Getaway to Wisconsin!

So back at the end of October I took a long awaited trip to Wisconsin to visit one of my sweetest friends, Kinsey. Kinsey and I have been friends since the 6th grade and have many memories together.

8th grade flashback! My how young we were!

When we graduated from high school, I stayed here in Conway and she, being the adventurous one, traveled to Appleton, Wisconsin to pursue her dream of studying music. I am amazed when I think about how that was over four years ago now. Time has flown so quickly! Anyways, I always told Kinsey that I wanted to visit her and experience a new part of the country, but of course life got busy for both of us and it never happened. Even thousands of miles away, Kinsey has remained one of my closest friends. She's always been one of those friends that you can just pick up with right where you left off! So after one of our long catch up phone calls back in September, we decided to finally make this trip happen! I set out on Halloween and made my way to the Midwest, which I really just consider the north! :) I spent 4 days with Kinsey and got to see Appleton, as well as Chicago! It was so fun to see where she has lived, meet her friends, and experience something way different from little Conway, Arkansas. I've been meaning to post these pictures since I got back, but of course life has been busy, busy, busy! So here goes!

I have to say spending several hours in the sky that day traveling to Appleton was some of the most relaxing, joyous time I had had in a while! Lauren Chandler's EP had just come out that week and it was definitely one of the coolest things to be flying so high and listening to her version of "The Sparrow."

About to land in Appleton! I loved flying over Lake Michigan and seeing all of the landscapes!

The amazing house Kinsey lives in right by a river.

The amazing view from behind Kinsey's house!

Another shot of the river. I couldn't get enough of the fall foliage!

All of the houses were so pretty an unique!

On Thursday we drove to Chicago for my first visit ever!

Coming up on the city!

Of course we had to go see the Bean! The first grade teacher in me wondered how many germs were on that thing :)

A beautiful Cathedral that we went into to look around!

We happened upon an art gallery that had a whole section of Dr. Seuss artwork! Made me miss my babies!

Beautiful view in the middle of downtown Chicago after doing a little shopping!

After sight seeing for a little while we went and walked through the Art Institute. As we were walking in a couple walking out handed us their tickets and said they were good for the rest of the day! We were so excited that those sweet people saved us over $30.

One of my favorites from the gallery.

Chicago at night.

Beautiful!

We met up for dinner with some of Kinsey's friends from college. Hanging out in Chicago at night with people who really know the city made me feel 13! This small town girl had to keep up with them!

We spent the night in Chicago with one of Kinsey's friends and woke up the next morning to head back to Appleton. Before we left we stopped at the cutest little diner with amazing food!

Yum!

On our way out we stopped by Northwestern University to see the amazing view of the city next to Lake Michigan.

On our way back we had to stop at THE Mars Cheese Castle! The inner tourist in us came out for sure.

It's really a castle on the side of the interstate that just sells every kind of cheese you can imagine!

Ya gotta try the cheese head while you're in Wisconsin!

The rest of the weekend was spent at Lawrence, Kinsey's school. It was their annual Jazz Festival weekend, so we went to two great performances that really broadened my horizons. Kinsey has always been the one to help in that area of my life!

My last night in Appleton we went and tried out the Melting Pot for dessert. Oh. My. Word. Talk about amazing!! Absolutely heaven!

Sunday at the airport before I flew home!

I am so glad that I was able to spend so much time with Kinsey in Wisconsin. It was definitely hard being away from my normal daily life and my husband and my kiddos, but it was time well spent with a good friend. I am so proud of Kinsey for following her dreams and not settling for less than her best. She has worked so hard in the past four years and I know that she will do great things with her talents and abilities! She will be going to grad school soon and I am excited to see where she ends up so that I can start planning my next trip :)

ObSEUSSed with First Grade!

Summer is gone and school is here! I am blown away that it is already the last Friday night before school starts!! It has been a whirlwind of activity in the Brewer house over the last few weeks. We spent all last week in Dallas preparing for my brother's wedding. It was a great week that ended with a beautiful wedding!! I did tease Taylor that he chose an awful week to get married: right in the middle of the Olympics and the weekend before I had to go back to school :)

I had started working on my classroom in early July because I knew I would be gone all last week. However, I took my time and probably left too many things to do the week of orientation! I spent an 11 hour day in the classroom on Monday and several more hours Tuesday afternoon before orientation! But all of the work was worth the outcome! I have to say I am SO excited about my room this year! With last year being my first year to teach, I literally just stared at the walls for so long, not knowing what to do. This year was totally different! I was able to quickly move things around and visualize what I could do with each piece. So, welcome to my classroom, where we will spend the year "ObSEUSSed with First Grade!"

Welcome to Mrs. Brewer's Room! The inspiration for my room comes from my favorite Dr. Seuss book, Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!! If you've never read it you absolutely should!

I didn't have room for this Daily Schedule pocket chart in the room this year, so I moved it out to the hallway! Mrs. Tonya Hammontree also made me the adorable crayon wreath for Christmas last year and I LOVE having it on my door!

My birthday chart is directly to the left when you walk in the room. Every month I like to write the birthday kids' names and dates on the balloons so they feel a little more special all month long!

