It’s my first day of school! I love this time of year, all fresh starts and possiblities! Team builder games are one of my favorite things to do in the classroom during the first few weeks …

Back to School with Pigeon {20 Print & Go Math and Literacy Activities} is a packet created to go along with one of our favorite characters and the back to school season. This packet includes print & go literacy and math activities, as well as a simple one page Pigeon craftivity.Skills inclu...

When I start the new school year, I pick a book of the day for the first two weeks. I create a variety of activities to go with each book. I use a lot of books that focus on social and emotional learning, including kindness, friendship, and respect. But, I also add in some fun ... Read More about 8 Books for Back to School

Click here to get your first few weeks of school planned with these fun and interactive back to school activities and games, team building activities, ice breakers and more! These beginning of the year activities are great for 1st grade, 2nd grade, and 3rd grade. Don't forget to grab the FREE bucket filler activity!

Tomorrow is the day! Back to school for me! We have two professional development days, a teacher work day, and Open House night. I decided to "colorize" my

Get to know your students with Tessellations! Great for bulletin board display! Within this resource: Hexagon Tessellation ready to print See preview for more details!

BACK TO SCHOOL GUIDED READING PROGRAM

Alright, it's mid-July! I know you are thinking about back to school time. You can't go shopping without seeing school supplies on sale or displays of new shoes and clothing, and I know you are getting excited. It's a fun time of year, isn't it? But... it's also stressful. You have ten tons to

Today it's all about monsters. Back to school monsters that is. It's such a cute and fun back to school theme!I wanted to share a sneak peek of my latest 6 Pack Centers packet, some read aloud ideas, along with a fun NO-PREP freebie! Those first few weeks back to school are nothing short of...

Looking to grab students' attention during the first week of school with fun and easy science experiments? These super fun back to school science experiments are perfect for your first week of school science activities. These are a great way to celebrate back to school while introducing academic activities your students will love. Your upper elementary students already love science stations, so add some back to school science experiments to those science activities! Grab the Science Experiment bundle and get 60 science experiments that can be used all year long! Your first week of school science activities are not only fun, but also easy. These science experiments use common household items making them a breeze for you to prepare for your students. These easy science experiments will have your students using hands-on investigation skills to create some super fun science experiments.  Fun Beginning Of School Year Science Activities and Experiments includes: UnPOPpable Baggies Which Glue Stick Brand Works the Best? Which Hoop Flyer Design will Travel the Farthest Distance? Which Keeps Your Hands the Cleanest? Tallest and Strongest Cup Towers Materials Needed: Ziploc Baggie, Water, Sharp Round Pencils 3 Different Brands of Glue Sticks, Paper Straws, Tape, Paper Bread Slides, Hand Sanitizer, Soap and Water, Baggies, marker Cups, Measuring Tape, Textbooks What's Included in this download? Materials Page Student Recording Sheets that include materials and procedures 5 Science Activities Why Should I Use Science Experiments During the First Week of School? Hands-on activities create a level of student buy-in. There’s motivation to learn and grow now that the student has enjoyed a learning activity. Experiments allow for a great starting point for classroom discussion, problem-solving, and interactions between students and teacher. Hands-on activities will also allow students to be social. This will be a great relationship building activity for students. Have fun with your students! They are able to see your personality and you are able to learn more about them, too. With the printable pages, you can send them home for students to make with their families, too! Teachers Like You Say: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "This was so fun and engaging for the first week of school!" ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "My students love science! These activities were perfect and easy to implement at the beginning of the year."

If you are looking for back to school activities for upper elementary that keep kids engaged and go over important classroom information, then you’re going to

Are you looking for get to know you activities to get your students excited to learn about their classmates? Check out these fun ideas!

