Show Off Your Classroom!

I have to admit, I almost missed Mrs. Fultz’s linky party because I really wanted to take some updated photos of my classroom, but seeing that this linky ends tonight, I want to be sure to show off some of my favorite things.. even if these pictures are from September!

In the book, Debbie Diller recommends hanging them with velcro, but since I started with actual curtains, I used a tension rod to hang them up so I wouldn’t need glue or screws.  The curtain on the right spans an 89″ length so that one needed some hooks to help hold it up, but it helps hide all of my things and it looks so pretty!  I also have matching cushions for the computer chairs, but again… these pictures were from September!

Wow, my walls are empty!  But again, here’s my use of curtains to cover up my bookshelves!  I hung them up with curtain rods.  These are my cubbies also… I know the colors don’t go so well in my classroom, but they work just fine!  Another thing that I love in this picture is my daisy tables… perfect for Kindergarten!

My pride and joy… my shelves!  I put these up myself!!! I even used an electric screw gun, a level, and toggle bolts for the metal studs.  They helped me make use of an otherwise unusable wall!

Clearly, my bookshelf (and lack of words on the word wall) shows that this picture was from September!  Anyway… more curtains, this time being used as they should be… to add decoration and block the light when it’s too sunny to see the smartboard!

This picture also shows my covered up windows :/ I have mixed feelings about this… unfortunately, it was the only place to put a word wall that was visible from everyone’s seats, and I was hoping that some light would come through the papers, but that didn’t happen because of my outdoor bulletin board!

I had this wonderful idea to do an outdoor bulletin board… the blurry box has the name of our school on it.
I put up the following from the inside of my windows facing out.  When I covered the windows in bulletin board paper (lots of effort and lots of tape!), the light was going through the windows and you could see the mirror image of “If you can dream it, you can do it…” shining onto our floor every time it was sunny out.  I had to cover the bulletin board paper with black poster boards, then again with pretty bulletin board paper just to keep the sun out.  It literally took a full day and a half just to do this project.  And it ended up completely blocking all of the sunlight from the windows.

Now… the pros to this:
1. It was absolutely amazing looking from the outside!
2. I had no blinds on the windows so it helped block the light.

But the cons to this:
1. It fully blocks the light on four of my wonderful windows.

I’m not sure if I’ll be doing this one again next year because of that one major con, but we’ll see!

I’m linking up my classroom pictures with Mrs. Fultz’s Linky Party, stop by there to check out some other amazing classrooms!