School's starting soon!!!

Wooooo wwwhhooooooo!  I'm very excited for school to begin this year!  I don't really know why, it's year # 13, so it's not the novelty of it all.  Who knows?  I'm just going to go with it.  The first real report day is next Wednesday, but my sweetie and I went up today to check things out:

And this is what we found:

Wowza!  What a mess!!! When I leave in May, I just want to get it all up and out of the way for the custodians. . . uh, check?  Now I have a little over a week to get this room back in shape.  History has taught me that this is possible, but it's good to have all that summer energy to get it all done.

Now that I've spent a whole hour in my classroom, I'm thinking about all my plans for the year: kindergarten is always so exciting and new, and first grade will be fabulous because they were fabulous kindergartners!  I'm thinking of adding an Australian unit in second grade, third grade is at the end of the day this year (we'll see how that goes), fourth grade is always smooth sailing for some reason.  I worked with fifth grade teachers last year to hammer out a new year plan for them, and I looovvvveee changing up sixth grade every year (maybe start with some European/UK art because of the Olympics?!)  Oh, so many exciting possiblities!

Let's be real for a minute: this is the best job in the whole school.  My job is really and truly to bring out the artist in every single child.  To show them the beauty all around them, to teach them about art history and how to appreciate the art they see everyday. What could be better than that?