[Music] good morning, happy Tuesday. We are starting classroom setup now. It is still July. I was not really planning on going in until around August, but today is actually kind of going to be like a cloudy, rainy day. And I actually had a workout class at noon, um, right near my school. So I was like, you know what, Parker's got the morning off, I've got the morning off, let's go in and kind of assess how things are going. I have no idea if the rugs are done, no idea if the floors are done, but I have a bunch of boxes that were sitting in my office that I need to bring here anyway. So I figured we'd go in, check it out, and kind of start day one of the setup. If the floors are done, I'm going to have Parker start moving a lot of the furniture back into place. Um, if you followed my videos last year, you might know that I hurt my back pretty badly. Um, I have a slipped or herniated disc in my back, and it's been

largely a lot better but still kind of flares up every once in a while, so I'm going to use Parker as much as I can for moving. So let's, uh, let's get in there and take a [Music] peek. All right, so we are bringing boxes in. I just talked to one of the custodians, and they are ready for us to move in. We have the floors clean, the, uh, other floor, the carpet clean, and those floors waxed, so we're ready to go. This is exciting. It is very hot in here. That was another reason I didn't even think about coming in in Massachusetts. We've definitely had a bit of a heat wave, um, this summer, which has been wonderful for going to the beach and all the fun summer activities, but the thought of being inside the classroom with, um, no AC was not fun. So we've got a couple hours. We're going to work here, get things set up. I'll show you, uh, how that progress is going, and I'll also share what I brought.

in uh in the boxes, so let me get a little unpacking and get going, and I'll pop in with you. [Music] He [Music] He [Music] He [Music] Okay, we're going to do a little pop-in. It is, we are getting sweaty in here. Um, but so having Parker was so much easier, and also this year is so much easier. Um, 'cause last year it was a blank classroom, but most of my stuff is already here and ready to go. So let me show you what we've done so far. All right, first things first was we got our desks set up in the three groups. Um, I mentioned last year that I'm going to keep this layout of the three groups of six. Um, my big rug is not here right now. They are cleaning that in the gym, which is totally fine. Um, so while that gets done, we got all these set up. One of the boxes I brought in were my new chair pockets. I had mentioned before that I was going to get new ones, the really good stuff ones, just

did not hold up in my opinion. Um, and these, like I said, I've used before. I know they are washable and ready to go. They do, they are slightly big. I did change chairs this year. Um, I used to have those type over there. They were blue, and this year I got the much lighter ones, the plastic ones, so kids can move them around easily. I don't know because they kind of go out anyway. I don't know if I could have gotten smaller, but we're going to see how these work. I just know from past experience that they're a lot more durable, so I'm excited about that. So, we got all that set up. We got the stools set up in the corner. Um, these desks I did get from a colleague of mine who was moving, and the other person that's coming in is bringing in tables, so I took these 'cause I like the look of these better instead of the wood ones, except she had, I think these are pencil holders, um, and these are like really, really stuck onto this.

desk. So, I'm going to have to get like a little chisel. My husband said like a little chisel or something should be able to knock it right off. So, we're going to do that. It's just this desk and one over here. We've got the same problems. So, if you have any ideas or strategies, tactics that might work, let me know. We went through this space over here. The table is not cleaned yet. The custodian said she was going to clean it after. So, she said I could totally place it down here and she'll give that a good scrub. I have my magic eraser for this table. It works to take off all this gunk. And then we kind of went through the toys that we're going to be using this year. Some of them were kind of junky and old, and I had to get rid of. So, we have got two things of Legos. We have our magne tiles, brain flakes. These I loved. I shared them last year when I got them. They were on sale.

