Five for Friday

Oh my, y'all, I am worn out and just exhausted!  This was my first week back to school and it was a whirlwind of meetings, decorating my classroom, meetings, greeting my new kiddos and their parents, and more meetings.  (Anyone else start out the same way???)  But I am happy to say that I was all ready for Open House last night and had a terrific turn out.  All of my kiddos seemed so excited and I just know it's going to be an awesome year!

So even though I about to drag myself to bed soon, I wanted to link up with Kacey and show some of what I've been up to this week:

Bulletin boards...I kinda have a love/hate relationship with them.  I love looking at cute boards but I hate putting them up.  Well now that we have no Teacher Assistants at our school (and my former one was fabulous at handling my boards for me), I guess I'm gonna have to start enjoying them again.  Here is my welcome board, which is just outside my classroom door:

Then there is another board between my room and my neighbor's (our TA used to always put this up for us too).  I wanted to put something up that the kids would enjoy.  I saw the cutest board on Pinterest (there was no source at all...so I can't credit it) and it inspired me to do a Despicable Me themed board.  I love how the minions turned out and the kids thought it was cool (my own sons wanted to put the minions up in their bedrooms)!

My classroom set up...here are a few pics of my room.  My room gets a lot of sunlight so there seems to be a glare in lots of pictures...gotta figure out how to fix that!  I have a Hollywood theme but have really toned it down to more of a red/white/black scheme with some Hollywood stuff thrown in there.  Here is where I post my standards, vocabulary, and my literacy focus wall stuff (it's not complete yet).

Here's my computer area, math practice standards posters, and pocket chart for homework turn in (wow, my computer cords are sloppy, lol):

Now for the guided reading area, Bloom's Taxonomy posters, and my board to track AR and Accelerated Math:

This shows part of my classroom library:

My fancy wreath...Wow!  That's all I can say about this wreath.  One of my sweetie's mom made (that's right, I said MADE) this beautiful wreath in our school colors for me to hang on my door.  It looks amazing and I absolutely love it!  I also had two super sweet girls make gifts for me and give them to me at Open House (forgot to get a picture though).  One cutie made me a pen with a Duck tape flower and a bracelet and the other made me a Duck tape bag and wrote a precious little note.  Melt. my. heart!  

So I don't think I've talked much about this but a former student's mom asked if she could train me in Crossfit.  I have worked with her all summer and have done things that I never thought I'd be able to do. Crossfit makes me feel strong and has definitely boosted my energy level.  Oh yeah, and it doesn't hurt that I've lost weight! I'm going to try hard to keep working with her throughout the school year.  I worked out with her four times this week even though I've been working like a crazy lady to get my room ready so there's hope.

Laundry...please tell me I'm not the only one!  This was my first week back to work and already the laundry's been sitting piled up for a few days.  I just haven't had a second to sit and get it folded.  And it's surely not going to happen tonight.  I'm headed to bed soon...have a great night friends!