This is my outstanding work corner that is right next to the birthday chart. The Cat in the Hat hats have clips hanging from them where I will hang up outstanding student work each week. This is probably one of my favorite spots in the room!

I LOVE my listening center!! Well, I love the new table and chairs! I saw these at Ikea in Dallas over spring break and fell in love! I've kept them close in my mind ever since and made sure I had the chance to run to Ikea during Taylor's wedding week to grab them for this school year! I wish I was small enough to enjoy them like my students!

In order to use the space in my room in the best way, I moved my writing center over to this area this year and I can't wait to get charts up over here! I got the adorable Writer's Eye pieces either from Cara or Amy last year. I can't remember which one it was, but both of them have amazing blogs and would recognize many things in my classroom as their own creations :) There are more small anchor charts that will be added to the writer's eye wall as we learn about them in class!

Motivation, encouragement, and uplifting words were so critical with the group of kids I had last year. I know every group of students is different, but I'm pretty positive that the need for recognition and motivation is absolutely necessary for all of them. So, every week I choose a student who worked hard, even if it was for a small amount of time, to take Cat in the Hat home for the weekend! Of course this has been done for years and years and is pretty old school, but I still remember getting to take our class bear home in first grade, so I know my kids enjoy the memory too!

Cubbies with book baskets ready to go! I was so super excited to find this baskets at Wal-mart. They came in a pack of 3 for 3.99. They were a little more expensive than the buckets from the dollar bins at Target, but are very sturdy, they match, and fit perfectly in the cubbies.

And of course you cannot have a Dr. Seuss themed room without Trufula trees!! I couldn't pass these up and loved how easy they were to make! The best tutorial I found for tissue paper poms was at Kasey's blog. It was very simple and I was easily able to attach the tissue poms to the top of the pool noodles with straight pins to make a truffula tree!

Another view of the truffula trees and part of the classroom library.

Here is a view of the room from the door. This was the day of orientation, so all of the paperwork is out on the desks that won't be there when the kids come! 

Speaking of orientation night, I made these little "Welcome to First Grade" treat bags for my kids to have at orientation. One of my professors showed us an example of something similar back in college, so I did some searching last year and put this together. Each piece has a meaning that is explained on the card. Hopefully they felt welcome :)

Here is a view of the front of the room. Of course, Dr. Seuss always rhymes, so I try to make the names of every area of the room rhyme! The Math Bath is my daily math review activities. Underneath the Smart Board are the "We Spell Well!" charts for spelling and sight words. 

My favorite part of this board has to be the scrunched border! I saw this on pinterest this summer and had to try it! It was pretty tedious at first, but got better as I went. I finished this board and was so exhausted and thought I would never do it again. But I ended up doing several other scrunched borders in the room and hallway! It was just too cute! Laura's blog has a pretty good tutorial you could check out for this border. I wasn't very structured with it, I just wadded it up and stapled!

Another rhyming area in the room! This is my word wall where sight words will be added each week. I kind of cheated with this one this year. I spent so much time putting this thing up last year, only to have to take it down at the end of school for paint touch ups. Instead of starting from scratch I folded it up carefully and put it in my closet in hopes that I could just put it back on the wall in one piece. It worked pretty well going back up, but it is pretty wrinkled in spots. At this point, I can handle a few wrinkles :)

This wall has taken on some new changes this year that I am so excited about! Last year I used this wall for writing charts and displaying detailed writing. This year I am really focusing on vocabulary, so this wall says: "Oh! The Places You'll Go...And the Words You'll Know!" I'm going to be picking words out of read alouds to teach as new vocabulary words. After reading, we will put a copy of the book cover and the word on the wall to help remember the meaning of the new word! 

To encourage the kids to actually use the new vocabulary words that we will be studying, I put a "Sparkling Speakers" chart next to the vocab wall. When the other kids or I hear someone use one of our studied vocab words in conversation, they will be able to add a sticker next to their name and write their sentence on a conversation bubble. We will set goals and when the kids meet their word goals there will be a fun prize that I have yet to come up with :)

I spent a lot of my summer learning how to use my sewing machine. I got it for Christmas and just never had time to learn until school was out! However, once summer hit, I was pretty productive! I made some Dr. Seuss curtains to cover my shelves and add some color to the room!

Before the curtains came to the room...

And after!

You can tell these pictures were taken before the rooms was decorated :)

I also made smaller curtains to cover the openings on the other side of the room.

I loved the fabric of those curtains so much that I had to use the left over material to cover anything else I could! I got this rolly chair from a friend and covered it to use at my reading group table.

Crate seats were another task on my summer to-do list. Thankfully my brother is very handy with cutting wood and I am handy with a staple gun :) I'm also doubling these crates as storage bins for my class set of clipboards.

Isn't this fabric just adorable? My mom found it online for me for Christmas because she knew I was wanting to make curtains eventually. I'm not sure what website she got it from, but you could probably find it easily!

So there is my Seussed out room! My kiddos could possibly be way over-stimulated when they walk in and see all of the color in the room, but hopefully they will feel welcome and relaxed! I can't wait to get my little first graders in there and start learning! I know it will be a wonderful year for all of us!