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The first two days of official work began with meetings and a LITTLE time to set up the room.  If the public new how much time teachers spend setting up before the contracted time I think they'd be amazed......"anyhoo"....It was a productive two days.

My team in first grade is excited to begin and liked all the ideas I have gathered from all the blogs I have stalked all summer.  It feels like a fresh new start with some great new activities.   

Big shout out goes to our awesome PTO hospitality committee for another delicious luncheon.  The salads were amazing and the Greek goodies are always my favorite...YUM!

So desks are labeled, activities are prepped and books are ready to read for the first four days.  I can't wait to meet all my newbies on Tuesday!

My literacy center rotation chart is waiting for the beautiful faces of my newbies to be added.  There will be lots of picture taking on the first day in various poses for various projects as you will see.  To the left is the rubric I made (well, really my 13 year old colored it) for what I expect when I say "Illustrate using details, please!"  Now the kids have a visual as to what is expected.

The art clothesline is ready for its first project to be added.  As you can see from a past year's photo I take a picture of the kids in one of those various positions I was talking about before so they look like they are enjoying a hot air balloon flight.  Soaring into a new year together!

Wild about computer center BB is a work in progress.  I'll add sites the kiddies can go to and work on learning games and various power points I have designed for skill practice.  Each site's name is mounted on animal print paper.  I'm digging the animal prints this year for some reason.  But I'm not ready for a total room transformation .....yet!

The poetry center is ready with one of our first poems of the year.  We will do a few together as a whole class to learn the procedure of the center, of course.  The second photo is showing the folders in which a copy of the poem is kept with another sheet that the kids write a connection they have to the poem with an illustration.  The have to read the poem with their partner first, then scramble the sentence strips (we call this scrambled eggs) and sequence the poem, then reread it before they move to the connection task.  I have lots of fun pointers they can choose from to do the reading too.  I have the directions posted in the center with photos of past classes doing each task for a visual reminder. 

And finally, a new photo of my writing center so you don't have to turn your head to see it :)