Classroom Reveal

I have admittedly spent WAY too long working on my classroom, so today is a big day. It is finally finished!! I just want to give a shout out to my mom. She has come to help me many times, often for hours at a time. If it wasn't for her I wouldn't have finished everything.
The classroom theme is "home away from home" (I am an elementary school teacher, I am allowed to be cheesy). The classroom has dark cinder block walls and no windows so basically it's a depressing dark cave, so I tried to liven it up with bright colors. I'm happy with how it turned out (even though I still long for windows). Sorry about the low quality phone pictures!

The outside of the door. Just makes you want to spend all day in class doesn't it?

This is the "where we are" board which will hang outside the door once I can get the janitor to drill a hole in the cinder block wall.

This is the front of the class. The banner says "home away from home." This is about the tenth time I have hung the banner. I've tried tape, Mavalus tape, hot glue, tape with hot glue, hooks, hooks with hot glue, you name it. Every time I came back to the classroom it was on the ground. Now each flag has mounting tape on it. If it is on the ground next time, I'm throwing it in a fire pit. 

Here is a closeup of the front bulletin. The students will rotate through their jobs weekly with our job chart. The  calendar was made with a dry erase poster board, how cool is that? 

This is a closeup of the other side. I made the daily schedule with tape. Thanks Pinterest. After the first day of school I'll have pics of the students to hang on our class family bulletin.  

This is behind the bookshelf by the front door. This is where students will fill out their "think time" papers.

I decided to put this little book shelf by the sink so that it would be displayed on its own wall. After our book shares, students will draw or write the book titles and display them on this shelf. 

Thanks to my amazing and talented sister I have the most gorgeous management chart ever made. Isn't it perfect?

Here are the bulletins on the side wall. I will display the classroom rules on the placemats after we organize our rules as a class. If you are wondering why there are placemats and cooking utensils on there, it's because this is supposed to be our kitchen in our home away from home (a bit of a stretch, I know). The frames will display students' work throughout the school term.

The pencil was another Pinterest idea. Pinterest is a teacher's best friend. I used it to display Brad Wilcox's "Mighty Writing Process." Check out Mightyauthors.com for more info. My professor was the coolest.

These are a few clusters of homey decorations on top of the cabinets (hooray for Michaels 80% off summer sale)!

Here is the other wall with the reading and math bulletin boards. It also doubles as our "living room" (reading corner) and "porch" (I just wanted an excuse to make an orange tree). 

Closeup

Closeup of the reading corner.

After hours and hours and hours, the bookshelf is finally organized into genres (I still need to make the labels). Hopefully the time and effort will be worth it... 

 So after months of working on the classroom, I feel like the dark cave is a little happier and brighter now. Hopefully my students will feel at home there.