My Finished Room!

Today was our second mandatory work day.  I am excited to say that my room is finally finished, with the exception of labeling tags with the names of my students.  This is always the last thing I do before Open House, our rosters change a lot and are not finalized until moments before Open House.  Tomorrow I will begin planning for the first week of school and finish making my homework folders.

 This is my carpet area.  I love my SmartBoard and use it for everything!

 On my white cabinet, I placed my "How We Get Home" Chart.  I found this new "home" packet on teacherspayteachers.com.  It was created by Mary Chappell-The Apple Tree Room.  After I find out how each of my students will be getting home, I will place their name under the appropriate title.  I decided to use this because I always seem to have students changing how they will be getting home and now all I have to do is move their name tag.  Cute and simple!

One last look at my classroom for today.  I have more pictures to share later this week!

Amber

The Beginnings of my Classroom

I've spent two days this week working in my classroom.  I was hoping that I would be farther along right now but I have gotten a lot accomplished.  I keep telling myself that Friday is the last day I will be going to school and that is to drop of Squirt, Crush, and Millie, our beta fish.  I am going to do my best at keeping to this promise.  Time will tell just how long I actually stay on Friday.

I have finished setting up my reading area.  I like the way that it has turned out.

 This year, I have four chairs for my readers.  I made my orange chairs this summer.  My mom gave me the chairs when I went home.  I had to spray paint them because they were that dirty tan color and looked awful.  I really wish that I had taken a before picture.  I also made the seat cushions.  After looking at this picture, I think that my next project will be my animal chairs.  They are looking a bit out of place and old.  I'm thinking about painting them hot pink and making cushions for them using the same fabric as the other seat cushions.  I've also thought about painting each one a different color because they are different styles.  I still have time to think about this, I probably won't have time to paint them til next summer.

 This summer, I wrote a grant on DonorsChoose.org for plastic book bins for my students.  Each students will place their own "on level" books in their bin.  These are going to work so much better than the plastic zip-lock bags we used last year!  I was excited to see that they arrived on Monday.

I have been working on leveling all of the books in my classroom library.  I got the bins one of my favorite places to shop for my classroom, Christmas Tree Shop!  I just wish that I would have gotten a few more.  When I bought them, I had no idea what I was going to use them for but I knew that I needed them.  The labels I made using Graphics From The Pond's Circle Chalkboard Labels. 

This is just one corner of my classroom.  I can't wait to show you some more!

Amber

Back to School

I've been super busy this week trying to set up my classroom.  I've spent about 12 hours this past week trying to set up my room.  I've been making many changes to my room this year, this is my second year in first grade and I know how I want certain things.  My first change was getting rid of my tables for desks.  I've set up a project on www.DonorsChoose.org for stability ball chairs.  When thinking about using stability ball chairs in place of normal chairs, I knew that I would be losing storage space, I made pocket chairs to hold their notebook & pencil boxes.  I cannot wait to see how having stability ball chairs in my classroom will help my students focus better.  I had a couple of my students sit on some for a couple of minutes and could not believe that they could sit so quietly and read!  I have also changed the way that I am organizing my student book shelf.  I purchased bins and have organized most of their books based on the reading level of each book.  This has taken a long time to do.  This should make it easier for my students to choose books on their level to put in their book bins for silent reading.  Hopefully I will be posting some pictures of my classroom next week.

I have also been working on some items to put in my teacherspayteachers store.  I've been creating a syllable sorting activity for each month.  It has taken a long time to find clip art that I liked and would fit with each theme that I was working with.  Here is the link to one of them, this one is a freebie in my store Animal Syllable Sort.  I currently have four syllable sort activities finished and listed in my store, sorry but only the Animal Syllable Sort is free.

I am going to try and enjoy my last week of Summer Vacation, I have a week of mandatory work days that start the 19th.

Amber

Goodbye July...Hello August

I don't know about you but I'm sad to see that July has come to an end.  I had so much fun this past month and did very little to get ready for the upcoming school year.  I still have two and a half weeks until our mandatory workdays begin, which this year, means tons of meetings and very little time to get our classrooms ready.  I will admit, I've spent a couple of hours at school this week.  I'm trying to still enjoy my vacation and only go to school on Mondays and Tuesdays.  Now on to what has made July amazing!

My month started off with a bang, I saw Daughtry, 3 Doors Down, and Halestorm in concert.  This concert was amazing and was lucky enough to be front row when Daughtry performed!  I was on my way to where some of my friends seats were, when I met JP, the bass player in Daughtry!  I was in heaven!  The only thing that would have been better was if I met Chris Daughtry.  I'm so glad that I didn't say anything weird, I'll admit that I named my gray and white cat Daught.

This was the highlight of my night.

Daughtry!!

I also went home for two weeks.  I'm from Illinois and that is where all of my family is located.  I had a lot of fun hanging out with my entire family.  The best part of going home is when I get my "auntie time" with my niece and nephews!  I also found out about a couple of amazing stores where I can buy food that I can eat.  I'm allergic to corn (which is in everything and has about a million of different names), eggs, kiwi.  Trader Joe's is amazing!  I found many items that I could eat, my favorite was CHOCOLATE!! I have a major sweet tooth and giving up sweets has been hard.  I think I might have even cried a little as I ate my first bite of chocolate since January.  I've found out that there is a Trader Joe's a little over an hour away from where I live, I will be making a monthly trip to that store!

I have been busy working on a few projects for school.  I'll let you know how those turn out!  

Thanks for reading.

Amber

All About Me!

My name is Amber Ottman and I am a first grade teacher in North Carolina.  I was told by a fellow teacher last year that I should really start a blog, so I've finally decided start one up!  This will be my second year in first grade, I was a kindergarten teacher for 6 1/2 years.  So you could say that I finally graduated from Kindergarten.  I wasn't too excited to move up to first grade but after the first month, I loved being in first grade!  

I have two turtles named Squirt & Crush.  I've been a "turtle mommy" now for a year.  I am so glad that I got them as a class pet!  My students last year loved them, they even appeared on our class t-shirt!

Here I am with Squirt & Crush the day that I got them!

Squirt & Crush today.  

I am an auntie of three!  Isaac is 5 and is going to be starting Kindergarten this fall, Kylie is 22 months, & Kaleb is 21 months.  I love being able to go home to Illinois to spend time with them!  I was lucky enough to spend two weeks in Illinois this month and got in my quality time with them.

That's all for today, thanks for reading.

Amber

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