Getting Organized For a New Year

As one year ends and another one is about to begin, I start to think about how I can set up my classroom to be more functional, appealing, and different for students that may be returning. This can often be a daunting task as I have 25 computers to accommodate. Not that I am complaining, as I scrounged to get them when the different labs in the elementary schools were changed over. I find these computers have lots of life left in them and they are well used in my room. Maybe one day I will write a post on just how I use them.
You can see from the pictures below, they take up a lot of room. I have found that putting them around the perimeter of the room is the best for space usage and visibility.

I have stored my units and subject materials in different boxes so that I can access them when I need them. As you can see, I have a lot of boxes. I think it might be time to start going through them and getting rid of some of the materials that haven't been used much.
I also have several bookshelves for free reading books that I have collected throughout the years. These books are different from my leveled books that are kept in bins for my reading groups. They are stored away for the summer, but they will be in blue bins when school starts.

These are my latest finds. I got them at XS Cargo when I was in Victoria. I liked them so much that I got my son to buy some more for me. I set up some in the classroom to see how they would work. My boys fought over who got to sit on them. Needless to say, they were a hit. They also stood up to the weight of the students. I love the novelty designs on them. They will be great for when we study community next year as well.
They are a good size and they hold lots of material. You can see that I used the first ones for a variety of different things.

Check out the cute smiley boxes I got at London Drugs. I also picked up the Sterilite container on top for putting the student paper work in.
On the right, you can see a large cupboard. This holds my games. Yes, I have a lot of them. Well, it is pretty beat up looking, so I decided to give it a facelift. I just finished painting it. Check out the after picture below.

Here are the before and after photos. I have some fancy duct tape to put on the top edge, but you will have to wait until the room is set up to see it.

Oh, oh! I shouldn't have started painting. Now I have the bug. I ran out of paint just before finishing the back of the cupboard, so I had to get some more. While I was there, I picked up some paint for my bookshelves. Check them out.

I just got these banner letters from the fan page for Teacher's Toolkit. Aren't they great? I couldn't just do one banner, I had to do a smaller one and a mini one too. I guess blue and white is my color theme  this year.

Well, there you have it. My start at organizing my classroom for the fall. I will post some pictures when I have it all set up next month.
Thanks for stopping by.