First Grade is a Blast

School has gotten off to a great start!  We spent the first two weeks getting to know eachother and working towards building "a caring community of learners."  It has been great learning all about my new kids, getting to know their unique personalities, and watching them come together to create a really cohesive, supportive school family. 

Our school has accepted "Rachel's Challenge," which is a program used to inspire kids to "start a chain reaction" of kindness and compassion. It is named after Rachel Scott, who cared about everyone and made it her lifes misson to touch the lives of everyone she came into contact with.   Sadly, she was killed in the shooting of Columbine.  However, after her death, her father found her hand traced on the back of her dresser---inside the hand she wrote "These hands belong to Rachel Scott and will someday touch millions of people's hearts."  Her father wanted to see his daughters' mission continue, so he started Rachel's Challenge.  It really motivates our kids to do kind acts for others in hopes that that person will be inspired to pay it forward, which will start a chain reaction that could change the World.  It's amazing.

In our classroom we also read "How Full is Your Bucket?" and "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?"  These books go great with Rachel's Challenge because it teaches the kids that everyone has an invisable bucket over their heads (or in their hearts) and when you do kind things it fills their bucket.  Likewise, unkind acts "dip" from their bucket and leave the person feeling empry.  The kids love this visual and are really motivated to fill eachothers buckets.  To keep the message alive in our classroom, each child has a little metal bucket of their own.  Anytime they are caught filling someone elses bucket (doing kind and compassionate acts), I fill their bucket with little jewels as well! 


Getting to know eachother and all of our fun, first week activities, was a real blast.  To celebrate this blast, the kids and I read the book "Hedgie Blasts Off!"  The kids then wrote using the prompt "First grade is a real blast!"  Once they finished their writing we went outside and had a REAL blast!!  What fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our First Day!

Back to School Time!!

I always love hearing what others do on their "first day" because there are so many fun ways to celebrate this great milestone with our new kids. 

Here is my day!

Today I arrived at school at 6:30, even though my school doesn't "start" until 8am.

During orientation I gave each of my kids this book to read on "The Night Before First Grade."

They all loved it, so for morning work they wrote about what they did on the "Night Before First Grade. I was happy when almost all of them wrote that they read the book! :-)

Then, after going over several procedures and a couple fun "getting to know you" activities, I read "The Kissing Hand" to my new students.  We did several activities related to the book (from my own Kissing Hand unit) and then had kissing hand cookies for snack.  The kids loved biting the two middle fingers to make their cookies say "I love you" in sign language!

Next we practiced a few more procedures and went on a scavenger hunt tour of the school.  The kids and I had fun practicing good "hallway behavior" and they enjoyed shooting big cheesey grins towards every hallway camera!   I secretly hope that our administrators were watching the security t.v's at that time because they were so stinking cute!

When we came back to the classroom, I pulled out the magic play-doh and told the kids that they could make a wish on their play-doh and if it turned colors their wish would come true!  They all wished for a great year, with lots of fun and friends....and all of their play-doh changed colors---so we know this year is going to be amazing (okay, it could have something to do with the 10 drops of food coloring hidden in the center---but we don't need to tell that to my sweet 6 year olds!).  

Next they had wheel (Music), P.E., and lunch.  We eat in the cafe with our kids, so it was fun talking to them more informally and hearing their stories.  When we came back we did our first math lesson and reviewed procedures again!  Finally, we began talking (again) about how Chester (from the Kissing Hand) felt on his first day, and how we felt as well.  We then read the book "First Day Jitters" and decided that we all felt (at least a little) jittery this morning.  We wrote about our first day jitters and then drank jitter juice to get rid of our jitters.  Our juice had pink lemonaide, sprite, sherbet, and marshmallows---they LOVED it...but it was not really my cup of tea juice.

By this time it was 2:35 and I told the kids to pack up.  It warmed my heart when they all announced "What?!?! It's already time to go home?!?!"  <3  I must admit, I was jittery this morning thinking that all the procedures would completely bore them, but their sweet comments reassured me that despite the lengthy procedures and summer being over, they all enjoyed their first day!

Needless-to-say, it was a fun day full of special treats, lots of hugs, and great memories.  I'm ready to make even more memories tomorrow!!

Crysanthemum and Freebie

Hi everyone, Liv here!

I hope your summers are going well!  I'm in Florida, which is currently the "not so sunny" sunshine state!  Being stuck inside is not all bad though, it has given me time to make a few new things for my class next year. 

One thing I made was a Crysanthemum mini-unit ($3.55).  Although after I had the idea for the unit I realized I couldn't find any clipart that worked. I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to try and make one myself.  I used the bamboo tablet I recieved for my birthday and much to my surprise, my little mouse ended up being sort of cute!  :-)   Super exciting!

Another piece of exciting news is that my TPT now has 100 followers!  To celebrate I turned one of my priced items into a freebie.  The item is a SmartBoard Word Sort/Pocket Chart activity.  It has 32 different sounds to practice.  If you have a SmartBoard or know someone who does, feel free to go download it!!!  (And maybe rate the item or follow my store if you like it?! You're the best!)