Okay . . . after hours and hours and hours and hours and HOURS of work, my room finally came mostly together this weekend. Thanks to the help of mom, Jenn, Alison, Natalie, Aunt Layna, Nicole and Nick my room is clean and decorated! Not all of the projects are finished yet, but all of the really hard work has been done. The janitor has commented three times so far on how clean my room is and how much he appreciated all the work we did. He said we're all hired if we want a job!

This is the word wall where we post words that start with different letters of the alphabet.

Here is the main teaching area. On the left is my birthday board, and on the right is the carpet area where we start the day with weather, calendar, singing and reading.

This will be the 'reading cave'. The picture looks dark, but it's really very cute! I still need to finish decorating the wall and I am going to hang icicle lights from the top to give more light and maybe look a little like stalactites. I will also be getting some bean bags to go in there.

This will be the art and science center. I hope to cover the cupboards up with more beautiful artwork that the kids make. I also have a piano in my room which I can use for music time if I ever learn to play some songs.

This is my teacher area (still kind of a mess right now)

Things have been going pretty well. Yesterday was rough with a half-day faculty meeting where they pounded us with information and the open house which ended up being really stressful. We were in the principal's office when the open house started still trying to split the three sessions into four. Not all of the parents were happy with the changes and confusion (neither were we) and I'm still working on getting things worked out with a few kids.

Today was much better. I started assessing my students and it's nice to meet them one at a time at first. It is nice to see what level they are at so I know where to start. I am also getting more organized and feeling ready for the next day without staying at the school until 11. Today I decided that I was going to leave everything at school and not worry about it until tomorrow. Then I will finally start planning what I will do with the kids on the first week of school!

As for Nick, he is being really wonderful and patient. Today he got me flowers with an orange daisy surrounded by red roses to symbolize my students blossoming from my wonderful teaching! He is training for the law review this week and will start school again on Monday. He is enjoying having a little free time to work on some fun projects he's been looking forward to doing (like re-building speakers from DI)