I'm moving!

I had 2 goals for this summer.

Save money and relax.

Then, the week before school ended I was informed that I would be moving to first grade.

Right then and there, my summer goals went out the window!

I've taught kindergarten for 9 years and loved every minute of it.

I love the little babies and I love my kindergarten team!

I mean, who else would dress up like a coconut tree besides a bunch of kindergarten teachers?

We aren't just co-workers, we're friends and family.

So this was definitely outside of my comfort zone.

I don't like change!

Then, on a whim, I asked my principal if I could loop with my current class.

And she said yes!

Now, moving to first grade wasn't so scary. I felt like I would be taking a piece of my home with me.

So I started taking things down, packing things up, and purging like crazy.

It's amazing how much stuff you can accumulate after being in the same classroom for 9 years. Some of the stuff was shoved so far back in cubbies that I didn't even know it was there.

The first thing I took down were my bulletin boards.

Since that's the first thing I like to put up in my classroom.

The picture above was taken during the last week of school.

I had already taken down anything that wasn't essential.

As you can tell from the picture, our calendar, center chart, and schedule were all essentials.

I packed all of my bulletin board material, words, and borders into a tub.

So that I would have easy access to everything when the time came to put them up in my new room.

Luckily, I was able to leave most of my things in my kindergarten room over the summer because my first grade room would be waxed first, and my old room would be waxed last. Therefore, I could move my things out in-between the two waxings.

I'm super sad to be leaving this classroom.

Not only has it been my home away from home for 9 years but I'm the last teacher who will probably ever be in this room. My school is splitting into PreK, K, 1st and 2, 3, 4 next year. So all the kindergarten teachers will move out of this building and into the main building.

So much history here.

This building was built in the 1920's, has super high ceilings, 2 bathrooms, a wall of windows, tons of storage, and I loved that it was separate from the main building because I could tune out "stuff" going on in the main building and teach my kiddos.

I was the very last teacher to leave school on the last day of school.

So I went down to my new first grade room, which had already been emptied for waxing.

It really is a great room!

My friend Ashley has been in this room for the past two years.

She painted it last summer, and her mom made some awesome curtains.

That's some of my stuff you see piled up on the counter in the back.

Definitely smaller than my old room, but still a good size.

The tiniest toilet you've ever seen.

It's literally like a foot off the ground.

My friend Dee calls them "squatty potties."

I have one cabinet.

Thank goodness!

And a closet.

I'm going from tons of storage, to a closet and a cabinet.

This is why I gave 7 boxes of stuff to my kindergarten teacher friends, took 2 bags to Goodwill, and put even more stuff out in the hallway for the first grade teachers to pick through.

I had way too much stuff!!

So this move is a good thing.

It has made me more organized and more intentional about what I buy and what I keep.