I Survived the First Day of School!

Well I have been MIA in MIA for the past couple of weeks as I worked tirelessly on my classroom and gave some time to my about-to-be much neglected family and friends at the close of summer.

I will be posting some pics of my finished (or almost finished) classroom because centers are still unsettled and a couple of odds and ends still need to be rearranged and placed in new areas. I don't think my classroom is ever done. I change around furniture and move the kids to new tables at least three times a year. Oh well, today how I set up my classroom worked beautifully and my new little darlings are no where near as bad as the ones from last year (though I loved mine for the first month of school last year too).

I have had so many good things happen to me since the last time I posted about my bummed out mood. Thanks to all who wrote little bursts of encouragement I think it helped to refocus me and gave me a swift kick in the behind to stop moping and deal. I started turning negative thoughts to postive ones and happily a number of things went my way. I started selling some items on Teachers Pay Teachers!!! They were small items but selling them made me feel very proud of myself. I also ended up with a girl heavy class instead of a boy heavy one (I relate better to little girls than I do with little boys).

I met my new Kindergarten team. Two brand new teachers from the Teach for America program, their enthusiasm is helping me find more of my own and they are genuinely nice people which bodes well for the year and for me. I have only heard of the Teach for America program in broad terms before but I guess I will learn about it throughout the year. I already know that they have to have the kids learn a class oath and that kinda boggled my mind.

The last very happy and exciting thing is that I actually won a giveaway!!! That had never happened before. I won the 150 followers giveaway at Adventures in Teaching!!! So thank you Amy for the lovely prize!!! I got a $10 gift card to Amazon and got to pick five items from her great teacher store on Teachers Pay Teachers!

I picked the following:





So excited with my winnings that I stareted using them from the very first day of school. Check out Amy's blog for some great ideas:

 



 Tomorrow I will post classroom pics, sadly I left my camera at home most of last week when I got the most done and today so my kiddos' first day of school pi