1-2-3 come Do Some Chrysanthemum Activities With Me “Chrysanthemum” by Kevin Henkes, is one of my all-time favorite back to school books. It’s perfect for a variety of ages, and especially wonderful as an introduction to name activities, as well as discussions about teasing, bullying and “filling buckets”. With that in mind, I enjoyed making a variety of Chrysanthemum-themed activities appropriate for PK-1st grade. I'll be sharing 3 of them in today's blog along with a sweet back to school FREEBIE. Because I like to mix math with literacy, I designed the Chrysanthemum Name Comparison Math Craftivity, where students compare their name with Chrysanthemum’s. I’ve included a simple PK version which can be done as a whole group, with an older elementary buddy, or done as homework with the assistance of a parent. There’s also a template suitable for kindergarten, 1st and 2nd, which involves some easy math, where students can show how they figured out their answer. Use the vowel, consonants and syllable posters to help explain things, then hang up for students to refer to. These can also be used as part of your display, as completed projects make an adorable bulletin board, or hung as a border on a hallway wall. I’ve included 2 “Mixing Math & Literacy” display posters for this as well. For extra pizzazz, punch a hole at the bottom and tie on a yarn "tail", or curl a white pipe cleaner and attach. There are 10 border options to choose from. Give your students a choice, or run off 2-3 of each of the worksheets so you have a nice variety in your display. Girls can add a bow to their mouse, and boys can opt to leave it off if they want. For an added splash of color, mount the worksheet on a variety of colors of construction paper before students glue their mouse head to the top. Next up, is another quick, easy and fun “print & go” name craftivity. I call them "sliders". Simply choose which name slider you want your kiddos to make. There are 6 options. I like my students to get some practice in making choices, so I run all of them off. I’ve included black and white patterns for kiddos to color, as well as templates in color, so that you can quickly and easily make examples to share. Mounting them on construction paper gives a splash of color and makes them sturdier. Run off the boxed “slider strips”, as well as the blank strips and trim. Children color Chrysanthemum, then write their name on the “slider” strip, by writing a letter in each box. If you have PK kiddos who don’t know how to write their name, you can have slider strips already written for them, or provide a name card for them to copy. I’ve included 6 matching name cards if you’d like to use these. Finally, I designed a Chrysanthemum-Inspired Class Name Booklet. At the beginning of the story, her parents explain why they named her Chrysanthemum, so I thought it would be fun to send a note home and ask parents why they chose their child’s name. Parents fill out the worksheet and their child colors it. After everyone has shared their page, collate the contributions, add the cover and you have a very interesting class-made book. Run off the "inside" pages and give children a choice. There are 7 girl-themed pages, plus 7 for boys. I share Dr. Seuss’s story “Too Many Daves”, then include those pages, along with the rose-quote poster in our booklet as well. We make several class books each month. They are always a favorite in our classroom "book" basket, and a big hit with parents at conferences. Adding a school photo to each page makes things extra special. Today's featured FREEBIE is also perfect for back to school. I not only give my students a little surprise treat on the 1st day of school, I do a little something extra special the entire week. For a quick, easy and inexpensive treat bag, fill up a Snack Baggie with Lucky Charms cereal and include my little note. There's also 2 "header" options if you want to put 1 at the top of your bag. Well that's it for today. My mom's visiting from Wisconsin, and I hear her stirring on this beautiful morning, so time to switch gears and go play outside. "Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams." - Hosea Ballou

Back to School Scissor Activities for the preschool classroom! Fun and engaging free scissor activities for your students!

If you're looking for Free Printable Worksheets for Preschool & Kindergarten, then look no further. Check out this list of free printable worksheets that I've created for preschoolers and kindergartners. You'll find math and literacy,

STEM challenges are the best way to begin building classroom community and teamwork at the beginning of the year. They are also a great way to introduce problem-solving skills and get students thinking creatively and outside the box. The best part is students LOVE them, and they don't eve

I have updated this link with a freebie! Click here to get there. "No, David" is one of our favorite books to begin the year or use anytime we need a little review of what our classroom expectations are. One corner of our classroom is devoted to David and our school rules. We read the book several times then the students chose one rule they thought was especially important to them and they typed their rule during Computer Lab time. Then each student created a picture of David and they turned out AMAZING! We had so much fun with David this year that we decided to use iMovie to create a short video of David following the rules and showed the video to the entire school. How FUN! If you would like to view the video you can see it on my classroom webpage. The poster shown above was printed at Staples. I used PhotoShop to edit the title to fit our lesson and class.

