My First Saturday Snapshots

Well I am trying to join up with more Linky's to try to connect with more people.  Today I am doing my first Saturday Snapshot linking up with Run! Mrs. Nelson's got the camera (great name by the way).  I am going to do a two parter with my pics today.

First before and afters of my classroom:

My room is a lab so my lab desks seat 8 and are attached to the floor, plus I have 5 large fish tanks in my room so there is not a lot of furniture to move around, but it was just Blah!  Very streile feeling.

These photos are roughly the same areas as in the first colage but you can see I added a little girly touch.  I bought a bar height directors chair from Pier1 and I decided to use my podium instead of my large demo counter.  The top right photo is my new bookcase that I found about to be taken away from another classroom.  I took fabric and covered the back side.  I have ribbon that I cam going to use to trim it.  The colors were inspired by my Thirty-One File Box sitting on it.  The bottom right is my new demo table/desk.  I took a large table that was low enough to go in front of my smartboard, and wrapped it with fabric to hide the fact that there are strorage bins under it. 

The book case that is in left picture was another find, this one however came from the side of the road across the street from my school.  The No Name paper board was inspired by pinterest.  I decided to use a bulletin board instead of the clothes pins the were on the original post becaused middle schoolers tend to get rough, and I think I need more space (they also tend to forget things like putting their name on their papers).  The top right is a close up of my team tubs, and the bootom right are two signs I had made.  These were all inspired by my Kagan training this summer.  The Mr. Ray one is to remind my students how to "coach" during Kagan structures (tip, tip, teach, try again).  The bottom one is to give them a place to put questions or comments that they have during class that may not need to be answered or shared right away.  It is my question parking lot.  Hopefully it will cut down on the things that the students like to share that interrupt class or may just pertain to them personally.  Middle schoolers love to share, sometimes it is not appropriate and it is so hard to get class back on track afterwards depending on what is shared!

Second are more personal.  My family took a trip to the Florida Aquarium today to help calm me down before school starts, if you read my post yesterday you know why I was stressed.  If not click here.  I had originally intended this blog to be pretty anonymous but after reading so many of your blogs and loving the personal touches you all put into them I wanted to share more of myself.

 The upper left is my daughter and I standing in front of this beautiful sea horse on the wall.  She is pretending to be a flamingo!  From Top Right clockwise are super adorable otter, little ocean playing with the jelly fish, a sand tiger shark (Hey it is Shark Week after all), me trying to cuddle up with a sting ray, and the same otter yawning (look at those teeth!).

The trip did its job and I am far more relaxed.  Tomorrow I am just going to try and get the house in slight order, get my lunch and dinner menus planned for the week and get my grocery chopping done.  Luckily for me I have the greatest husband who declares every Sunday "laundry day" and does it all!

Thanks for being a part of my life!

Mrs. Ocean