at Lakes Shore. I think maybe during like their Christmas sale or something, but just a little pretend play here. The Penguins one and lions. Um, it's such like a preschool type thing. Um, um, which I don't like to age anything, but I just mean you find these often in like preschools, but you'd be surprised how much the first graders love kind of just building and playing with those. This I got last year. Uh, I have two students do it at a time. It's like a little pixel art challenge that they loved. And then down here we have some of the mini jungle blocks that they use to build and a whole bag of little mini Potato Heads, which is hilarious because I'm a 37-year-old and that is definitely what we played with when I was younger. Something new we got this year. We have Tinker Toys. So, so at the end of last year, there was a little bit of a stem budget where each of us could get a couple things like this, like kind of free play, free explore type activities. I

already had some of the stuff on the list were like magne tiles, Legos. I already had a ton for my own boys that I had brought in, so instead of purchasing that, I got this bucket of Tinker Toys. Parker opened that box earlier, and I totally forgot what was inside, so I think this will be a fun one for them to play with this year. For those of you that might be wondering when we use this, um, I like to come in in the morning and do a bit of a slow start, so students would rotate through some toys in the morning for about the first 10 minutes that they get in here. This is also the whole area that we use for indoor recess, so we don't use any sort of iPad or technology during indoor recess. It's just too hard to manage and monitor, so instead, um, they use all these fun pre-free play things here, and then, of course, we have our little number blocks over here. Uh, this was something I was going to look into more last year. I think I told you

guys, I had purchased this even before I knew I was going to be a classroom teacher, just because I loved the conceptual idea of the math stackers, and it's something we used during our number sense unit. Um, I can kind of go more into this later, but essentially, this is a 10 block, this is an 8 block, and you can see that it actually fills up, it fills up 8/10 of the space. So, they all just like make sense, and we can see that, you know, four twos would make an eight, and five twos would make a 10. So, they can see all this when they stack them up, they can put them in order. Um, sometimes they just like to build with them, and I ask them simple questions, but they're a lot of fun. All of these buckets and everything under here, I actually organized at the end of last year, and my now summer Susan self is so happy I did that. So, I will go through, and then these cabinets, I did the same thing, I already organized them.

all I'm so happy I did tell you. I was going to do an organization video, so I will do that. I'll kind of go through the cabinets, how I have all my materials organized, um, how I keep things by every unit, um, even just how I plan for the week using those folders, how I plan my win. I think I can make like a big organizational video. These are all my decodables here. This is my small group center. I like to have everything, you know, everything has a place, um, and I know where everything is, so I might be a little crazy that way, um, but yeah, I can definitely make an organization video to kind of just go through everything that works for me, and you can see if anything works for you. Just let me know if you want that. Oh my gosh, this sweat is real. Um, the last little thing we did today was get the book corner kind of situated, so let me show you what that looks like now and what my plan is for that. I probably won't set up the books until

Thursday, but let me see. Everything over here is in the same space as last year. I really liked the layout of it. Um, and I'm just remembering like last year all this stuff was brand new. I bought this desk from Ikea, so we had to build that new chair. I actually think I sit in this chair and that chair for most of the day. Well, and the one that Parker said. I sit in that chair during my Rel Lads. But these two chairs, like for any small group during writing time. Um, all of my reading groups. I am always pulling kids back to that table. And my Aid had that table, so I'm thinking of getting another one of these chairs. They were, it was like $100 or so. Um, and it's just so comfortable and well worth my time, especially with my back scenario. So I actually think I might replace that chair. Um, before the end of the year. So I mean before the start of the year. Okay, where was I? Back to this. All right, so I put everything back. The books stayed there all summer long, so I need to go.

through those they're mostly where they're supposed to be from last year, but I just need to go through it. This right here is always my seasonal bookshelf. Nerdy Birdie was a book I bought over the summer, so I just brought it in. So this will be all of my back-to-school books. This one right here is like very popular read-alouds. This is where we'll have Bad Seeds, Smart Cookie, Cool Bean, um, all of those fun read-alouds, the pigeon read-alouds, um, all of my Elephant and Piggies are over here. But this is just going to be like very popular read-alouds for first grade that my kids always love. So I will get that all set up maybe on Thursday because I'm really, really ahead of schedule, and then I don't have to really come in at all, which sounds great. This is my little stuffies. We've got Pigeon here, Cool Bean, we've got Bad Seed and Good Egg, Smart Cookie, and Fly Guy. They go a lot with um, the books we have out, the other ones I

