Classroom Reveal Part 1

Hello World!

It has been such a long time since I've written, and so much has happened since then! It has been such a whirlwind of a time. Since I was last on here, I had our son, Jonathan Camp.

Now, I won't completely bore you with pictures and all that proud parent stuff, but I will include one picture of him. I'm pretty proud and think he is pretty stinking cute. Not sure if that's just a parent thing though.

Anyway, he is now 7 weeks old and I have been in my classroom all week getting set up for next year! I found out that I am teaching Grade 3 and Choral/Music Theory at my school next year! I was a bit nervous for the position at the beginning, but as I've had a little bit of time to wrap my head around things I get more and more excited!

Now, I know myself well enough that I know I have to get my space in order before I am able to think of other things. So, Jonathan and I took all of our things down to the school and moved in. We brought pillows, the pack and play crib, blankets, everything we needed to survive for a week there. Then we trecked our way down to the school every day this week, and did some awesome set up in the choral room! I will share with you some before photos, and then what things have been transformed into! I am super excited with how everything has turned out and really proud that I've gotten all this done!


Now! For the before photos! 

There was a lot of neutrals. Grey backgrounds on white walls. Everything had become a bit faded and not so fabulous looking. As a lover of clean lines and bright colours, I knew this had to change!


We had to deal with these funky orange colours of the cabinets. Good thing my blog colours involved an orange, I decided these colours would also be my classroom colours. Keep it simple, stupid.

My colours are teal, pink, lime green, bright orange, and purple. I knew it would be easy to incorporate things here.

I'll give you a quick overview of the room, and then talk about specifics. Now as we speak, there are still 2 bulletin boards left to be finished. I want to do my classroom expectations on one, and composer of the month on the other. I'll post an update once those are finished :) 

Check out the Homeworkopoly that I've designed on my board! I am working on getting this product up for sale on my TPT store. I will provide a link here when it is available!




Don't mind the crib in this photo, I told you we moved in for the week, haha!


I did all my bulletin boards in purple, green and pink. I figured I had the orange on the cabinets and the teal would make it look a bit dark in the space. Plus, finding the right type of teal was a bit tricky!



I decided to embelish things up a bit with some printed music notes from melonheadz. If you would like to purchase her product, please check out the link HERE. I am a HUGE fan of her work, I love how it is funky, but also cute. She is easilly my favourite clip artist at the moment! 
The teacher last year LOVED Orff instruments, so we have a whole ton of them hanging out at the side of the classroom. My principal has ordered some custom shelves to be build to house them all, so those will apparently be coming sometime throughout the year! Super exciting!


Now, my big challenge. There were 10 billion bulletin boards!!! Or nine. Truthfully, just 9. But THAT IS STILL A HUGE NUMBER! Two of those were little, and one is out in the hallway, but I had to do some serious thinking for what to do with 9 bulletin boards!

I knew immediately what I wanted to do with one of them. I wanted to make a huge interactive staff at the back of the room. Somewhere where we could hang student work, or post up note names or different elements of music. I was very excited about this one.


I want to put clothes pins on tacks along each of the lines so we can hang certain elements up there. I hope the final project will be just as awesome as I imagine!



This is my teacher space. I don't need a huge amount of room. I like how it is sort of tucked away and is a cute little area. Having a cute little space helps me keep it organized and ready for things.



I absolutely love how my bulletin boards turned out! I designed the products, and am also working on getting those ready for my TPT store. I will update things when they are ready to go! I have a 5 different boards (and conveinently 5 different blog colours! Whoa...) I have a board for Tempo, Smybols, Dynamics, Rhythms and Notation. Each has a different colour, but all look like they belong together! I am super happy with how they turned out!



That is a quick overview of the classroom! I LOVE the before vs. the after. I feel that now I am able to process the  curriculum and what I am needing to teach in the space. I am so proud of how it turned out! I still have these little bulletin boards that I need to finish, but those shouldn't be terribly hard.  I know what I want to put on them, I just ran out of time at the moment. Plus a quick tidy is needed of that counter. It will drive in insane otherwise.

 

My next project is getting my Grade 3 space set up, but also to start organizing the cabinets. I need to explore what is inside of each of them and get it in some sort of order! It is looking much better than it was, but in my OCD brain there is still a very far way to go before I am totally happy with it! I need to get inspired on how to organize things there. Plus many file folders must be purchased.



I will do a Part 2 of this once I get all those finishing touches up! It shouldn't take too long, and hopefully I'll be able to get that set up soon!

Happy planning!

Lora Camp

The Essential Tools

As I've been keeping myself busy during my mat. leave, I've been creating all sorts of products for next year. There are a couple of products that I have been using constantly which have made my life so much easier, and today I wanted to share them with you!

First, a product that many teachers already know about. It is the Scotch Thermal Laminator.

