Back 2 School 13-14

School starts in 14 days! Wow! where did summer go? I'm sure most of us repeat this phrase every first week of August.

When summer arrives, I spend the first two weeks adjusting to summer, sleeping in, staying up late, and doing nothing related to school. Then I spent several weeks in June preparing for vacation. June was over and July arrived, for my family that month is packed with events...4th of July, two birthdays, our anniversary, VBS, and two weeks of daily swim lessons (whew, I'm tired just revisiting the last month). With July gone in a blink we arrive at August. dah, dah, dunnn!

This was the first year in many that our building was used for summer school. We are used to being the first building cleaned so we are back into our rooms early. I was expecting a very late start, but thanks to some pushing from our wonderful principal we got back pretty much right on time. I walked into this...

Stacked to the ceiling!

Random stuff everywhere

So I really took these a couple hours into working in my room (still new at this blog thing). I absolutely despise the packing and unpacking phase. At the end of the year, I always come to the breaking point where I can see summer only a couple piles away and I start stuffing stuff in every corner possible. Anybody else feel me? I literally looked for my hot glue gun for about an hour before I found it where I thought I had put it only it was hidden with the other random things in that drawer. 

Then you return after summer really just wanting to get started and you have to UNpack! It can really take the wind out of my sails. For me the biggest bummer is my desk it too wide to fit through my classroom door so I have to box up my desk every year. You would think that would mean that I would have a really organized and purged desk, but not the case. 

I decided to change my theme this year. I had really only dabbled in a theme before, buying the cute "theme" of the season about every two years and going from there. My room had a sprinkling of frogs, and lots of other random "teachery" things. But people, you are a bad influence!!! I have spent the last two summers blog hopping and you'all have some cuteness going on!

So I jumped on board, fully invested. This year and for many future years (redoing and committing to a theme is expensive) I will be adding to an owl theme. They are so cute, I was totally in love. They have even spilled over into my home with owls in my kitchen. 

Here is a peek at the new additions.

These curtains are blue and aqua chevron fabric. Although I had to have the pattern run vertical (kinda of a bummer) because of the length I needed and the price of the fabric (always frugal). I love the way they hide my stuff! I have smaller shelves that run on the opposite wall and now that this is all hidden I think I want to make curtains for those shelves too. I used the ceiling clips and dowel rods to hang the curtains.

I sewed curtains to hide the shelf full of "important teacher stuff". People I haven't sewed since I was a 4-Her so I was very excited about how they turned out. 

New alphabet and WBT rules. Click on picture to take you to the link for the very cute rainbow chevron alphabet

 I hadn't had a new alphabet in 14 years!!!! Yes, I still had the functional, but ugly animal cursive alphabet that I bought at a teacher store my very first year of teaching. So I hopped on TpT and got this very cute chevron alphabet from The Bender Bunch. It comes in two sizes. The WBT teaching rules pictured above are my first digital creation.

6 Trait writing posters with Owls of course

These were the perfect addition to the owl theme. They also come from TpT click on the link above to check them out.
Finally, I went in to work one day with a long list of things to accomplish but instead worked on this project. Probably not the best use of my 2 hours, but I think it turned out super cute. 

New Door Display

My inspiration came from a pin on Pinterest (of course, where all ideas begin). Click here to link to the original pin. 
Well I hope everyone is getting along with their prep work. Ready or not the kids will arrive, for me on August 20th!