Going a little overboard

So I feel the need to start this message by saying... I'm a nerd! I have a tendency to go a little overboard on my organization/projects sometimes. Today was one of those days! I've been doing a lot of work with common core this summer (AKA my checklists, plan of attack, and teacher's notebook of student progress monitoring for the standards). Well I showed my stuff to some of my awesome teammates and now it's become a school-wide plan...that somehow I'm helping organize. This means creating a system where everyone knows how to track and collect work samples as we are teaching, not just at the end of every quarter. Plus decide what binders/tabs to order so everyone already has the materials they need to do this. We've learned creating work just makes people groan and hate you. But if you hand it to them ready to go, they are happy to oblige. All of these are wonderful things of course, but they were in no way what I was planning on doing this week! I was thinking I was going to be busy making my class adorable. Then it got quickly switched to a hodge-podge of impromptu meetings, classroom organization, and helping out my coworkers with various questions/ideas/brainstorming sessions. Some of which was fun of course! Not torture, just busy.

Here's what got done:

• rearrange some classroom furniture for more useable space for centers
• hang ABC line, calendar, number chart
• dug out some kindergarten posters hidden in my closet
• common core planning meeting (very successful, but longer than I intended)
• yummy Chinese take-out lunch on the floor of my friend's classroom as we swapped stories of our summer adventures
• copied assessments to administer the first week of school to create individual student goals
• cut out all the centers materials I bought at the TPT sale and laminated earlier this week.

What didn't get done:

• finding my table! It's still a little buried!
• stapling the assessments together, including the DIBELS books
• Setting up first week of school files/copies/activites

After school I went to Morrison School Supplies, I don't know if you have that near you, but it's so much better than Lakeshore! Cheaper and bigger variety of materials. Anyway, when I got there it was clearly the beginning of the school year! There was NO parking in the lot that normally only has 1 or 2 lonely cars, and I ended up having to park next door. I couldn't believe how busy it was! I was able to get star borders to go with this year's star theme for my classroom. I also found kindergarten writing journals that have the empty space on top to draw a picture with the story.

On my way home, I went to JoAnn fabrics and picked up some star fabric. I plan on sewing the edges and wrapping it around the bottom of my centers tables. It's going to hide the big books and curriculum that are stashed underneath them. It's always been there, but with the tables moved around it's MUCH more obvious how much junk was under there. So I'm going to hide it in a cute way! I'll post before/after pics once it's all done. In the mean time, below you'll find the pics of the tables with the junk I plan to hide with the fabric. I know it's a weird table arrangement, but I have a very old cottage with strange pipes, poles and switches everywhere that make it a challenge to place furniture.

My fabric just got out of the dryer. Time to get sewing! I think I should go into work tomorrow... but I might be lazy and stay home while I can still enjoy the last few days of summer. Perhaps I'll just go in for a short day...

Lisa