Classroom: The Before Pictures

Here are the before pictures of my preschool classroom. 

The back of the room.

The other back corner.

My new closet with our heating and air conditioning units!

The front of the room.

Be on the lookout for the "after" pictures coming out shortly!

Duct Tape Borders

I told you I was in love with fun duct tape! Here's another use I found for this wonderful invention! Duct tape makes a Wonderful border! It comes in lots of different colors and designs and makes for a nice straight border. In the picture below you can see that I used it around my whiteboards in the back of the classroom where I plan to have circle time. As you can see on the top picture, it is on top of the old chalkboard and I didn't like that I could see the raw edges, so I decided to cover them up. This is where the duct tape comes in. It didn't take me very long to put up, and I was very happy with the results!

A look at my completed board all ready for circle time! It's hard to tell from the pictures, but those are actually mustaches on the right side of the board! A look at my finished classroom will be going up within the next few days!

Dry Erase Markers

My preschoolers love to write on the whiteboards and I love to let them. Anytime they want to write, is fine by me! My problem was always making sure that they were using my "special" markers (aka the dry erase markers) on the board. Part of my problem is that some of the new ones look just like the regular markers they use to color with. So, what to do? I have fallen in love with fun colored duct tape this year, as I'm sure you'll see as we go along. I took some of the fun duct tape and wrapped it around the bottom of all my dry erase markers. Problem solved! Now I just have to keep reinforcing that the only markers they can use on the board are the ones with the green duct tape on them!

Time to Organize

Today I spent a good six (yes, six) hours cleaning and organizing one of the closets in my room. I'm almost embarrassed to show you the state that my closets are in, but alas that is the sacrifice I must make. Ninety five percent of the things in the closet I inherited from the previous teacher after she retired after about 20 years, so needless to say, she had a lot of stuff to share. Its kind of overwhelming to take it all in at once. I had to work up my courage to start tackling the enourmous job of cleaning and organizing. Today I finally tackled the first of two large closets in my room.  The best way for me to get motivated to do this is to do one shelf (or drawer) at a time. Then as I slowly see things start to change for the better, it makes me want to keep going. I managed to get through four of the five shelves today (just dont look at the bottom shelf on the picture). Three bags of trash later, it is finally looking like an organized closet in which I finally feel like I can find things quickly and easily in. Now I just have to work up the courage to tackle the back closet. Wish me luck . . .

Tips, Tricks and a Little Randomness

There are always little tips that you find out along the way that are useful and that you almost always wish you knew earlier because it would have saved you a lot of time and effort. These are a few that I have found that I hope you will find useful, too.

Tip #1: Dry erase markers make great erasing tools. They will take permanent marker off of anything that has been laminated or is plastic. This way you can continue to use posters over and over again. Just use your dry erase marker and color over the permanent marker then use a kleenex to wipe it off, and voila! you now have a clean poster.

Tip #2: Magic Erasers will become your new best friend! They can be used to clean just about anything off of anything. Once you start using them, you'll never go back to any of those stinky sprays again! Crayon marks on the table (or wall)? No problem! Glue on the table? Gone! Random sticky stuff? Wipes right off! As a bonus it can alao be used to clean those stubborn marks off of a dy erase board! I highly recommend investing in some of these; they will change your life!

Have any good tips you want to share?  Stay tuned for more tips, tricks, and a little randomness!

End of the Year Cleaning and some Whiteboard Magic

Well, it's that time of year. Time to clean and put away things until next year. It's also a great time to purge unwanted files and other artifacts that are lurking unused in the deepest darkest recesses of your classroom. This is what I have been doing over the last week and a half. Last week was spent going through my filing cabinets, and I'm sorry to say that job isn't even done yet, sigh. I have, however, made a lot of progress. When I got my teaching job this year, I was lucky enough to inherit a large supply of preschool items, which I am definitely thankful for. The downside is that I also inherited a lot of old files, some dating back to the eighties that I've been going through and purging. One filing cabinet at a time. I've found lots of interesting items that I will definitely be using next year. It's like a perpetual treasure hunt, and its always interesting to see what I might find in one of the closets, which I what Ill be tackling next. Before pictures are coming tomorrow. I've been having problems getting my whiteboard to come clean. I've tried everything I and Pinterest could come up with. I tried white board cleaner, baby wipes, air freshener; you name it, I've tried it. Nothing would take the marker off completely. Then today out director suggested using a Mister Clean Magic Eraser, and Bingo! With a little (okay, a lot) of elbow grease, the white board is finally clean once again! Mr. Clean saved my whiteboard!

I'm back!

After a long absence I am back. Older, hopefully wiser, and with a lot more experience. I have recently renewed my interest in reading blogs (especially preschool ones) and it has renewed my interest in blogging. I am committed to blogging more often about my experiences in teaching preschoolers. As I am posting this, I have just finished my last day with students for the year. It is a bittersweet moment. I'm glad for the summer break, but I will definitely miss my preschoolers, especially my four year olds as they are moving on to pre-k and kindergarten in the fall. My three year olds I'm lucky to get back for another year to see how they continue to grow. I'll be posting throughout the summer on different things I'll be working on to get ready for next year.