This thing is FANTASTIC! It has been such a lifesaver to be able to be at home and doing some laminating. I have used it for everything from labels to reusable student sheets. I also love how it ends up thicker than the lamination used at my school. It makes things a bit more durable. Plus, how nice is it to have a reliable machine! I don't know about your school, but the laminator is the machine which breaks (and stays broken) for the longest time. When you really just need to get things done, this machine will save you!

Click HERE or the picture above to be taken to Amazon for purchase. Or HERE if you are a Canadian buyer.

I would keep your eyes open. Amazon tends to put it on sale every so often. While I would buy a replacement at full cost, any little bit of cash saved is money in your pocket!

Okay. This product has been a lifesaver. You know how many hours it takes to roll those little tape circles and stick them on the backs of things to post them up around the classroom? Well, NO MORE! This product has saved my life. I originally got it for scrapbooking (a hobby which has since been abandoned), but now use it for school things and I would never go back!

I use the Scotch ATG 714 and it has served my purposes so well. Click HERE if you are from Canada.

I would suggest shopping around for re-fills, because the prices vary hugely. Recently I purchased these ones which will last me forever and have been holding up well.

But honestly, it will save you oodles of time. Trust me. For everything from putting posters up, to a quick Interactive Notebook entry without the drying time, it has saved me many a time!

This is my newest, but next loved product. I first learned about this product from The Ladybug Teacher who has a whole blog post on the wonders of this product. It is the Proclick Binding Machine. I have recently received my own, and have fallen in love. There is something to be said about a nicely bound, fat notebook full of things that you can customize.

Check out her blog post for all the information and suggestions for this product! I have used it both at home, and school for everything from recipe books to my own teacher mark book.

And last, but not least a standard. A good colour printer. I never had a colour printer until a couple of years ago, and my school only uses a black and white photocopier, so a colour printer has been fabulous. It is one of those novelties that you choose your products wisely because ink can get expensive, but is so worth it!

I have some very high standards for what gets printed in colour, but these include things like:

• Things I plan to laminate 
• Posters 
• My own teacher supplies 
• Labels for things

It is one of those "special treat" things, but has allowed me to create many products for my classroom on a much cheaper budget than purchasing from a teacher supply store. 

If you don't own one, or don't have that fabulous friend you can beg from, I would certainly recommend getting one! Mine is a couple of years old at this point, but HERE is the one I am currently using. I personally love the laser aspect, it saves me from buying so many ink cartridges as they last FOREVER! I've had this printer for at least 2 years and while I am selective with my printing, I've only had to buy a replacement ink cartridge once! 

But those are my 4 teacher tools which have made my life as a teacher 10x easier! These products have helped take my classroom to a professional level, and made it so quick and efficient to do what I need, and we all know as teachers how useful saving those 10 minutes can be. 

Thanks for joining me for this post, and I hope some of these tools help you out. 

The Storm Before the Calm?

Have you ever had one of those moments where you just decide you need a change? I had one of those as I stared at my "Teaching Room". You know, we all have that space. That area of our house where we have too many educational resources, books, tools, items, all focused on teaching things. Well, in our house it has even been given a name. The "Teaching Room". Now, in actuality, it is the "Catch All Room". It is that place where we store those bits of random things we don't know where to put. It also (will) double as my sewing/crafting room, but the vision of a nicely organized and put together room are far in the future.

This morning, I woke up with determination. I was going to go and put 20 minutes worth of work down in this mysterious Teaching Room. Today's struggle, book organization.

When I left Grade 5, I took my entire classroom library with me. I had collected, scrounged, ordered and found books like you wouldn't believe. They all came with me as we travelled across the province to a new city for work. Believe it or not, in my classroom they were all pretty and organized. They were in easy to access buckets and my kids loved it. As I packed up my classroom, all the books went in boxes, I had my kids help me, and just now am I starting to go through that mess and a half.

So this morning, book organization. I have a ton of large Rubbermaid bins on the sidelines ready to go. I grabbed a couple boxes and tore them open. Books were everywhere. They were in piles. They were in stacks. They were in groupings on the floor. It was a disaster, and it still is.

As my 20 minutes went by, then 40, then 60.... 90 minutes later I stopped, looked back at my work and decided that was enough for today. I began reflecting. This is the messy part of organization. This is The Storm Before the Calm. One day, all of these things will be neatly organized and I shall feel very accomplished, but now... it is a complete and utter disaster.

I decided to take a leap. I took some pictures and here I am blogging about this experience. I began reflecting on how social media promotes the best of the world, but never the worst. People don't take those selfies where you look slightly haphazard, you post the ones where you think you look great. No one shows this organizational chaos, only the gorgeous finished product. As I was thinking about this, I wanted to be real. I LOVE LOVE LOVE organization. I love the pretty binders, the colour coding, the bins, but it is a process to get there. This mess and chaos which is still sitting in my basement waiting for some love, and I am here to share it with you.




As you can see, there are 2 lovely buckets (the grey and the blue) located underneath the shelves. That is my accomplishment for today. I am happy to say, they are labelled with all the categories of books, and will make it easy for me to find books in the future. But the rest... this chaos, this is real life. 

