I know so many of you are already back to school and I have been admiring your gorgeous classrooms! We don’t head back until after Labor Day, so I’m still working away on my room. I did want to share a little sneak peek of what’s going on though.
I am keeping the black with brights theme I’ve had for a couple of years now. There is nothing I love more than fine-tuning a classroom scheme and evolving it a bit each year…plus my students love those colors so I am committed for another year (or more??).
Here are a few things I’ve been tweaking so far…
New Contact Paper
If you’ve followed the blog for awhile, you will know I love to cover my mismatched tables with contact paper. Last year, I went with black paper and it looked really sleek and modern…but in the end it was a lot of black along with my bulletin boards and I knew I would change it up a bit in the future. Here’s a picture of last year’s tables in black:
The tables in our classroom have about five different wood grains, so I decided to choose the…well…for lack of a better word, prettiest one to use this year! Three of our round tables are a warm, maple color. So I found some contact paper that matched really well at a local hardware store and have been covering all those mismatching tables with a new shade this year.
Here’s a darker table being transformed with new maple contact paper:
New Carpet
I found a new carpet back in June at Target for a nice sale price and I actually purchased two because they are my students’ favorite alternative seating (besides our little couch, more to come on that later!). This is a messy-work-in-progress shot that shows the carpet design:
New Library Labels
The carpets actually led to a new library label inspiration. I knew since the spring I wanted a black and white label with an icon look this year… and I tried out a different shape as well. These labels are from my Simply Iconic Library Labels set and they have a regular rectangle shape as well (plus a white with black option):
New Dry Erase Features
I’ve also been having a lot of fun using dry erase shapes to tie in with that icon-looking layout for my morning meeting area.
I used my circle cutter to make this calendar, so my 5th graders can write the date each day:
I realize it is still slightly askew (it’s that Thursday column!!) but it was about 9,000% humidity the other day and we don’t have AC at school…I will fix it next time.
And then I tried to this one look notebook paper-ish…
I have a couple of others I’m working on as well–they’ve been a lot of fun to make and they really stand out on the black contact-papered boards!
New Desk Plates
I’ve also reworked our desk plates since last year, after careful observation of how my students (especially the ones who really need these references) use them each day.
I’ve always made my multiplication charts alternate colors in columns like this…it really helps students track the numbers with their finger and not get confused. I enlarged the charts as much as possible for the best readability and left a small space to write the name…since it’s 5th grade and the name is more for substitute teachers.
I have a copy of the desk plate to share…please see below if you’d like to grab it now!
I have tons more to share but I don’t think I’ll have a full classroom tour until a couple of weeks into September…I hope you’ll have a chance to visit the tour then, I feel so behind everyone else!
Are you still setting up your classroom? Or have you been back to school already? Thanks so much for stopping by!
Kristen Beakey
I’m an elementary math coach with a passion for sharing beautiful, streamlined solutions to save teachers time. Ladybug’s Teacher Files has been a work of love since 2010. Filled with tech tutorials, math ideas, and organization…I strive to save you time in all aspects of your teaching!