have our dog man and cat kid, right? Yeah, or Pete the Cat? No, not Pete the Cat, Cat Kid. Yeah, um, and then Elephant and Piggy here on top of the Elephant and Piggy books, which I'm not really surprised because they're amazing. But last year, I had been in a real classroom for seven to eight years, like a classroom of my own, and to see just how much kids were still obsessed with Elephant and Piggy books as they were about a decade ago is pretty, pretty awesome. And then, yeah, these are all my smaller books. This one's non-fiction. We have a lot of The Fly Guy series here. These are going to be for some more higher readers. We have the dragon series by Dav Pilkey, which I love. Big Nate, I only had a couple friends dive into, but the Who Would Win books. Actually, I need to move these. I'm going to move these to the front here, switch that with this. Um, and then, yeah, some bigger chapter books because every once in a while, you get some kids that are definitely ready for a bit of a

challenge. So, those kind of stay there all year. It has numbers that go from 1 to 120. That's a special chart and books over here. I organize these all by myself. Nice books. He is making fun of me, but yes, that's what I do. I sit in my classroom and I chitchat with you all. Um, but yeah, that's mostly what we did today. And as you can see, it is like I feel like I'm mostly done. Um, I obviously have to organize some things. I really want to go through and lay out my books. Oh, I will. Let me tell you this real quick. Let me flip the camera since Parker was just talking about my 120 chart. That will absolutely come down, and so will my numbers. Uh, 1 through 20. And I know you might think, Well, oh, what a waste. You're going to use that quickly. But I have explained before. I actually don't like anything up on the walls, so the only reference chart that will be on the wall is going to be our ABC chart here in the front of the

room um because that we will reference basically right away as soon as school starts until we dive into our numbers up here. I don't put them up there. I don't want anything on the wall unless we are actually using it. And I kind of make a big deal of like, oh, when they come in like after we start our 1 to 20 unit or sorry, our 1 to 10 unit, and we talk about the 10 frames, they'll basically come back from specials. They'll like, do you notice anything new in the room? And they'll see that this is up here. We'll talk about it, and I'll show them that they can turn up there as they need to to reference the numbers. So same once we get to our 1 through 20 unit. We do the same. I add those. I'll add my 120 chart way later. So all that will be coming down before the end of the school year. There were a couple other things I brought in today, so I just wanted to

share them with you. These are the supply boxes I had made a little Instagram reel, um, sharing what I purchased. We get some money from our PTO. We get about $150, maybe $200, I don't know, um, where we can get a reimbursement for classroom supplies. So, these go on sale for a dollar every year, so I make sure I buy these and keep the receipts. Um, my own boys actually just did this Dogman puzzle a couple of times this summer, so now I'm going to bring it into the classroom. I thought I had another one in here too, but I don't know where it went. Um, and then these are the little, uh, I think I got these for like 68 cents from Michaels, and these are going to hold all the crayons. So, that way, because they have a lot of stuff in here, they have crayons, they'll have scissors, glue sticks, everything. So, I have them actually take their crayons out and put it in here. Uh, again, just another organization little thing I'll have.

labels for this that I will print out and get done, and I got some highlighters, so I brought all that in. I'm just going to put it on the back counter for now until we get into that. And then the last box I brought in was this Lakes Shore box. Um, Lakeshore actually sent me a few items for the beginning of the school year, which was very nice. I think a couple of them are academic, and then I believe one of them is more of like a tinker toy type of activity for the morning. So maybe next time I come in, I'll open that up and show you what's inside. Hi, can I do a grande iced caramel macchiato with soy milk and whipped cream? I'm also going to do a venti iced coffee with two pumps vanilla and a splash of half and half. And then I'll do a spinach feta wrap as well. That's it. You got it. We'll see you at the window. Good morning, happy Thursday. We are back in the classroom today. I don't

expect for long um. We just have a few things that I wanted to do since we did most of the work on Tuesday setting up the furniture and everything. Today on another kind of cloudy is rainish day. I wanted to just do a few small things. I did end up purchasing a new chair um for my back corner that I'll show you. I think Parker is going to set that up and I see that some of my school supplies came in from our school budget. So I'm going to unbox those and get those all situated. I also printed out some labels for the supply boxes and yeah I'm going to kind of walk around and see what small things I can do. He [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well I um cut out all the labels and was about to stick them onto the pencil boxes but I realized I printed them on

