Our Future's So Bright!!!! (And COOL...Now)

I have been back to school for four days.  I have wanted to post several times, but just haven't had the energy to do it.  I have been totally zapped each day. I am hoping it was because my AC wasn't working properly. It was running, but it wasn't cooling...much. Just to make sure it wasn't just me, I brought a thermometer up to school on Thursday to see how hot it actually was. The last time I looked at it, it was 87 (no wonder I was sweating). 

To explain things a little clearer, I had turned in a work order when I first started working in my room. I think someone from the district had came out and serviced all of the AC units, changed all of the air filters. Since mine (it's a window unit) was running, I guess they thought that would solve the problem, well it didn't. Since I was new to the school, I didn't want to do too much complaining, so I asked the principal if I could take my last class of the day to the library since it was hot in the room. She said it was OK, but reminded me that the East side of the building was hot in the morning. (Our rooms have 6 HUGE windows so the east rooms get the sun in the morning and the west rooms get the sun in the afternoon.) My principal is great! She just hadn't been in my room in the afternoon to realize how hot it was.

Fortunately for me, I have a teachers son in one of my afternoon classes, she stopped by to see how things were going. You can imagine her reaction when she came into my room that was 87 or hotter by that point. She went straight to the principal. My principal came down and was shocked when she realized how hot it was, it wasn't even 15 minutes later that two maintenance men came to check it out. the next morning they came back and got it fixed. I'm hoping on Monday it will be even cooler, the room was already 85 when it got fixed so it had a lot of cooling down to do.

I have more things to share, but I am going to start with our school theme, "Our Future's So Bright." My principal got all of the staff t-shirts to wear the first day. Here is a picture of her wearing it, one minute before the we started letting the kids in on the first day of school.

Since it was a school-wide theme, we all did bulletin boards with different variations of it it. I thought there were some great ideas, so I thought I would share them.

I took the saying completely literal. she said neon colors and my budget was tight so I bought poster board from Dollar Tree. When the kids first came to school my board looked like this.

The sunbursts and stars have different occupations on them. On the second day of school I took pictures of the kids with "shades" on and a board saying what they wanted to be when they grew up. Here are a couple of the photos.

I replaced the sunburst and stars with the photos. Now it looks like this (except not blurry!).

Here are some of the boards my great co-workers came up with. I may have more to share later, a few of them are still putting the finishing student touches to their boards. I also have somehow lost some pictures of some boards.

Hopefully now that the AC is working, I'll have enough energy to post in the evenings! HA

Hope you are off to a terrific year!

Five for Friday August 8, 2014

I'm joining Kacey @Doodle Bugs Teaching for her linky Five for Friday.

I shopped the big TPT sale..didn't everyone? You can definitely tell what subjects I'll be teaching this year.

 

 

 

 

Can I just say I absolutely love The Science Penguin's bundles! I would have bought all of them if I had had the money.

My old school went back on Monday, it was really weird to read all of the posts on Facebook. Parents were posting pictures of the kids first day of school. I worked at my old school for 20 years, 3 as an assistant and 17 as a teacher. It's hard to imagine that they are actually functioning without me! LOL  At my new school, I feel just like a first year teacher, I don't know what the procedures are, where things are located, etc... It's really a strange feeling. One of the teachers told me to laminate my stuff at Smitty's. I didn't know who, what or where Smitty's was. I found out yesterday it is apparently the district laminating place if you don't want to laminate at school. There are more teachers at my new school and I am trying to get their names and grades down, so far I'm doing good just to recognize that I have met them! HA I'm sure after a week or so of being in school all of these feelings will be forgotten. I  had a couple of teachers help me out yesterday, it was great! I feel like my room is starting to take shape, plus I have made some new friends!

Besides the classroom, I have been working on another painting project. I had a couple of bar stools that are still like new. I decided I would try to do a little decorative painting on one of them. I'm not really artistic and I don't have a very steady hand so I'm really glad to have painters tape!

So here's stool before.

Here it is after I painted it...

and then I added a few dots. I like the finished product!

Since I used the same paint from my classroom, it will match perfectly!

Tuesday evening, I met my best friend to deliver Delaney to her. She is spending the rest of the week with their family in Wichita Falls. as you can see she is having a great time! So guess where I'll be while she is having fun??? Of course, up at school trying to get my room together.

So I have been working in the room and even with the AC turned on, it has been very hot in the room. It is running and if you are right in front of it, you do feel cooler, but in general it feels kind of like a rain forest, warm and muggy. UGH! A work order has been turned in. I hope it gets fixed before school starts, I don't even want to think about how bad it will be after recess on a hot August day. I don't think a Scentsy will be able to fight that smell. HA! I haven't finished the room, but I thought I would give a preview. I still have a lot of things to put away. I need to work on some bulletin boards.  Plus I need to adjust several desks so they are all the same height.

From the front of the room, didn't notice the picture was blurry. : / I was going to do polka dots on the back of the red cabinets, but time became an issue. Plus once the shelves are full, you wouldn't be able to see them anyway.

From the back of the room 

I was so glad my rug fit in the room since I had only had it one year. I probably need to adjust the valances, but those windows are so tall, they may stay just the way they are! 

I'll be in new teacher orientation Friday and Monday, hopefully I'll be able to finish up in the time we have after meetings next week. 

Monday Made It Week 10

I'm joining Tara @4th Grade Frolics for her weekly linky party Monday Made It. I really should be working on lesson plans, but crafting is so much more fun!

First is is more of a recycle. My sister gave me this really cute cup. I love the design on it. When the cup broke, I just hated to throw it in the trash. The design was printed on some sort of plastic film, so I decided to take it out and try to frame it. 

Here's the finished product, I think it turned out really cute and it matches the colors in my classroom. :) 

Someone at school discarded some shelves ( I forgot to take a before picture). I really liked them except they hadn't ever been painted. I decided to go with some super glossy black paint. 

I've been working on a few signs for the classroom. The colors in the pictures are off for some reason.

After making the one above, I wasn't sure I liked it so I made another set.

That's it for this week. I had a couple of things I was working on, but did not finish. Hopefully you will be seeing this stool totally transformed next week! 

We almost finished painting the classroom. We have only worked about 5-6 hours total, but as you can see in the photos, I've had a lot of help. We are going to put the finishing touches on Monday. 

These two pictures are the same wall. They sure don't look the same color do they? 

Don't forget to check out your favorite TPT sellers today and tomorrow. There is a big Back To School sale. I found some terrific items from The Science Penguin that are going to make it a lot easier to get ready for the beginning of the year. :)