There's No Place Like Home

Our classrooms are places where we live.

For the last six years, I have called this room my home.  I have tweaked and rearranged until I have created a place that I feel is calm, inviting, and functional.

Here's a tour of my classroom. 

Most of the activity takes place here. There is enough rug space for whole group activities. Our library and big book station are also here. 

This bulletin board is located to the right corner of the dry erase board.  I keep calendar short to about ten to fifteen minutes.  

The items I treasure the most as a teacher are my books. Our library covers many topics and I keep most books out all year. I go back and forth about having "my" books only which tend to be seasonal books but over the years, I have come to realize that books are meant to be read by my students.  We spend a lot of time talking about how to treat books and most kids are pretty good.  

A small portion of the library is dedicated to leveled books. These are leveled by DRA. This class loves reading from these books.

I have had these Four Blocks word cards for almost a decade. I love the color coding. As you can see, we've learned a lot of words in Kindergarten!

My kids each have a Grab and Go box.  Each box is numbered. Inside they have their crayons, dry erase marker, highlighter, scissors, glue, and space man. As you can see some are messier than others. Also on this shelf are their Book Boxes which are ice cube buckets.

Right above our Grab and Go boxes is our main bulletin board space.  I use a sheet to cover the bulletin board.   This was our first bulletin board of the the year.    

My students sit in groups of 4 to 6 scattered around the room.  We change seats about once a month or I allow them to sit anywhere they like.  Both these systems work well depending on the personality of the class.  

This year, I did away with cubbies for storing their completed work.  So, all their completed work goes into the black tray. At the end of the day, one person from the table passes back papers to go home.  In the beginning, I do it and it took some time.  But now, getting ready to go home takes no more than a few minutes.    

Our school only has two "traditional" large kindergarten classroom with bathrooms.  My classroom is not one of them. 

As a result, I like to make sure that my floor plan is flexible enough to create spaces where at times the kids can use that large area to create or make into a stage area for performances.  

I must say that I really am proud of how my classroom looks because it does feel open and large although in all reality it is an average sized room.  Please don't let these pictures fool you. My classroom is a living space and with that it means that on a typical day you will probably find my computer table a disaster (notice no pictures of that) and bits of paper on the floor especially after three days of no cleaning.  But despite that, it's my home away from home.  

And, we all know there is no place like home.

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I hope you'll share your classroom with us.

Happy Teaching and Learning!