the wrong side, which is fine 'cause I wasn't going to do all of them anyway 'cause it's a little early to put all student names on things since um class list could easily change in the meantime, so I have to reprint those, which is fine. Parker is doing the chair right now. I'm taking a little uh coffee break and going to have my breakfast, and I started taking out some of the small stuff, so I'm going to organize the calendar labels from up there. That's our first day of school with kids. We go um, we start Monday the 26th, and then yeah, I'm going to get some stuff ready, but first we eat breakfast. [Music] All right, before I really go into what is in these boxes, let's do a quick little check-in, see what we have got done so far. So here on the back, we have a new chair. Um, this was like a cheap one off Amazon. I think it was like $40 or so. It is not super comfortable, but it's more comfortable than and more sturdy.

than this. This old chair and this chair was really, really heavy. This one's nice and light and doesn't provide as much of a visual blockage back there, so that's good. Um, I had Parker take down the 120 chart, and I also, uh, took down all of the numbers to 20 anchor charts that we'll use, the little reference posters. So, each of these I will put, um, up here. This I'll talk about in my organization video, but this is how I have all my units organized. So, we have, uh, numbers to 20 is right there. That's where I'll put those posters. So, when we're ready to do that unit, I'll just take down that container and get everything I need. I also took out some small things like my schedule chart. Um, our schedule did change a little for next year, which kind of ruined my rainbow order of things, but that's totally fine. So, this year we have, we moved math to the morning before lunch and recess because that was something we were struggling with. So, we will have our morning meeting and

morning work, PGR, then phonics into writing, so all of that together, which I'm happy about. We took writing away from the end of the day, and then we have snack and recess, to calendar and math, and then lunch and recess. Then we will have WIN stations after lunch and recess, right in between our specials. Then we'll have our reading block, followed by social studies or science, and then pack up. So, that is our new schedule for next year. I put my brain break cards back up here, just a bunch of different ones as needed throughout the year. Over to this side, we have our first day of school, which you saw me put up, and then I have my book ledges, which I'll go through this book corner. I don't know if I'll get to that today. That'll probably be a closer to school type thing. All right, as for what is in these fun boxes, each year we do have a budget that is provided to us from the school. We are very lucky to have that.

none of the other schools I worked for had a budget for these types of things. Some schools I worked at had like a supply closet we could go to. Every school kind of does it differently. I have never worked for a school that is this good about these things. So that being said, we ordered all of our crayons through them, through the budget. This is all from school specialty. I ordered two packs of laminating sheets. You guys know how expensive these are. So I love to if we can have somebody else buy these for us. I love to do that 'cause we go through a lot of these to get things prepared. We also have a bunch of black folders. I am still working on organizing all of the decodable books and their lessons back here, and there were quite a few more I needed to use, and some of those folders back there are all like ripped and everything because they were old. So I'm going to replace and finish up the job with these black folders. Here in box number two, we have a

bunch of Crayola washable paint. Um, I have mentioned this before, but a lot of the paint supplies and things like that I keep over here. Uh, right now the buckets are in the way, but these are the old paint supplies, and I don't use paint often. Um, but this was what was left from the teacher who was in my class. Uh, the previous year before me, and most of it is completely dried out. So, I wanted to just replace a few. Uh, each year as we need it. So, I got some basic colors, and let's see what's in box number three. And in box number three, an exciting box. Let's see, we have got two pairs of kids' headphones. We do always have these students bring in headphones. I actually had like three, I think, students. Um, we never brought them in last year, so I just used some of my own that I had from home that the boys weren't using anymore. Um, but I wanted to get a class just a couple pairs for the class in case that happens again. These poits I love over at

my desk for writing down everything. Basically, I write it all, all my notes that I write on there, some markers, color Mac. I didn't notice that these are different colors. Cool. Um, some more markers 'cause those were running out. I also have more crayons for the whole class this year. We've got some sets of pencils to get us started for the year. And also, what are these called? Glue sticks, X markers, and some Mr. Sketch markers, the scented ones. Students love these. Uh, whenever I correct anything, I always do like a little star or a smiley face with this, and they love to smell it. But I also use them for my anchor charts, so I'll put these back there. Oh, also these right here. I saw these at the bottom of the box. I love these for um, using them in small group. Obviously, golf pencils are great because they help students with their uh, letter formation and just their hand formation of pencil grip. I use these all the time. I keep them in that white little container over there on top of the rolling cart for

