Classroom Tour...Finally!

Welcome to Mrs. Ziegler's Kindergarten! 

Tonight's open house was a smashing success with 16 of my 20 students coming to meet the teacher.  Half of my class is hispanic so communicating with the parents was challenging on more than one occasion but overall it went rather smoothly.  I only had 1 hispanic family that could not communicate at all (and that includes the kinder of the family) and one little boy from China who has only been in the states for a few weeks and will only be here for one year.  I am pretty comfortable with the challenge of teaching to such a large group of ESL students but have to admit I am pretty apprehensive about working with the little boy from China.  Not only am I unable to speak or understand Chinese...but neither is any other child in the classroom or any adult in the entire school building.  How on earth do I deal with that on day one?  Any suggestions?    

I am however finally ready to share pics of my classroom.  Do you remember how bare it was the first time I stepped in and then how messy and disorganized it was while I moved in?  Well, all the hard work payed off because I absolutely LOVE my new room...

 

 View of the doorway entry from the hallway

 

View as you enter the room!

 Our Calendar Area.  I made all the cute calendar headings myself and am considering adding them to my new TPT store!

 

My BEAUTIFUL carpet:)

 My center-block word wall.  These letters are in my TPT store and they are PERFECT for this space.  I have to thank my best teacher friend (Mrs. Morgan from Asheville) for this inspiration!

Our Reading Center!

 Our Math Center.  The golden framed area will be for our math vocab words.

 One of my favorite parts of the whole room.  If you looked at the pics of my old first grade classroom you might recognize the blue and yellow pages.  I used to have them on our word family wall.  Now they will be used to help display student work.  Notice the super adorable banner hanging above?  That is all thanks to my amazing new assistant.  I was talking out loud about how I couldn't think of a cute or catchy heading for our student work and an hour later she had whipped out this adorable banana banner!  LOVE.

 My Corner.  Isn't it wonderful?  If you look REALLY close you can see my teachers toolkit peaking through the arms of the chair.

 This is the entry to our classroom bathroom. Also pictured are the backpack and coat hooks for the kids.

 This will be our block and games and puzzles station!   I still need to add labels and I wish I didn't have to keep my teacher resource bookshelf RIGHT there...it's so ugly but oh so necessary!

So that's it, my new classroom.  I have worked super hard and now I'm ready to focus all that energy on teaching the sweet sweet kiddos that I got to meet tonight for the first time.  Hope you enjoyed the peak into my room!