Back to School Linky & Class Decorations

U My classroom is finally ready!  In my guided reading and small group math area, I created a fun beach theme using a palm tree that was created from an old carpet roll (Home Depot give away), brown lunch bags and an old umbrella covered with green fleece.  MeaningfulMama has a nice blog post with step by step pictures showing how to make your own tree here.  I also added a small kid sized beach umbrella and a paper lantern sun to my beach area! 

Tip -  In order to stand the umbrella and palm tree I used 5 gallon buckets from Home Depot that I filled with water bottles to weigh it down.  I bought PVC pipes from HD and they cut a hole in the top of the bucket lid so the PVC pipe would fit perfectly.  

Here is my new writing center!  I am really excited for this area and I am trying something new by having my writing center menu fully displayed this year.   I love having my writing center activities already set for each day of the week - it gives my student a schedule and they look forward to different days of the week and once they get into the routine they always know what to do at the writing center.  Check it out here for more details.

In my county, school starts on Monday and all across Maryland kids and teachers will all finally be back to school!  As a way to celebrate Techie Turtle Teacher, OC Beach Teacher and I have set up a Back to School linky party to gather some fantastic resources for everyone!  Please feel free to link up your back to school post, resource or freebie and make sure to visit each other's sites and leave some BTS love!! 

Classroom decorations Day 1...

Today was my first day back at school and even though I went in last week to sort out supplies for my team it was still a lot of work and dang I am tired tonight!

So here is what my class looked like last week:

It was all shiny and clean and in the corner where you can't see there are boxes and boxes of supplies for the whole first grade team!

So last Friday I went in and with the help of 5 awesome helpers, we got all the supplies sorted and delivered to each of my teammates classrooms!  

Over the weekend I chalk painted a table in my room that turned out so cute!  I used cream colored chalk paint from Jo Ann Fabric (Lace) and mixed  and in my own acrylic paints to create some bright colors!  Mixing the paint was pretty low key, I poured some chalk paint into a plastic ziplock storage container and then added just enough acrylic paint to get the color I wanted.  For my table, I mixed 3 different colors and still had some left over!  Gotta love chalk paint! If you have not tried it yet you need to!!!  I am going to chalk paint an old night stand that I have sitting in front of my classroom, it holds books for kids to read while they are waiting for school to start!  I will post a few pictures later this week...

I also managed to move all my books and set up the library.  This year I added a few new Seuss Turffula trees and moved my palm tree to my reading table (more on that later this week)!  They were super easy to make and Bombshell Bling has a great blog post with lots of pictures to help you make your own!  Since the trees are made of pool noodles they are super light and I was able to simply tie them to my class library using pretty ribbon!

More to come later this week...

Back to School Word Work Flash FREEBIE!

I am honored to be featured as as a Milestone Seller on Teachers Pay Teachers!  I am so grateful to all of my customers and followers ~ THANK YOU!!

To celebrate my TPT Milestone, I am having my first FLASH FREEBIE!

Happy BTS everyone - my flash freebie is perfect for you!  It is a back to school themed Word Work unit full of fun worksheets that can be used for morning work, independent work OR literacy centers!

August and September Word Work Unit includes:

✔ 10 different “make a word” activities
✔ Back to school Word search
✔ 4 different word alphabetical order activities 
✔ 2 sentence writing activities
✔ 2 adjective word work activities 
✔ 4 themed writing pages 

Grab it here, or click the picture below! Please make sure to follow me here and in my TeachersPayTeachers store so that you can see what other freebies or giveaways I may have in the future!  The unit will be a flash freebie until 8/9/15!!  

Update!! I have extended the FREEBIE until the need of the day Monday 8/10/15!!  

Happy BTS everyone!

Thanks again for being SO great! 

Don't forget about the TPT back to school sale (8/3-8/4)!!  Enter code BTS15 for 28% off everything in my store!

 Check out all my other Word Work units here!