First Week!

Oh.my.word.  I survived the first week back.  We started on a Monday.  Whose bright idea WAS THAT? Each night this past week,  I was in bed by 8:30.  That's insane.  I did, however start working out before school so I get up at the crack of dawn to make it to the gym.  It's amazing, btw.  When I leave school for the night, I'm finished.  No gym.  No working at home {says the workaholic}.  *We shall see how long that lasts {working at home that is}!  Obviously I had to take a selfie at the gym!

So back to the first week of school.  We had a decent week.  The kids are really chatty, so the constant reinforcement contributed to my exhaustion, I'm sure.  The bulk of the week was spent on teaching and reviewing procedures.  Making sure procedures are taught and constantly reviewed in those first few weeks of school is crucial to having a successful year.  I've never been one to "rush" into teaching curriculum/standards the first few weeks of school; I prefer to ease into it and spend my time going over our classroom expectations.  I learned this trick from a book I was given 11 years ago, my first year of teaching. It's Harry Wong's The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher.  I must say, I have pretty darn good classroom management and always have.  I seriously attribute it to this book.  I would review it the nights prior to my first day of school for my first 5 years of teaching.  I highly recommend it to new teachers or those who want to tighten up their classroom management.

Ok, so on to the fun part of the post: my first week in photos!!!  Monday morning my classroom was ready and everything was in place.  {Click here in case you missed my classroom reveal!}  In walked 24 brand new first graders!  They kinda came in with a bang, chattin' it up like they'd been in the room for years.  In between all of our procedural reviews, we did some fun activities!  Most everything I show here is included in my "Back to School Printables" pack.  We did a few getting to know you activities.  One was a Skittle activity where kids shared something about themselves.  Another was drawing ice-breaker questions out of a bag.

Here's us reviewing some of our procedures!

We read Chrysanthemum and did some activities with it.  The mice turned out so cute!  

We also read No, David and David Goes to School and talked about good behavior.  We made little David's as a follow-up activity.

Of course we HAD to read First Day Jitters!  If you follow me on Facebook, you saw this picture below! My mom and dad gave me the book prior to student teaching.  I still have it and read it every year, on the first day!  We made jitter juice and did some writing.

We made our first day of school mini-book and played with play-doh a lot for breaks.  *This is a must for me!  I give my kids a play-doh break each day for the first few weeks.  It's a great time for me to start my beginning of the year assessments.  

Speaking of assessments, towards the end of the week, I began some.  I try to start with the simple ones first.  So far I've done rhyming, number writing, and letter writing.

We learned a few new songs and practiced singing them each day.  I heart these lap books by Dr. Jean/Creative Teaching Press! 

We read How Full is Your Bucket? and made nice pictures for one another.  The kids keep their notes in the popcorn buckets under my white board. 

We played a little school supply dice game from Jennifer over at "Rowdy in First Grade."

On the first day, my hubby sent me a beautiful bouquet of red roses!  He always surprises me with flowers the first day of school!  He even made the dinner on the first night!

Overall, it was a fantastic but exhausting week!

xo
Megan