I'm definitely in my zone...

Aaah...I've been so excited to be back in a school this past week and hear kids in the hall and smell the laminating machine and feel the warmth of stacks of paper as I grab them from the copy machine.  This week has been a whirlwind!  I arrived at my new school early on Tuesday morning and walked into my new classroom.

No student desks or tables!  It was pretty empty, except for this extremely random find:

Yes, those are 8tracks and yes, that is Barbra Streisand.  And no, I did not take them home to rock out.

So I spent Tuesday de-cluttering and forming a game plan for room arrangement and decoration.  Then I worked like crazy the rest of the week to pull something together.  It's  not exactly how I'd like it, but it will do for now and I'll just keep spiffing it up as I go along...

I have a SmartBoard, which I'm pretty pumped about!  And only 18 kids in my class!  I've NEVER taught fewer than 25 kids.  Ever.  The last year I taught, I had 32 kindergartners.  Yikes!  I mean, it's doable {I lived through it.  Barely.} but definitely not ideal.

The third grade team is departmentalized and they added me in to the mix about a month after school started.  So there's one teacher doing math, one teacher doing reading, and then I will be teaching spelling, supplementing with additional math curriculum {Do the Math} and teaching phonics to one group and focusing on vocabulary with another group.  A little bit of everything!  I'm used to ONLY teaching math, so I'm pretty excited to get to teach reading too!  I will be using Fountas and Pinnell with my phonics group and am looking for good resources to teach vocabulary and context clues to my other group.  Please share if you have something fabulous or know of something fabulous!

This weekend I finally got to create something that was NOT in Times New Roman font.  Aaahhh... I've missed my fun fonts and clip art.  I made a fun little book to go with our study of consonant blends this week.

{Sheesh.  I feel like my photography skills leave much to be desired.  My apologies!  Trying to be quick with a pic from the trusty iPhone.}

Anywho, y'all will still love me regardless of my photography skills, right?  Especially since I'm posting this little booklet as a freebie!  Grab your copy here.

On top of all of this new job excitement, it's also my birthday!  So now I'm off to find some icing cake to eat and presents to open.  Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.  I can't wait for tomorrow-next week will be my first full week teaching!  Hopefully the kids don't eat me alive.