Welcome to my 1st Grade Classroom!

For the first time in my life, I have my own classroom! This year I have the privilege of being the 1st grade teacher at CHESS Christian School.

I spent most of the beginning of August working to set up my classroom. The previous 1st grade teacher left me a lot of her supplies, manipulatives, and games…and I’m so thankful for that! I don’t know where I would be without those things! I also went to as many teacher garage sales as I could find. My classroom also got moved down the hall into a bigger room so that we could keep the desks 6 feet apart. My classroom is still not where I would like it to be, but I’m content with it, especially for my first year, teaching on a budget.

Do you want to take a little tour?

This is the first day I walked into my classroom. It was completely empty except for a pile of furniture from the previous classroom. All of those supplies were for big kids, so I had to have them moved OUT of my room, and the entire 1st grade classroom moved INTO my room. Thankfully, I just wandered around the school until I found some teenagers who looked bored, and I recruited them to help me move everything! They were SO helpful! One of them even slightly broke the back of a shelf, so he went and found a hammer and fixed it himself. Helpful, smart and thorough! I’m thankful for my school community!

It only got worse before it started to get better…

I took the kids with me most of the times that I went in to work. I will admit that I was frequently frustrated with how long it took me to complete every task while the kids were there. I struggled with how I would balance Mom and teacher life when I felt like I couldn’t even put my classroom together! Update: it has so far been much easier to manage mom/teacher life than it was to set up a classroom with all three of them there!)

Finally started to see some progress being made! I found that setting up my classroom was a lot of trial and error. I would hang something somewhere and let it be for a day or two, but hate it the whole time. Take it down. Think about a new space for it. Hang it there. And then it would click.

I ended up approaching my classroom like I do my home: really focusing on what is functional and trying to keep it minimal, while still being pleasing to the eye. If something is not useful, I have no problems getting rid of it or not using it at all.

I barely finished setting up my classroom before open house night began! About 20 minutes before my first families arrived, I found out that I had three more students in my class!

Open house ready!

I cut up confetti and had a small Photo Booth where the kids could toss the confetti in the air and we would snap the picture! It was a total hit! It did make a mess, but it really wasn’t hard to clean up at all.

It’s been really fun having Tera in my class so far!

We went into the school year thinking that face shields were sufficient to meet the mask mandate, but the morning after open house our governor put out a statement saying that face shields don’t count as masks. Honestly, wearing a mask all day trying to teach small children is the WORST. I have way more thoughts on that, but we will just leave it at that.

And there you have it! My first 1st grade classroom!