2014 Classroom Reveal!

Ready or not, here they come! AND that they did! I've been back to work for 3 weeks now, but our pre-schoolers just did start this past Monday. The first hour of day one was a little hectic. We quickly realized the classroom is understaffed during that hour. 2 adults just won't cut it-- we've got to have 3.

My wonderful admin tackled that issue and we started off day 2 with 3 adults. Everything went SO MUCH smoother! We've definitely got our hands full this year, with a much, much, younger group of kiddos, but I think it will be a great year!

Now, are you ready for that classroom tour? There are still some things on my to do list, I'll certainly admit that, but here's what we looked like on day one!

Here's is the view of the room standing in the door way. Please ignore my crooked (and in some cases- missing) letters from around the ceiling. They won't let us use the ladders anymore, so asking a custodian to fix them the way I want is more work than I feel like addressing at the moment.

The table top with the polka dots is basically my daily "command station" if you will. This is where I keep the students' daily sheets to fill in throughout the day, my lesson plans, their communication books for parents, etc.

Then we turn to the right and look down the cubbies where students hang their stuff during our arrival routine. This view isn't really that exciting. And the picture came out lousy. But it will help give you an idea of the room set up.

You can see my desk at the end of the picture above by the window. The next view is from standing in front of my desk. We randomly have a mirror on that end of our cubbies and it is the BIGGEST distraction. I've even had children self-stim off of their reflections! So I've covered it up. With a poster that has since faded tremendously from the direct sunlight all day.

The small table above will be used for our morning sign-in when students arrive. I don't start this until week 2. We have enough going on during week 1 and with so many new students learning the arrival routine for the first time, sign-in can wait! Now...let's turn a little bit more to the right!

When students arrive we have table time (the toys on the table). It takes time to work on getting the students to stay in just this space. We made good progress during week 1. By the last day we were all staying at the table. :)

Behind that you can see where we keep our task boxes. There are names and spaces for task schedules on the table in front of them and the table to the left. The hanging trays will be used to write down each child's task schedule for the week so set up will be easy at the end of each day. I also have my data board by the smartboard. A clipboard with each students name where I will keep the data sheets for their IEP goals. Here's a close up of the data board.

I've since gotten another new student {of course} and now have nine kids. NINE! How am I supposed to add a ninth board to this set-up with my OCD?! I'll think of something. Eventually.

Next stop on the tour train: our circle time/greeting time/large group time/carpet time area. The angle on this picture is funny. I'm actually taking you on the tour in backwards order to how I took the photos.

I've had these cube chairs for years. I've never used them in my greeting area before. With this particular group of students they are perfect! It provides the young ones with more defined boundaries of where they need to be when we are on the carpet. I have students who I didn't expect to even be able to stay with us on the carpet during this first week, sit in these cube chairs and stay-- with edible reinforcement of course!

The only down side is they slide REALLY easily on the carpet. So we have had issues with the kids pushing them back. Intentionally and unintentionally. I added a strip of rug tape to the bottom of them on Friday. We will see how that works to stop the sliding.

Right now our greeting time is quick. We sing our Hello song and pick a song from the song book. Music really holds their attention the best right now. This week we are going to try stopping to spell our names too.

To the left of our greeting area, we have the house area.

I debated a lot with this center over the summer. I'll be doing a more detailed post on it with better pictures in my next installment of saving dramatic play. You can get caught up on those posts by clicking {here}.

Next to dramatic play we have the toy area and the block area. I liked having these centers together this year. A lot of times there are toys in each center that the students love to combine. So instead of bringing something across the room, we have them right here together.

Another bonus to having most of the play areas this close together is that when we start tightening up our routine a little bit, it will be easy to monitor the children at centers with 1 one adult when they are all together. On the other side of the block shelf we have our cots, then the sand table. The sand table has been closed for week 1, and will be for week 2. We have a lot of "throwers" in this group and we're not quite ready for sand. We'll get there. Just not yet!

And last but not least, I think I skipped this area in the tour. It would have fit better following picture 2, but oh well. I went right instead of left. If I had gone left this is what you'd see.

This is a multipurpose area. Mostly because it's the only table we have on the tile floor. We need to use it for certain things that would otherwise be a huge mess on carpet. This is where we have breakfast, lunch, and snack. It's also our art area. You can see that students have name tags on this table. This is based on the amount of support they may need during meal times. You can also see in this photo that our bathroom is to the right.

Well, that's about it for the classroom tour. I have extra photos of some areas so if you have more questions about what you see it may be something I either can elaborate on in another post. Thanks for following along!