The Evil Opposite of a Classroom Reveal and a FREEBIE!

I know I'm not the only one who has been in denial about setting up my classroom, right? I have bought things and laminated and cut (and cut and cut and cut) things for my classroom this summer, but I've sort of had this lovely fairy dust notion that the classroom would get done after our vacation.  Which just ended yesterday.  And so.

 

Ugh.

 

Today I was at a meeting about first grade math curriculum in which THINGS WERE ACTUALLY REMOVED from our curriculum.  It was like The Twilight Zone.  Apparently in aligning our curriculum to the Common Core, which has been going on for a while now, the powers that be realized that we actually might be teaching too much. 

 

Too.  Much.  The people with the big admin pens actually said it.

 

Yes, we do teach more than the Common Core, and we will continue to do so.  Of course we won't be leaving money out of first grade even though it doesn't have standards.  But there were some things that they felt could GO. (Like removing thirds from our fractions unit, woohoo!).  So that was positive and happy.

 

And the meeting even ended a little early, which was also unusual and positive and happy.

 

So I decided to zoom on over to my school with my little bit of extra time and take stock before I pull my first full setting-up day tomorrow.  And here is what I saw:

 

Empty, bare, stuff all piled on shelves, boooo!



Where everything gets piled for summer cleaning - my coat closet.

Stuff stored everywhere... NOTHING LOOKS CUTE!

They took out my tv.... and left a mess of wires...

The front of my room.  Looking bald and sad. Needing School Rogaine.

My old letter and sign language signs, soon to be replaced by the Mod Owl versions in my TpT store. Can't wait!

 

 

Plus lots of labeling with these, which you can get together as a FREEBIE set HERE.

 

I also made a new lil SMARTboard attendance file to match:

 

 

I'm not gonna lie, I kinda wanna cry.  But my room will get there.  It always does!

The good news is, my fishtank did get a nice sprucing up...

Before - Plants all eaten, old things inside all chipped 

 

Bright, new plants (fake though) and a cute lil fish house. :)

Onward and upward tomorrow! :)