When I was in school (as a student), I used to very carefully choose all of my supplies, and then spend the 2 or 3 days before school started packing and re-packing my backpack. I had to make sure that all of my pens were lined up just right, that my highlighters were in rainbow order, and that my binder was sufficiently decorated. I definitely did not keep it so organized throughout the year, but by god, on the first day of school everything was perfect!
Maybe that's why I decided to go into teaching, so I could keep having a first day of school every year for the rest of my life!
I have been doing some hardcore back to school shopping, and I am loving it! I really need to get a folder to keep track of all of my receipts in so I can claim this all on my taxes. It's like I'm getting all of this stuff for free! Right? Well that's how I'm justifying it!
One thing that I'm really excited for is this:
Woot! Easel! The other side is a white board, and there is a bar at the bottom where I can keep a roll of paper that I can drape over the top if I need to. And it's from Ikea! So it was only $15 dollars!!!
Compare that to this:
From Lakeshore (a super favorite of mine) which is $129!!!!! WHAT?!?!?!?! And they have easels that range up to $269!!! DOUBLE WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!If there's anything I love better then getting awesome school supplies, it's getting awesome school supplies on the cheap!
I have actually been eying this easel for quite some time, but Ikea doesn't sell it on their website, and last time I looked for it in my nearby store, they told me that they weren't producing it anymore. I basically cried. :'( So when I went to Ikea to show it off to my Wyoming in-laws, and I saw this easel again, I think I
And I found another item from Ikea that I want to get for my classroom:
The Expedit series of shelves. I have some serious storage issues in my class, and I really need a better system to store all of my instruments. This would be perfect, especially with a whole set of these:
The Lekman box! It's a little bigger than a cubic foot, and it fits right into each of those little cubbies. I could fit a whole boat load of maracas, or rhythm sticks, or guiros, or whatever in there! And then I could make cute labels ala Mrs. Dennis
Of course it wouldn't be in gorgeous wooden cabinets, but it's a lot better than what I have going on right now, which is not a lot. The teacher that I took over for was not a music teacher, but rather a theatre teacher. She spent all of her time putting on mini-musicals with the kids, which I think is really cool, but they didn't learn any music! And she did not treat all of the instruments with any respect at all! A lot of them were just dumped into baskets and cupboards, and most of them are a little worse for the wear. My favorite story (or least favorite) is when I went to set out the Orff xylophones on the first day of school. They were looking a little dusty, so I started taking off the keys to get it all out of there. When I opened them up, I found a bunch of old stale popcorn laying in the bottom of the majority of them!!! Apparently when she ran out of musicals to teach them, she used to have movie and popcorn parties (the classroom teachers tell me this used to happen at least once a month). And because she didn't respect the instruments, the kids had no need to respect them either. Oy. The kids were very cranky with me last year when I informed them that there would not be movies or popcorn in music. Fighting an uphill battle there.
Anyways, I'm really ramped up for this year. I'm getting back into my classroom tomorrow, and I am so ready! I'm really going to try to go through all of the mystery cupboards and get rid of all of the junk that is left over. Including the huge collection of records and the record player taking up space. Or maybe I'll keep that. I don't know. What I really need is unlimited space to keep all the junk just in case I ever want to use it. :)
And... I think I've figured out what I'm going to use as far as a lesson planner/schedule organizer. Something I've cobbled together, but I think it'll work well. I'll post it once I've got it put together, probably next week.
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