I was inspired by Victoria Smith, owner of Kinder Korner website
to cover my walls with blue paper and set up a teaching wall
and a thematic wall in my classroom.  I was also determined
to give the room a new look since I was looping up with my
kinders from last year. I wanted the room to be a little
different from kindergarten. It sure was a lot of work, but with
the help of my husband and printed pictures from the KK
website, my portable has been transformed into a great
place to work and learn at Swift School. This tree will
soon be covered with apples made by the kids on the
first day of school.  Then, the green will come off
and fall leaves will be added to the branches as will pumpkins on the fence.

My teaching wall.  We spend a great deal of time on the carpet in front of this wall.
The carpet was given to me and I used duct tape to section it off into squares. 
It works really well for each child to have their own "space", and this is now
the perfect place for many large group activities that take place in our classroom.

Our word wall with all the words (all 56 of them!) we had learned by the end of
kindergarten.  I was very pleased that quite a few of my kids still 
remembered a good number of them at the beginning of this year.

The Great Green Room
This is my home center.  One year for a booth at our school's literature festival
my class re-created the great green room from the story Good Night Moon.  We used
a refrigerator box with one side cut out so the room was three-sided.  We covered
the walls with green paper and a parent drew and painted these pictures.  We added
a toddler bed with a stuffed bunny, and two beanie baby cats plus a little rocking chair.
Our item to sell was red balloons for two tickets.  I have always wanted to 
use these two pictures in my classroom some way, and now I have my own great green room
in my classroom.  I read the story to the kids and they were in shock at the sight
of the first colored picture and all began poiting and saying that's in our room.
Not one child had ever heard the story before, and they loved it. 
The home center is quite a popular spot in our room this year.

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