My Favorite Thing

On this lovely Mother's Day, I have been thinking about the things I regret not doing while my mother was alive. I have decided that the biggest regret I have is that I never dragged her (or pushed her) to see my classroom. She passed away the second week into my first year of teaching and the entire summer I set up my room, I continually had the thought that I needed her to see my creation of a classroom. I wanted her to see it...I just never got around to arranging to have her come in.
She taught for several years in school and she was my biggest (albeit quietest) supporter. On one occasion when I received a highly praising email from one of my favorite mentors from BYU, I immediately forwarded it to my parents and they replied with their own lovely email.
It's too late now to see her reaction to my classroom and teaching, but I know she has been with me while I have taught.
If you were to take a moment to step into my classroom, you would find an overabundance of bunting. Banners. Pennants. Garlands. Whatever you want to call them, I have more than a slight obsession with them.
Let's take a look, shall we?

Upon first arriving to my classroom, you run into this little beauty. She took the longest out of any banner I have made. Each circle has 6 layers involved. I am pleasantly surprised to see how well it has held up throughout a year of being displayed in the hallway after so many indoor recesses of hundreds of kids tromping by.

Once you come into the class, there are many cloud garlands that adorn my ceiling to go along with my awesome hot air balloon table numbers.

I love welcome signs. What's not to love about a welcome sign with typewriter font and pinwheels?

There are many little pennants that are hard to find in my classroom. I made this washi tape banner while proctoring the DWA. (Let me say how happy I am that my grade is lucky enough to have Chrome books which allows us to do our SAGE testing in the classroom.)

I don't mind if kids spell my name incorrectly (most of them do), but I do get a little irritated at them asking me...all the time. It's something I really should not get irritated at because they just want to make me a card or draw a picture with me labeled in it. Now I can just point if they ask me.

 Adorning the back whiteboard is the easiest one I have made yet. Glitter clothespins I made last year with cute ribbon the PTA donated and circle punches out of one of my favorite paper packs took no time at all to hang up.

Okay. This one should have come down after March left. I just love it too much. This little guy took my a while to put together. I should have been lazy and just bought green glitter paper, but I am a penny pincher. Thanks to Martha Stewart glitter and a nice layer of Mod Podge, the letters and shamrocks and sparkly without having glitter fall off causing rage to fill my custodian's heart. (You can't have the custodian mad at you. You just can't. That's rule #2 in my book.)

 Sometimes I am lazy and find a great deal at a scrapbook supply sale. A tiny, adorable strand of banners for one dollar? Yes please.
Also, I wish I was not so OCD. I love my map of the US that I made this summer...but Georgia and Delaware do not match with the rest of the colors. I forget what happened this summer, but I had to cut them out of different paper that did not match the other colors. I will sadly be taking down the map, state by state, and replacing it with a new map where all the colors match perfectly. Plus, did you know that you can make any map of anything with just four colors? Yeah. I'll be doing that next time.

My birthday chart even has darling shapes strung out on a picture frame.

 And...my latest creation. I need to get the circles to be more 3D. I ended up hanging this one on my projector screen. I think I may have ran out of room for any more banners.

Even my signs have little banners on them. My Chrome book signs have this cute decoration on them.

As does my correct punctuation sign.

Are you surprised at the lack of bunting in my classroom? Don't worry; there's more. I keep all my seasonal banners in a drawer. I have pennants for Halloween, Thanksgiving, fall, Christmas, winter, 100th day of school, and Valentine's Day.