when my students are in a small group, uh, and it's just a fun little pencil they get to use over there instead of their regular ones. So I'm going to unpack all this, get some of this situated where it needs to go, and then we'll probably be out of here. [Music] a [Music] I just realized I did not get the pre-sharpened tyon deras. My fault, but that's going to be annoying at the beginning of the year to sharpen all these. First world problems, I get it, but I thought I ordered the right ones. Bummer. [Music] phew. All right, we have been in here for probably about 2 hours, maybe a little under two hours today, and while it doesn't look like we got as much done as the first day, 'cause the first day is like, you know, moving all the furniture, and it looks a lot more noticeable, we did get a lot of smaller things done today that had to be done. We got a lot of boxes unpacked and cardboard moved out.

of here, so let's kind of walk through some of the things I put away and did, some of the things I got, and what I have a list for to continue working on later in the summer. Parker went ahead and, since we got all the Crayons today when we came in, he put them in their crayon boxes and into their supply boxes, so we've got these ready to go. I told you I have to reprint the labels 'cause I messed that up, and then all the other supplies will kind of go inside there. In terms of what other supplies we will put in, students will have a glue stick. This is where I have all my backups and everything too, so students will get a glue stick, they'll get a pair of scissors, an eraser, um, what else will they need? Oh, they'll get a highlighter and an expo marker. Those are in here, so they'll get a highlighter, they'll get a skinny Expo marker, and I think that's all they'll pretty much need. Other than that, I kind of just unboxed my other stuff. I keep

All my laminating sheets up here with my laminator. Uh, and then I also just take out like one box at a time and throw them in here 'cause it's easier to grab. And then we have Play-Doh for the beginning of the year. I have some here, which are the smaller ones, but I also got a set of the bigger Play-Doh. We always do this for our first day, and this is like a kind of quiet activity that first week of school as we are getting used to new procedures. All my paints, I went ahead and replaced all the old ones and threw them in there. Let's see over here, Parker put the number posters in that numbers to 20 bucket. These are mostly organized, but I have to go through a few of them. Some of them are just housing things for now that will be given out to students. Um, this right here, actually, I don't know. I just don't use these, but I kept them all. All the really good stuff buckets that I got, like not those ones.

those didn't come with it. Oh, the ones over here. Let me show you these really good stuff buckets. These are the book bins. So, they come with, which I love, like little dividers. You can divide the books by genre or however you're trying to divide them. But they also come with, like, labels, which I never ended up labeling mine last year, and I just don't know if I ever will, if I'm being totally honest. I kind of like it not labeled. I don't know. But then, in the meantime, it's just like taking up a bucket over there for no reason, and I didn't. I thought maybe I would do it last year, and I didn't. So, now I wonder if I will end up doing it at all. Do you end up labeling them? I know it's, like, nice and, you know, appealing. And then, there's also so many other dividers that just, again, I don't think I'll end up using. So, even if I, I'm not going to get rid of them. I might just take them home.

and kind of store them in my garage in case I end up using them, or maybe I can find another place. I just feel like it's a waste of space for one of these Prime Time buckets to be just holding that in one of the other boxes. We had some stuff that Lake Shore gifted me that I am very excited about. I got to pick what I wanted from a list of some items, so we have the double-sided letter tiles, which are great for small group and word building. These I think are so fun. Instead of magnet tiles, they're like 3D ones, so this is definitely going to get added to our little activity block over there for morning time fun. And then we also have a trace and write center with both uppercase and lowercase letters. So I really went for the academic route for these two. And then this is just a fun one that I think students will really enjoy for indoor recess and for that kind of free structured playtime. I think we are going to head out, but we really

