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!!