Getting Ready For School

The last couple of weeks have been crazy trying to get everything ready for school.  I am so thankful for family and friends taking extra time to help me get things prepared.  My room is pretty much ready now, which is good since tomorrow is the students' first day of school.  We had back to school night on Thursday this week.  I have been looking through my yearbook from my last year of teaching trying to remember students' names so I could call them by name when I saw them.  It was mentally challenging to try to remember so many names, but I did a pretty good job, and I think it will pay off in the long run.  (Now on to learning all the new students' names...)
Here are some pictures of my classroom.  I got an extra white board in my room which will be really helpful.  My theme for the year is the song "Engine, engine, number 9, going down Chicago line..."  focusing on the Chicago "L".  I'm starting with a cute book called "Jonathan Cleaned Up--Then He heard A Sound or Blackberry Subway Jam" by Robert Munsch.
It took me a lot longer to get things ready without my parents' help, but I think things turned out pretty cute, don't you think?

My composer wall, outside my door way

 Antonio Vivaldi, Amy Beach, and Louis Armstrong entering composer station turnstiles

I will put up student Treble Clef drawings on this board

 Pictures of me in Chicago (these are all pictures from my blog if you want to look at them closely)

My instrument wall

 Instrument Family train cars...String family

 Woodwind family car

 Brass Family Car

 Percussion Family--Keyboard subgroup

 Percussion family 

 Word Wall--The Chicago "L" map

Each train line (color) will represent a different grade.  

The words they learn will be placed on like stops on the train line.

 North end view

 North-East view

 South-East view

 South view

 South-west view

North-west view