Big changes ahead (and Monday Made It)

My life is changing in a big way.  I decided to move schools and grade levels...AND I'm buying my first house.  As I was deciding, I let blogging get too far away but I am feeling inspired and renewed so I'm back at it.

Change can be scary. I'm leaving my friends and the students I have loved for the past four years.  But I'm ready for a new adventure!  And the best part is that I will be teaching second grade next door to my close friend. 

Today was the first day I spent in my new room.  This room is much smaller than my old room and I was nervous but it was all for nothing because everything fits!  (I still have a ton of work to do but I would say today was a great start.)

I got a moving van to haul all my stuff to the new school. I thought a 10 foot truck would be perfect but they only had a 17 foot truck.  Thank goodness that happened because we only JUST got it all in.

This is the inside of the truck :-/

So my first task, after dumping it all in the new room and walking away from it for a week and a half, was to organize my books.  I lost a lot of shelf space.

THEN

Here are my old shelves from the old room:

On top were my leveled books and below were fiction books.

Here were all my non-fiction texts.

NOW

My leveled books stayed the same.  I had to reduce and reorganize my fiction and non-fiction libraries in a MAJOR way.  The fiction texts are in the colored baskets.

More fiction texts.  The black baskets are now filled with my non-fiction texts.

 The empty baskets are the students' book bins.

Then I moved on to the large bulletin boards on either side of the board.  They are a major improvement to my one dinky bulletin board before.

Here are views of the full classroom as it is now.

 I had to bring over my favorite area from my old room!  I love displaying the students' writing in these frames from Lakeshore.

Here is our meeting area (it still needs a rug).

For my Monday Made-It I created a dry erase word wall.  You need peel and stick transparent covering and letters.  My letters are from Wal-Mart in the back to school section.

I decided to center the covering.  I started at the top and stuck three inches on.  Then I slowly uncovered more of the covering and rolled it down the door so it stuck without bubbles.

Then I stuck the letters on with duct tape.

Finally, I was able to write words on the covering with a dry erase marker.  I look forward to the ease of writing it on rather than printing, laminating and taping each word on.

I'm in love with it!

With all these changes, I am feeling excited about the future and all there is to come!