Now, as I went through, I found a bazillion books with no labels. At first, I was getting hung up about what to do with all these, and then I decided to make my life a bit easier. I created and labelled a bucket of "NO LABELS". That is what you see here. Clearly I have a lot of work ahead of me.



Here is a bit more of my progress and a half completed bin, accompanied by one of my "piles" of books.

Whew. This pretty room is far from perfect, but there was progress made today. I feel accomplished, and I can not wait to show you what it looks like in the end!

Digital Organization Part II

Teaching and papers go hand in hand. It seems like as a teacher you have to deal with papers, and a lot of them. I wanted to talk to you today about how I organize my teacher files and reduce the amount of paper clutter I have in my life. More importantly, I want to let you know about the reasons behind my switch over to the digital world.

I have been teaching for only 3 years, so after about 6 months of fighting with TPT, binders, and other products I decided to go almost 100% digital. Like ... just jump in. While I desperately love the look of those organized binders, with their cute covers, and their dividers, I find I can never keep up with it. I go through an organization blitz where I spend hours upon hours getting everything just perfect, trying to come up with a new system, but without fail, all my new files get pushed to the back burner.

Another frustration I had with the paper system is that I HAD to be at a location to use it. For my first 2 years of teaching, we commuted to the city on the weekends and lived in the small town during the week. Our reasons behind this could be a totally different blog post, but regardless, it meant that on the weekends I either had to take half my classroom home with me, or I wasn't able to use that resource until we were back in town. Such a pain! Using digital, and especially the magic of Dropbox, I was able to get my files at home, at school, at the grocery store, wherever I needed! It was magic!

With so many of my resources being online downloads, it seemed such a waste to also print them off. The amount of paper it used was astronomical. With digital, I can retain the entire file but only print off the pages that are necessary. Also, I love how a page looks when it is printed straight from the computer instead of photocopied with all of it's imperfections, hole punches and snags. It is just so bright, crisp and new :)

When I moved at the end of my second year of teaching, I found another HUUUUUGE benefit to having digital files. I did not have to pack up my papers! They were done! I have all my teacher resource books, and maybe 2 inches worth of printed resources, but the amount of time, effort and energy I saved because I didn't have to cart around those paper files. Oh. My. Goodness. I can't even imagine. So much easier to pack up a classroom!

Now, granted, I came into teaching at the perfect time to go digital. It was easy to scan those 6 months worth of files to label and put them in order. I can't even imagine the headache if I had been teaching for 10+ years, but for me, it has been truly fabulous.

While there are positives to having those binders and papers at your fingertips, I have fallen in love with the convenience of the digital world.  There are the occasional things I do end up printing and putting into those fancy binders, with the fancy covers and organizing with sticky notes, but there have been so many positives to using the digital world I doubt I will ever go back, and I hope I have given you some reasons to look into a more digtally organized life.

Stay tuned for my next blog post where I go into the specifics on how I organize my files to reduce headache and to make sure I don't have things get lost in the black holes of my computer.

Lora Camp
Campinwiththeclass

The Mess of the Digital World

Last spring I decided to jump into the new word of the Apple brand. I traded in my old and dying Dell computer for a nice new shiny Macbook. I had a whole new learning curve I had to figure out. How to click, how to get the "right" mouse button when there isn't a "right" mouse button, all the different shortcuts, how to find the things I was looking for, how to make the silly navigation window pop up at the bottom....

It was a great thing I decided to switch in the spring and had the opportunity to get familiar with a Mac over the summer, because I switched schools for the fall and my new school was entirely Mac based. Kids have MacBooks instead of Chrome Books. Teachers have Macbooks instead of desktop computers... it was quite the change! 

Now, don't get me wrong. There are still some days that I look at this fancy new computer and have to google how to do something. But all in all, I haven't looked back. 

One of the main features that I have come to love is the file folder organization. As a teacher, I have 10 billion files. Like seriously. If I counted them, I'm pretty sure it would be 10 billion. And figuring out how to digitally organize them has been the bane of my existence. There is one fabulous feature though that has made my entire life better thank you to Apple. 

It all has to do with this little button up at the top of the Finder window. 

Now, many of you long term Mac users will think this is ridiculous and basic, but for me it was an absolute life changer! This little button became my new best friend in the scary, messy digital world! 

What happens when you click this? It turns your computer into what looks more like a filing cabinet. Let's get metaphorical for a second. This lovely button lets you can see the drawer you are looking at, the hanging folder inside of it, and all the little folders inside of that! It makes organization so much easier! 

So you guys can see, you can easily see what other folders are available, and where to drop your documents! This makes organization 10x easier, and in a world where we have those 10 billion files sitting in a mess, it can be a lifesaver! 

On my next post, I'll walk through how I have my digital files organized and some tips I have to make your life easier! 

Lora Camp 

Campinwiththeclass