Welcome to My New G.A.T.E. Room! :)

Hello, Friends!

I did some work rearranging and getting everything ready for this year! Thanks to School Girl Style for having the materials I wanted to decorate this year! It really helped to brighten up my space! This year, I was all about rainbow colors. I hung paper Chinese lanterns and colored paper balls from the ceiling.  It really helped to brighten up my room!

I also organized all of my Lego NXT robotics pieces and promised that I would post the organization system once it was done, so here you go! It took many, many hours and sore fingers to make it look like this. Thanks to my mom and my teaching partners for helping to sort all of the tiny pieces! The toolbox, storage box with drawers, and tall standing organizer with flaps all came from Home Depot. It made organizing much easier than putting each piece in an art box. It took less space and put similar parts nearer to each other.

Small Parts Organizers

Small Parts Organizers

Powerstrip to charge NXTs

This summer, I attended a past G.A.T.E. teacher's summer Lego WeDo camp and got a lot of materials to help increase my knowledge in that area. I didn't know before, but you can buy extensions binders for the Lego WeDo sets that extend each build in social studies, literacy, math, and science. You could stretch out 2-3 builds to make an entire semester of work and I found this very helpful! I wasn't sure before how to make it last long enough since the build that I first tried took me around 10 minutes. I am a fairly savvy builder though, so that may have helped me. It might take my 3-4th graders a bit longer (or at least I hope so!).

Over last week, I did not have students, yet I was at school from 8-4 like I would if there were kids. I thought I had everything under control and would be sitting around twiddling my thumbs. I was wrong! I helped make the name tags for our Collaborate section of the classroom, all of my robotics nametags, organized my year long morning activities for 4th and 5th grades, helped plan the first week and develop those materials, had an enjoyable time meeting families at our open house on Tuesday, and much, much more! It was such a busy week, but I am certainly ready to have my first set of G.A.T.E. kiddos today! It will be such fun! I will make another post later about how the day goes (if not today, at the end of the week).

Have a great one!