fell apart a bit. It's my personal opinion that kindergartners are expected to do too much, too soon, which is rushing me past the basic behavior skills they so desperately need. So I'm going to take a deep breath, and start fresh. Tomorrow is a new day.