did get a lot of little things done on my list for next time. Of course, I need to go through all those folders that I got. I want to replace and label them, uh, make sure those books are all organized by skill. Like I said, those are all my decodable books. I have a whole video kind of explaining what's inside those right here. This is how I run my small group, um, and those that those are the lessons that are inside those folders. So, I want to be sure those are organized by skill and not by foundations unit because we are likely getting rid of Foundations. Uh, we're piloting two programs next year, and we'll see which one we end up with. Next time I come in, I'll probably do my book displays. I have two of them here, this one and that one, um, and I already have those books organized over here. Let me see, let me get up and show you. I'm just so tired. Here we go. All these books over here are actually already organized by um, month or kind of theme. So, like, beginning of

the year. Some of them have different themes, like some of them are writing mentor text and everything, but a lot of them are just themed. So, I'll take down that book or that bucket, and I'll start organizing that. That should be easy on my little list of what to do. I need hand soap for over there. I like to bring in my own hand soap and paper towels. I want to get a bird feeder for the window. I don't know if I mentioned this in one of my videos before, but some of the teachers at my school have little bird feeders here. This is like a whole little garden. It's a little area that students can go outside, and birds love to come over here. And if you put up one of the little plastic birdhouses that you can see through, birds come and visit. So, I think that'd be so cute. So, I want to get one of those. I need to bring a scraper to remove those pencil things on my desks. I'm going to

bring some magic erasers. Uh, I want to buy some student whiteboard erasers. Let me show you the ones I got, but my kids destroyed them, so I need to come up with a solution for this. These right here are the ones we used all last year. It was just a cheap pack on Amazon, but every single child of mine drew on them, uh, you know, hearts, smiley faces, stars, whatever. They just could not help themselves, um, and so many of them also got lost. So I need, I, I mean, I don't really mind purchasing another pack of those, but I'd like if they don't destroy them. If you have a solution or a suggestion for some better student erasers, let me know. They worked fine in terms of actually erasing, so I don't mind. And like I said, I don't think they're super expensive. I need to look on Amazon, but that's another thing I have to buy. I also wrote down name tag holders from Lakeshore, so these are the ones I use. Let me flip the camera around.

and show you. These are the ones I use on student desks. Um, the large nameplate sleeves. These stuck really well to the desks, and I didn't have too much trouble getting them off at the end of the year, which I also appreciated. Um, I need a whole new pack of these, and then this leftover should be fine. And then these are the actual name tags, which I do have enough of for this year, so I probably won't order another pack. But I do need the actual holders for it to go into. So, I believe Lake Shore is having their sale right now, so I'm going to go ahead and order those online and have them picked up for the next time I come in. I'm also just going to write on here while I'm here anyway to reprint the label correctly, reprint labels. And then I do have, I can't show you too much of this, but um, my meet the teacher page that will go out on August 15th. That's when all of the teachers and families, not teachers, students and families, find out.

what teacher they have. So, I want to make copies of this and send that out. Um, once I have all student addresses and everything, I'll get those ready to go. So, let me put that down too. Reprint labels and send uh meet the teacher letters. That won't get done till August, but I need a little checklist to keep me going. I do also want to let you know that something big I've been working on all summer long have been my sjt clubs. I have a literacy, a writing, and a math club, and they are open now all through July. So, on July 31st, they will close again. So, if you are interested in joining any of those teaching memberships, they are ready for you to join. I will link everything down below in the description for you to check out. Basically, they hold all my lessons, activities, uh everything that I do throughout the year. They are all research-based, and a lot of time has gone into them over the last few years to kind of build them up and make it so your life is a lot easier when you're

teaching. So, if you'd like to check those out or have any questions about them, just let me know, and I'll link it down in the description. This will be it for classroom setup video number one. Basically, I spent about 4 hours, maybe three and a half, in the classroom, really not too much to do, I feel like. But I don't know, I say that, and today was a lot of small stuff, and it does take up a lot of time. So, as I come in and continue to do more, I will absolutely share with you any questions, comments, concerns. Let me know down in the comments, and I will answer for you. As always, I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, give me a thumbs up, make sure you are subscribed to my channel, and click that bell. That way, you're notified of every new video. See you in the next one. Bye. [Music]

CLASSROOM SETUP 2024-2025 // FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM (PT. 1)

CLASSROOM SETUP 2024-2025 // FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM (PT. 1)