First Week Survival

Hey bloggers!

Well, the first week is under my belt...well, the first 3 days anyway! It actually went really well. I only have 20 students (so far) this year, which seems AMAZING compared to the usual 25. It's crazy what a difference 5 less can make! They have been great so far though and I've really been impressed with their manners...very polite kids!

Here are a few activities we tackled the first few days (when we weren't practicing lining up over & over, or practicing sitting at the rug, or practicing, practicing, practicing everything else!

A few of the books we read this week were:  Chrysanthemum, Wemberly Worried, Miss Nelson is Missing, and The Kissing Hand. (A lot of people have started class mascots...looking for a Chester mascot?)

After reading Chrystanthemum, we created a class graph on the smartboard to count the letters in everyone's name. Then, the kids colored their bubble names. I started an example with my name and then sent them off to work on theirs!

They loved this activity! After they are done, I will have them laminated and trimmed. Then, I hang them from the ceiling and every time we do a new art project, it gets hung under their name. It makes it much easier for the kids (& parents) to find their work!

One other project that we did after reading about Chrysanthemum & Wemberly and talking about the things we had in common with them, was a quick craft.

I didn't feel like breaking out all the tracers, scissors, glue, sequins, etc on the first week, so this was a quick & easy project for them on Friday afternoon. {I'll be posting a freebie of this template once I get it scanned in! So check back for that!}

We also started some math. On Thursday I had everyone write their numbers 1-25, just to see where everyone was at...and most of them did really well!

On Friday, we got out some cubes and practiced counting & comparing numbers. I started by just having them make piles of a number that I chose (numbers 1-10). Everyone was able to do this so we moved on to comparing numbers. I gave them two numbers to make piles of and then asked questions (ex. Which pile has more? How do you know? Which pile has less? How do you know? How could we make these piles the same?). This went well too, so I am really excited about the math skills of this group!

We also started writer's workshop on day 1 (because they had writer's workshop in kindergarten). We started simple and just wrote about things that we did over the summer. Again, I was impressed with their skills. Most of them are able to create at least one sentence matching their picture and a lot of them are already using spaces and punctuation! Love it.

We have a full week next week and will start using some of the activities from my Back to School Packet! You can find it {here}.

The one draw back I have found so far regarding going back to school pregnant (other than not being able to sleep in)...my poor feet! I'm going to have to find some comfy shoes or slippers or something because my feet are killing me! Here's a picture of my feet exploding out of my shoes on Friday afternoon! haha.

Have you finished your first week? How did it go?!

Enjoy your weekend...I spent today in the pool! :)