The First Two Days!

Well, I have met all of my students and it went amazingly well!  I have some adorable little kiddos.  It has been very fun getting know a little about these tiny humans but it has been enjoyable.

Like everyone else, the first couple of days of school we spend going over procedures and rules and such and doing some fun activities.

This year on the first day, we read First day Jitters  and David Goes to School.  Jitters was a fun book, but I don't think my kids quite "got it".  We did have a great discussion about what gives us the jitters though.  David is a great book about a little boy who is a complete handful.  He disobeys the rules quite regularly.  I read this as an introduction to classroom rules and procedures.  Here is a picture of the book cover.

I found an adorable activity idea on none other than Pinterest so I decided to recreate it.  I found the idea at The Kinder Cupboard blog and fell in love with it.  We read the book, and then I we talked about being "peacemakers" and "peacebreakers".  The kiddos loved it and they really got into the activity.

Afterwards, we made the "Davids"and they really loved this!  I have a few pictures of some of their samples.  Do you see mine hanging on the board at the bottom of the picture up there?  Hehe, their creations look nothing like mine but they are cute anyway.

On the second day, we read the books Chrysanthemum and Wemberly Worried.  Kevin Henkes is a wonderful author!  For Wemberly, we listed on post-it notes all of the things that made us worry on our first days of school.  We gave the worries to Wemberly and kissed them goodbye.  The kids thought this was fun.  Here is our poster I created (just by looking at the cover of the book) with our worries.

Afterwards we read Chrysanthemum.  For this book we talked about how unique each of us are.  I was also able to involve a math concept with the book so I a two-for-one deal with it.  :-)  Each of the students were given a slip of paper with their name on it.  They had to cut apart the letters and count them.  Then they had to glue them onto construction paper and we attached it to the chart.  Here is our activity below. 

I would say the first two days were good.  We didn't lose a 1st grader this year going home and my activities rocked!  I would say overall it was a success!