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 Ever noticed how hard it is to take a picture of a window? No joke! This is one of my favorite things in my classroom this year, though. A complete makeover of the windows that line the entire wall, opposite the door of my classroom.  The little flag banners are 12x12 inch squares of scrapbook paper. Two swags (one from each end of the windows to the middle) were made by cutting the squares of paper in half, horizontally and vertically; then cutting each of those in half, horizontally and vertically; then cutting each of those in half, diagonally. Each piece of paper made 16 isosceles triangles. The middle swag cuts across both of the other pennants, and has larger triangles. Just cut in half diagonally sooner, and each paper makes 8 larger isosceles triangles.  I punched a hole in each end of the (hypotenuse) diagonal cut, strung it through with twine, and used a tiny piece of scotch tape to keep it from flipping on itself. Probably not necessary, but the whole process took less than an hour for all three banners, so the extra step wasn't a deal breaker for me.

The other straight line hanging there is a thin wire I've had for a few years with clothespins attached to hang posters/student work. I work in an urban school, so the glimpse of blue sky and tree is by no means taken for granted. {LOVE}

 I made the curtains from sheets. I took three twin sheets (two are white with green and blue circles stamped on, one is plain blue) and cut them half.  Each half already had three hemmed sides (the sides of the sheet come hemmed, as do the top and bottom of the sheet) so all I had to do was fold over the edge of side where I had made the cut, and sew a straight line. They are held in place with tension rods, which I already had from the old curtains I had made when I first moved into this classroom three years ago.

I added huge, fluffy, tissue paper pom poms. There was no magic to the colors, just used what I had and ended up with three lime greens, two pinks, and one tangerine.  You can buy Martha Stewart kits to make these, but really, there's no need. I just accordion folded 8 to 10 layers of tissue paper, then trimmed the edges, either rounding them or making them a point. Tie the folded tissue paper in the middle using a pipe cleaner, in my case, and carefully separate and fluff the layers. I hung these by attaching twine to the pipe cleaners and using a staple gun to attach each one to the acoustic ceiling tiles. (shhhh, don't tell our custodians!)

 The math workshop and bulletin board area. The polka dot border is actually duct tape. I used the brown kraft paper as the background to every bulletin board in my room. I made the window pennants too long, so these extra tails worked out as decorations here. The pocket charts are from the dollar spot at Target. The longer purple one is the actual size, the other four are cut in half.  I'll show how I use this area soon, as I haven't started it with my students yet (we had two half days last week, and next week is our first full week!) but the math bins and journals/notebooks you see there on the bottom are talked about in the last "I'm painting" post. ;)

I have two long shelves under the window. These are baskets of books for the classroom library. I'm in the middle (beginnings? lol) of trying to cull out old books, and update the library, as well as sort them into some usable format. Probably by some combination of genre/series/authors. I used to have them by reading level, but I have since decided that it's more important to teach them how to pick their own interesting book, and give them strategies for determining if it's the right level for them, then to direct them to pre-leveled books. I can't think of anywhere else in life where that decision will be made for them, so this seems like the more lasting skill path to take. A path full of missteps and issues, to be sure, but worth walking I do believe.

Under those two shelves are the textbooks for science, social studies, and math. So far, I'm not letting them use desks. We'll see how long it lasts!