Whether you are a seasoned pro or new to teaching with STEM, these first-week activities for STEM are sure to be a hit in your classroom.

first grade teacher blog

Hey hey hey! It’s BACK TO SCHOOL season!! Oooooh, I’m just so excited for a brand new school year, so I thought I’d help you start your year off with a bunch of free greatness to use with your class! I’ve included freebies from some AMAZING teacher mamas, so scroll on through to check ou

Art Teachers, in this episode I’m going to give you 10 fresh and new art projects, activities, and ideas for Back to School in your Art Classroom! These are all ready-to-go ideas that you can use in your classroom that have a lovely Back-to-School vibe and will have your students in your art classroom exploring art mediums, experimenting, and being creative! I got you my lovely friends! Alright, let’s get into it!

Back to School Printable Packet - Kindergarten Literacy and Math This is a "no prep" printable packet that can be used as a whole-group activity, centers, morning work, homework, review, etc. The theme for this packet is back to school and apples! :) Download the preview to take a look! This packet is also available in a DISCOUNTED BUNDLE Also available: Back to School Printables - FIRST GRADEIncluded: *I can write my name assessment *Letter identification assessment (uppercase/lowercase) *I can trace! - tracing vehicles to buildings *Classroom scavenger hunt - finding and coloring classroom items Literacy: *Alphabet tracing pages A-Z (picture on each vowel page of long and short sound) *Rhyming match (cvc words) *Syllable sort (cut and paste) *How many syllables? *Beginning sounds *Beginning sounds differentiation (b vs d) *Writing prompt "The first day of school is____." *Fill in the missing letters *Uppercase/lowercase sort (cut and paste) BONUS: *"School Days" emergent reader traceable number words (one-ten) *12 school themed word wall vocabulary cards * Write the Room recording sheet for school words Math: *How many? Counting items 1-5 *Patterning school items (ABAB) cut and paste *Number/letter sort (cut and paste) *Fill in the missing numbers (1-20) *School measurement *I can compare! - Color the shorter object *I can compare! - Color the longer object *I can compare! - Color the bigger object *I can compare! - Color the smaller object *I can compare! - Color the taller object *I can compare! - Color the shorter object *I can compare! - Color the heavier object *I can compare! - Color the lighter object *I can compare! - Color the blackboard that has more letters *I can compare! - Color the blackboard that has fewer letters You may also be interested in my other: Printable Packets ****************************************************************************** Please consider leaving feedback for FREE TpT credits and following my store for updates on new units, sales, freebies, and more! :)

first grade teacher blog

I love starting the school year with this activity. It’s easy, parents love it, and it immediately gives the children a little boost of self-esteem by identifying a part of themselves that they like…

Note: This blog post contains resources from our TpT store and our Amazon Associate store. --------------------------------------------- 1. An animated read aloud of If You Take a Mouse to School by Laura Numeroff In this book, the story follows a mouse and all the fun and chaos that ensue when you take a mouse to school. It's known for its repetitive and circular storytelling style, where each action leads to another, creating a humorous and engaging narrative for young readers. The book is loved for its whimsical illustrations and the way it sparks children's imaginations as they follow along with the mouse's adventures at school. 2. Engage your class in a variety of activities inspired by the book: Decorate a shoe box as a lunch box. Try your skill with a yo-yo. Write on the chalkboard. Do a simple science experiment. Build a house with blocks. Write a story book. Read the book aloud to a friend. Kick a soccer ball. Shoot a basket. Have a snack! 3. If You Take a Mouse to School Reader's Theater 4. Writing Activity Have the students create their own sentences: If you take a ___________ to school, ______________ will _______________. Free Writing Paper 5. Review of School Rules Complete the sentences: If you take a child to school, he/she will _______________. Examples: listen nicely, raise his hand, be kind, ask for help, put supplies away, follow directions, make new friends, etc. 6. Illustrations Review Examine the illustrations of the boy and mouse getting ready for school. Student may write or discuss what they do to get ready for school each morning. 7. Favorite Animal If you could bring your favorite animal to school, what would it be and why? Students could bring a stuffed animal representing their favorite animal. Students may research facts about their chosen animal, or write a pretend story of their animal's adventures in school. 8. Print All Around Us As students read the book, encourage them to examine the pictures. Notice there a words and numbers everywhere. Encourage students to walk around the room to notice print in the real world. How about at home? At the grocery store? At the movies? Etc. 9. Math Application Shapes, shapes, shapes! There are shapes everywhere in this book. Have students draw each shape they see in the book on a piece of paper or poster paper. Don't forget to find shapes in your own classroom as well! 10. Mouse Puppet 11. Paper Plate Mouse (Alter the Easter Bunny LOL) 12. DIY Mouse Costume Perhaps the teacher could show up to school as a mouse? Wear gray pants and a gray jacket :) 13. Mouse Trap Online Game Mouse Trap 14. Printable Crossword Puzzle If You Take a Mouse to School Crossword Puzzle 15. Printable Task Cards for Center Activities and Games If You Take a Mouse to School Reading Comprehension Task Cards Have a scavenger hunt or play SCOOT! 16. Printable Craftivity If You Take A Mouse to School Interactive Notebook Activity From our Amazon Affiliate store: If You Take a Mouse to School If You Take A Mouse To School Puppet & Props U-Build Mouse Trap Game You may also like this blog post: Shelly Anton is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. ** This means there are Amazon affiliate links in these blog posts. This does not mean you pay a dime more when you purchase a product through the link. It just means I am trying to save you valuable teacher time by making it easier for you to find great resources for your students, and I earn a few cents for my research and time. Thank you for all you do for kids!

