Hill/Box 2012-2013 School Year

This year brought about several changes for the Hill/Box Cluster.  Probably the biggest change (and one that I am so thankful for!) is that we are a growing group!  This year, as of the first day of school, we have 26 precious 5-7 year olds.  So since our bunch keeps growing we were blessed to have the opportunity to use both classrooms in the downstairs part of our building.  The 9-12 year olds that have been our next door neighbors for the past several years have moved across the street (I cannot tell them thank you enough for giving up their room!!!!) and so we now have both rooms.  During the summer Margaret and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the best thing for the students would be for this school year.....did we want to stay as one class?.....did we want to totally separate?  Since we had such a large number I was hired full time (my dream come true!!!)....so we had a lot of options!

 What we decided (and I think it is the best!) is that we would still be one class, but we would divide the kids up at times.  Margaret is teaching science, journal writing, and life skills and I'm teaching math, handwriting and spelling and then we both teach reading.  Think of it as when you were in high school and you had a homeroom, but then had other teachers the rest of the day.  Both of us get to teach all the students (which we both wanted) and we still get to be one class.  Since The Capitol School is opened from 7:30-5:30 Monday-Thursday and 7:30-2:30 on Friday we have worked out a schedule to where we alternate days that we have to arrive at 7:30......basically which ever one of us gets to school at 7:30 leaves at 3:30 and whichever one comes at 8:30 or 9:30 (depending on the day) stays until 5:30.  The two main groups we have the children divided into this year are the "moons" and "stars" (we are covering the solar system later on in the year).  The moons eat lunch in Margaret's room and go to swimming with her......and the stars eat lunch with me in my room and go to swimming with me.  We tried to not have the rooms called "Mrs. Hill's room" and "Ms. Box's room" because we wanted everyone to understand that we were all one class, but before we even started school we realized that just wouldn't work......not only did the rest of the faculty refer to the rooms as "Margaret's room" and "Hannah's room", but Margaret and I did as well.  So we're one class, but we have Mrs. Hill's room and Ms. Box's room!

Since both of us are at school for the majority of the day I feel as if we are able to do so much more for the children!  I really have loved the first 8 days of school and I can already tell what a wonderful year it is going to be!  I will create a blog later on that deals with our topics for the year in each subject area. Since we have so many students this year our "expert teachers" (Spanish, German, Chinese, art, music, P.E, Swimming) are with our class for a longer period of time each day.  This allows them to have a small group of students at a time and therefore can teach more to the individual than to the group (which is what is most important to us!)

Here are some "after" pictures of what my room looks like......I had taken some before pictures, but then my phone "updated itself" and I have no idea where those pictures went.......I did put them on Instagram, but I'm not really sure how to move pictures from Instagram to this blog so I'm just not going to worry about it!  So here are the "after" pictures:

This is our world rug.....it is where we meet for calendar and any other time we need to all meet together.  I LOVE having all of this open room!

This is our calendar area.  Here we keep track of the weather, seasons, days of the week, schedule and how many days we have been in school.

This is our reading corner.  This year to help keep our books organized I created a sticker system.  For example books about animals all have an orange circle sticker on them.  The bin where animal books go also has an orange sticker on it.  So far this method has worked really well. (Oh and before anyone asks that isn't my guitar......I can't play the guitar to save my life!  Margaret is a wonderful musician and she plays the guitar when we sing songs and during calendar time.)

This is one wall of the room....below the windows are shelves with work on them.

I am standing on the world rug looking at the other half of the room.  This is where we do any work that would require a table.

This is the back door that leads out to the park.  The curtain on the right hides a nice big closet that I use for storage.

This is a close up of the curtains in my room.  I love them so much.  The blue fabric has "hello" written in several different languages.  I love that it not only says hello in the different languages, but it also says what language it is in.  My mom made these curtains for me!

This bench was in the classroom before me.  It was covered in some sort of black material.  I found this laminated fabric at Hancock and then my mom (I couldn't have gotten my room ready without her!) used her staple gun to recover it.  The kids love being able to sit here and read!

Well that was the grand tour of our new room.  It is wonderful and full of space!!!!  I am so fortunate to have such a wonderful space to work!