Have you heard about The Applicious Teacher’s linky going on right now? She is hosting a weekly link up and this week’s topic is classroom decor.
I love looking at teacher’s classrooms. It gives me inspiration to change things up and make my classroom more comfortable to be in. While doing this post I realized I have changed some things up and didn’t take pictures! First of all, this wall down here is now in the back of my classroom and the alphabet has been replaced by my own themed one. You can see that in the pictures way down the post.
This is my fluency reading tree. I LOVE cherry blossoms. My BFF created this template for the tree and I added some cherry blossoms to make it a cherry blossom tree.
I use the tree to monitor our progress in reading by moving the students’ clips from one side starting at 0 to 100 for the end of the year. You can number their clips so that they can’t see who is where. Before putting the clips up, we have in depth conversations about us making progress at different times and they never make anyone feel bad about where they are on the tree. They love moving their little owl up to the next level when they meet a goal!
This little owl is so cute!
A close up of my cherry blossoms.
This is my author of the month wall. I copied the covers of several books by one author and we read the books throughout the month. The kids have developed a very strong connection to the authors. It’s awesome when they come back from the library with even more books by the author of the month. I also cut the letters out with my Cricut.
I had been looking for posters from my favorite books for a long while. I couldn’t find any good ones that were the right size or had good pictures, so I decided to create my own!
This is what it looked like while I was working on it. It was painful putting it through the laminator 🙁 Some of the oils melted and spread in the wrong places. It’s hard to notice it though.
This brilliant idea was from my husband. I read Alice In Wonderland each year and my kids fall in love with the characters from the story! I got this Cricut cartridge with Disney characters and when my husband saw him, he said that I should make him hold my classroom clock.
This is a view around my bathroom door. We are blessed in having a bathroom. We have to share it, but it beats having to send my kids outside and having the classroom door open all day long. The sticks that you see on the side of the door are my bathroom management sticks.
Alice is falling down the side of the wall and she lands by the door here on the bottom.
Here is the Chesire cat:) The kids love his grin!
I LOVE this wall! Each child’s picture is in one of these frames. We did this activity at the beginning of the year and they wrote about themselves. It gave my kids a sense of pride of our classroom and helped us feel like a family/community. They also loved picking out their own frame! I cut the frames with my Cricut at about 10 inches.
I am not a huge theme person and last year was the first time I even considered a theme. I went with an owl theme. It wasn’t even on purpose. It began with a cute set of clip art and it kind of exploded everywhere in my room:)
Here are some owl themed things in my room:
This is our owl-phabet 🙂 I need new pictures, they look so nice across the wall.
This is my Box Tops container I made last summer as one of my Monday Made It’s.
This is another one of my Made It’s. It’s a bin to hold all of my read alouds for the week.
Yep, another Made It. This bin is a life saver! Whenever my kids find a ripped book, they just place it in the book hospital instead of handing it to me to fix.
We celebrate owl style too:
The kids wear this owl birthday buttons. They feel so special wearing them around campus!
I print out these cards for each of them. These cards and their button is on their desk when they arrive in the morning.
Yep, we even test owl style!
I am sticking to the owl theme this year and I am wanting to add more teal. I want a black/white/teal look with bright colors throughout. I’m hoping it will come together. I’ll be in my room in a few weeks and hope to start my plan of action. Now link up your classroom decor with the Applicious Teacher!
Update: 8/12/13
The latest addition to my owl themed decor: Organization Bins. Loving having a cute place to store everything! Click on the picture below if you are interested in this label set.
So now make sure to link up with The Applicious Teacher and show off your decor!