We don't really think about them much... kids bring their lunches in them, we put groceries in them, and sometimes they carry our last minute take-out meal. Paper bags. Paper bags have been around since the mid 1800s and, according to what I have read, haven't changed much in all these year. Why mess with a good thing, I guess. Paper bags have always been there to hold our "stuff" but it's time to give the paper bag the glory it deserves! Here are 8 clever classroom uses that'll make you want to "brown bag" it this school year: Ask your students to think outside the box, or should I say "inside the bag" for classroom projects. Creating an art piece and then filling the bag with items connected to the subject is a great way to connect art and content. Students could: draw a self portrait and fill the bag with items about themselves. draw an animal in its habitat and fill with items related to the animal studied. do a book report by drawing a scene or a character on the bag and then fill it with items the character might have or need in the story. do a historical research project. Students could draw a historical figures and fill the bag with "artifacts" related to the person or time period. I'm sure there are more ideas. If you think of any, please share them with us in the comment section. This project was inspired by a pin on Pinterest. You can find it HERE. Another way that I integrate art into our study of Native Americans of the Northwest is to make Chilkat Blankets. In my class, I don't send student artwork home with students until Open House in the spring. Instead, I share pictures of the artwork on our class Facebook group and display the originals in the halls at school. When the artwork is taken down, we put our artwork in the portfolios. Every year I purchase poster board for students to make art portfolios with. While looking for ideas for this post I came across a pin on Pinterest about making art portfolios. You can find the pin HERE. Using large grocery bags to make the portfolios is mind-blowing for me! First, I love to recycle and reuse as much as possible. This is a perfect example of that. Second, paper bags are strong and with a little duct tape, you have a sturdy, attractive art portfolio for students to house their artwork all year long. As an added bonus, a lot of grocery bags have handles already built in (The ones I used in the picture didn't so I made my own.) which makes carrying the portfolios easy. Interactive Notebooks are all the rage... and great teaching tools to boot! Use small lunch bags to create pockets for storing small items such as vocabulary cards, index cards, and other items that need to keep contained. One lunch bag can make two pockets. The pocket you see on the top opens up for easy access. The second pocket, used with the bottom of the bag, folds behind the flap to keep items contained and more secure. Paper bags make great little interactive books. Because they have pockets, they can hold slide-out cards, photographs, and other memorabilia. I made this book using three lunch bags. There are a lot of clever things about this little book. The first is that it has larger pockets for photographs, cards, etc. to slide in and out. I made little tape tabs for my cards to make them easy to pull out. When using lunch bags, you get blank pages to write on or down items. The third things are these great little side pockets made with the ends of the bag. I love these little books and have been thinking about how they could be used in the classroom. My first thought is as poetry books. there is a lot of space to house poems and creatively illustrate student writing. Another idea would be to make a personal journal/keepsake/scrap book from another person's point of view. As with the paper bag art above, students could use book characters or historical figures. This would take some critical thinking on the part of the student and would be a wonderful end of novel or unit project. Hmmm... Very interesting... Another great use for paper bags is to use them for journal covers. I wrote a whole blog post on how to make these pioneer journals. You can read it HERE. Everyone loves getting goodie bags, students and teachers alike! Paper bags make cute little holders for any holiday or event. For back-to-school consider making little packages for your students to welcome them your class. Another great idea is to make packages for your colleagues with items teachers love. Kids of all ages LOVE puppets! Paper bag puppets are a great way to engage your students and get them thinking creatively. Even with older students, puppets are a meaningful way to apply learning and show understanding of concepts. Just like some ideas mentioned above, puppets can be used for traditional reports on historical figures, book characters, and animals reports. But take a moment to ask your students to think a bit more abstractly. What would a puppet of the cell look like? What would it say? How about a stomach, a germ, or even a volcano? Think about the concepts you are teaching and challenge your students to come up with puppets and scripts to present what they have learned to the class. This would be a wonderful alternative to the traditional exam or report! It's summer and I don't have any puppets hanging out there at home, but I did find a lot of ideas for paper bag puppets on Pinterest. here are just a couple: I'm awful at remembering birthdays. Even my own family's. One year I totally forgot my husband's birthday, which is in September... bad timing with back-to-school and all! Eventually he forgave me, but because I am so bad with dates, I have to do everything I can to help myself remember these special occasions. In the classroom I've helped myself by displaying students' birthday goody bags by month on one of the classroom walls. It doesn't take up much room and saves me a ton of time. Checking the birthday display now and then I get a quick peek at the birthdays for the month and have a birthday bag all prepared for each student. No more scrambling to find those "Happy Birthday" pencils and stickers... they are already packaged and ready to go! Paper bags are an easy answer for this display. The personalized bag tags dress them up and they hang nicely when stapled to the wall. This summer I've worked on designing a brand new Birthday Display pack I'll be using in my own classroom. I'm very excited to get it up on my wall this fall! It includes editable bag tags and birthday book marks, 6 different birthday coupons, pencil flags, month headers, birthday crown, and "Happy Birthday" bulletin board letters. This will make my year so much easier! It's a brand new upload to my TpT store, so I'm selling it for 50% off through July! Click on the product cover to take a look at it. And now, because you stuck around through all 7 of the ideas above... Here is #8 and a FREEBIE for Back to School! About Me Bags are a great way to get to know your students at the beginning of the school year. Glue these tags to the front of your brown paper bags and hand out the first week of school. Don't forget to fill your own bags so students learn a little bit about you. This is also a great opportunity to model for your class how to present their bags to the class. As an added extension, use the bags as a writing prompt to learn about how to write a great paragraph or a longer 5 paragraph essay! Click HERE to get your free download of About Me Bags Tags! So there you have it! 8 Creative and clever uses for using paper bags in the classroom! I hope that this post has inspired you to try at least one of these ideas this coming school year! I know that I've inspired myself and I can't wait to see what other great ideas you all have for using this everyday item in new and interesting ways! Please pin me. Thanks for visiting and I hope you all have a GREAT Back to school!

