First Year of Teaching

The blogging world, I have finally joined.

I have just completed my first semester of teaching! I am teaching first grade and loving every minute of it. I am going to begin putting classroom things and activities online and hopefully open up a TPT store soon!

I have gone back and added things from the first few months of the school year, be sure to check it out!

Cheers,

Karen

October Fun

I finally felt somewhat caught up on all the craziness. This month I decided to do a door decoration! We also started doing Fun Friday's. The kids have to earn it though with warm fuzzies, which I will post more about later. If they earn it we have a fun afternoon on Fridays; lunch in the room and some kind of craft. This month also happens to be Anti-bullying month so we created a poster for it... in which we won the contest and our class got a free dress day!

One of our Friday crafts were the tissue paper candy corns. Also, we painted our hands black and turned our handprints into spiders!

Our class also won skate night this month, we had the most people attend! We earned a donut party and we got to keep the trophy on our shelf! This was my first time to skate since I was in elementary; I definitely hugged the wall the entire time. 

Classroom Setup

After moving back home from camp I was finally able to start working on my classroom. I spent a lot of the summer on Pinterest trying to decide on a theme and different things to add to my class. I was fortunate to have completed my student teaching on a US military base in England. I love love love traveling and wanted to incorporate that in my room somehow; thats how a landed on the idea of a Road Trip Theme.

I got these awesome background papers from SchoolGirl Style. She has lots of wonderful ideas and great products!

I had some wonderful friends at camp help me with this palette. I serially couldn't have done it without them! They helped me sand and paint it, they are such rockstars. 

I cut out shapes from maps to make some window decor. 

This is one of my favorite things; our calendar area! 

On the tables there are cup holders from McDonalds. In the cups are the students pencils, glue, scissors, and crayons. 

And It Begins

A little bit of background...

This past summer I worked at a camp, Make Promises Happen. It is a camp for children, young adults, and adults with special needs. This camp seriously rocks, I can't say it enough. Each camper is paired up with a counselor to hang out with for the week or weekend. We have archery, paintball, ropes course, swimming, hay rides, dances, fishing, and boating; the list goes on! The activities are all made accessible to the campers, even ones in wheelchairs. SO stinking cool. 

While away at camp I was nervous about finding a job since camp wasn't in my home town. I filled out many applications prior to leaving and drove home many times to attend job fairs. I was fortunate enough to score a second interview in early June! 

As the interview concluded, they told me they would call me back within a few days to let me know if I was selected. Well, they ended up calling me about 5 minutes after I left and offered me the first grade position! 

About a week later i drove back home and signed my paperwork and got my ID badge. It was official!

I contacted my principal and was able to go up and see my classroom that day as well. During the interview I did not get a chance to tour the school or to see any of the classrooms. They failed to mention that my classroom was only 2 years old and BEAUTIFUL. When I walked in for the first time I was so surprised. There was so much space and empty walls to work with, I even had a magical storage closet! I couldn't wait to start decorating!