First steps

I was very excited to have the carpet in my classroom cleaned at the end of last week so I could get in there today and start moving furniture around.  I'll share a few photos with you of how the classroom looked the first time I saw it on June 2nd and what it looked like today after I pushed everything around.  Keep in mind this is a true work in progress.  I've added a few sentences to describe the space so you can get a sense for the positives and negatives.  My school is about 50 years old.  The classroom was NOT designed with early childhood in mind.  But I'm going to make it work, and it will be fabulous!! 

From the doorway, looking into the classroom.............the wall opposite the door is all windows.  There are no outlets on that wall. It is great to have all that natural light though, and I have a plan to soften up the windows a bit and still allow a lot of light in.

 The next photo was taken from the doorway, but looking across to the opposite corner.  You can see from the above photo and this one that the walls that are perpendicular to the door and windows each have a white board flanked by two bulletin boards.  I am planning to have my large group space in front of the wall pictured below.  One noteworthy comment is that there is one outlet on each of the "whiteboard" walls, located directly under the whiteboard in the center of the wall.  This has quite a bit of bearing on how I will have to set up the space.

 This next photo was taken from the "window" wall facing the wall with the doorway.  You can see the door to the far left in the photo.  What you can't see very well here is that I have a little teeny tiny tiled area in front of a set of cupboards.  There is a sink on the far right.  I desperately wish for more tiled floor, but pretty sure that's not happening.  So I'll have to get creative with messy and wet materials.  The table right next to the door hold two classroom computers.  I had wanted to relocate them to another area, but have to leave them here due to the lack of outlets.  After moving things around today, I actually feel okay about this location for them.

So..........on to progress made today.  I just snapped two quick photos before leaving for my college class.  I am too tired at present to write a whole lot about this photo.  I know it looks like a hot mess.  Right in front of the doorway is a big jumble of items that I am hoping to get rid of or store elsewhere (i.e.. I don't want them to stay in the classroom).  I am finding that this may be a difficult task, but we'll see what happens.  One little teaser I'll add here is about the tape that you can see in the center of the photo if you look closely.  I have a big project that I am going to be working on (in all my spare time.......haha) that is going to go where the taped area is.  I wanted to allow for this big item as I arranged everything else, thus the tape.  I have no idea when this project will be started let alone done, but suffice it to say..........it will be AWESOME!!  Very excited about it!

 This photo is from the doorway looking into the room.  To me, the most exciting part of my preliminary room arranging is that I was able to fit my teacher desk and file cabinet into the space in a way that makes a very small footprint as well as making them virtually invisible.  So..........can you find a file cabinet and teacher desk in this picture?  If you have to look hard, I will feel that I've succeeded in one of my goals.  This is the children's space, not mine.  If I had my way, there would be no "teacher area" in this space.  But........I am required by the district and ECERS to have a work area.  At least I was able to make it a minimal part of the entire layout. 

That's all for now.  I am one tired puppy.  I had a Puppet & Storytelling enrichment class for children at my house from 10-11:30 this morning.  Then I headed immediately to my school to work until about 3:45.  Then I went to my college class which was from 5-8:30, and got home around 9:00.  It is now 11:00 p.m.  I feel good about what I did in the classroom today, but I admit to feeling quite overwhelmed by all that is left to do.  One day at a time............