3 Awesome Art Challenges for the First Week of School Creativity % %

Math About Me, Back to School, Freebie

This package contains printables and activities to help you and your students get to know each other and to help make the first week of school run a little smoother. Package Contents: Getting to Know Your Class Student Search Classmates Word Search Getting to Know Me Two Truths & a Lie Classroom Scavenger Hunt Me and My Classmate Who Am I? Rules, Rewards & Consequences Personal Information Sheets Textbook Contract Lunch List How I Get Home From School Textbook Tracker Locker List Bin Labels Please see the preview file before purchasing.

The best back to school games for your classroom including Minute to Win It, printable word search and charades and pictionary clues.

Discover the perfect All About Me preschool activity designed for young kids! Get a free printable worksheet that's simple, engaging, and ideal for emergent readers. Download now!

Back to School is right around the corner for us and I am SUPER excited to kick of this school year with some fun, hands-on and engaging resources for The

Teaching procedures effectively those first few weeks of school is so important. This post shares tips and activities to help you teach procedures.

The Pigeon Has To Go To School is the perfect book for Back to School. Included in this pack is a craft along with 11 writing activities!

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A better way to teach classroom procedures and expectations on the first day of school.

Read about ten activities to use in your classroom for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas for your upper elementary students. From STEM challenges to printables these activities cover curriculum and bring engagement to your students.

Looking for occupational therapy activities using free or household materials? This list of OT activities supports development of OT goals.

First Day Idea with a Freebie!

No David by David Shannon is a classic book to read in kindergarten. Here are free No David activities, videos and book ideas listed all in one place.