Here's my cookie dough!

For those of you who are not as nerdy as I am, or have not memorized every line from every episode of every Buffy the Vampire Slayer Series, my room being "cookie dough" means that it's a work in progress. Here's the actual quote from Buffy:

"Because—OK, I'm cookie dough. I'm not done baking. I'm not finished becoming whoever the h___ it is I'm gonna turn out to be. I make it through this, and the next thing, and the next thing, and maybe one day I turn around and realize I'm ready. I'm cookies. And then, you know, if I want someone to eat— or enjoy warm, delicious cookie me, then... that's fine. That'll be then. When I'm done."

Clearly, she was talking about relationships. I'm talking about my classroom.
But hey, the it works!

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This is how my room looked when I walked into it for the very first time. Woah. This is from the door looking straight.

Remember this? This is from last week. 

TA DA! The small shelves are my class library books. The left shelf is fiction books and the right is nonfiction.
It's not as organized as I would like - I really wanted to use bins for everything. But those books were dusty and it was super hot, so this will work for awhile!

I swear, I was so relieved to have this finished! 
The blue bins on the shelves are where my leveled readers will go (once I've sorted them), and the blue bins on top are for various book recommendations. Labels will be put on them on August 24th, or the next time I am allowed in my room... whichever comes first!


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This is another view of how my room looked when I first walked in. This is from the door, looking left.

This is what was behind the butcher paper on the shelf. More stuff to tackle, woo hoo! 

Here it is now!!! This is my "desk". I'm going to get rid of my actual desk - a table works just fine for me so I can mean with small groups. I wish I had a kidney table, though! This isn't anywhere near what the finalized product will look like, but it's a lot better than the craziness I started with!

The hubs playing teacher!

What's that writing behind him? Oh, it's old information that was behind the tile board that was nailed to the chalkboard. From 2004. I decided to take the tile board down so I can replace it and make bulletin board sidings and got a good laugh when I saw this! 

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Last photo of when I first walked into my room. Yikes. This is from the door, looking toward the back left.

And here it is now! I still have tons of stuff to put away, but it's definitely brighter. AND the blinds are semi fixed, woo hoo! I am so in love with my bright orange board. :)

PS Here... Seriously, bulletin boards? I hate them! It is not easy to get all the paper and borders up so that it looks perfect!  I finally said that it looked good enough (from far away), but it drove me crazy!

Hehe, I just thought this one was cute. Silly hubby :)

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So there you have it, my cookie-dough, work-in-progress room!

The bad news?

They start to wax the floors in my hallway tomorrow.

That means I can't get back in until August 20-24. 

Which means August 24 for me, because I have a week of New Teacher Academy!

Argh!

But the hubs is going to take August 24 off and help me finish up my room.

He is a very handy guy to have around, we got so much accomplished already!

Whew, all better. 

So, I came home and put together several to-do lists. 

I also brought tons of stuff home with me to sort through. 

So I will keep myself plenty busy in the next week and a half crossing things off my list!

I just wish I didn't still have stuff I had to purchase. 

I'm seriously running on empty. :(

Oh well, it will pay off in the long run!

Has anyone else started working on their room yet?