What activities do you do the first week of school? I get asked that question OFTEN! So I am going to share a few of my "First Week Goodies" with you! I have to say--I can't take credit for most of them but I am great at stealing ideas from others! :) First, to get the kids moving, we get to know each other a bit! I always do this version of Classmate BINGO! I have the kids find another student to sign each square then they color it in. Besides, it is a great conversation starter! Afterwards, I always ask some students to share a few things they learned about their friends! Next, we do a series of ICEBREAKERS. These are great for any grade really. The Kinders and 1st graders might need some assistance with the writing ones, or you could just take those out. I believe I may have mentioned this in an earlier post, but I love doing this All About Me Bag activity. I ran them off on orange card-stock (we are the orange hall) and cut them out. Then I stapled them to a brown bag and placed one on each child's desk for Meet the Teacher Night (or the first day of school.) The kids love showing their items and I love getting to see a piece of them! Another thing I do on the first week is read my favorite read aloud! One of my all time favorite books to read during the first day of school is Junkyard Wonders by Patricia Polacco. If you have not read this book, I encourage you to read it first before reading it to your students. I cry tears of joy every time I read it, I just cannot help it...it is a beautiful story. I am going to share a (free) activity that is great with this book and helping build community in your classroom! Here is a YouTube video reading of it, if you would like to listen to it before your purchase. I do recommend actually reading it to your students, vs. the YouTube video though. The connection with your students will be so much better! Check out my Are You Connecting? blog post to understand how to use this activity. Click the Link Below for the Activity: JunkYard Wonder Activity We also choose one day during the first week to do this digital spinner activity! The spinner spells WELCOME. The kids take turns coming up and clicking the digital spinner. Then the class answers the corresponding question on their task card. You spin until all questions have been answered. Great writing activity and awesome for getting to know your students. Another first week of school think I do is introduce my classroom management method for transitions.I must confess though, I completely "stole" this idea from the Mustache King at The Kindergarten Smorgasboard! When I saw what he was doing, I was sold! First, simply head on over to Amazon (because we all love PRIME right?) and snag a wireless doorbell! The wireless doorbell receiver simply plugs into the wall in your classroom, and the transmitter remote is easily worn around your neck, placed in your pocket, or just laid on your desk. It includes 50 chimes and no batteries are required! When you want to get your student's attention or it is time to move on to another station, center, activity, line up, etc...simply ring the doorbell and it chimes. What I really love is...the chimes are not annoying, they are almost soothing but still grab the student's attention. I will never go back to the vocal attention grabbers. I know those work for many, but for me...I enjoy this method! I hope all of these things help you out with your first few days! It's getting close! Let me know what you do for your first week! I am always looking for things to add!! (affiliate links are provided for your convenience)
Well lookie there, school is about to start (or has started for some of you.) I cannot believe the summer has flown by so quickly. I wanted to hop on here and share a few COMPLETELY FREE resources for the first few weeks back to school. The weeks of starting back are hectic, crazy, expensive and oh so much fun! So grab these free resources to help make planning easier, learning engaging, and maybe hang on to your sanity a bit longer. :) First, I love these Beginning of the Year Agreements from PYP in Paradise. All you need is chart paper and post-its. I personally love to fancy up my walls a bit with the Chevron Chart Paper from Amazon, but the other stuff works great too! Have the students write down things they expect from you as a teacher. I also have mine do this as students as well. We do the teacher one first then the student one second. It is great for building community. It is free. It is engaging! Another activity I love involves candy. If your school does not allow this, you can do pom-poms or some other colored object. This is extremely fun for the kids the whole "sharing about yourself" thing a lot easier on the teacher. Now for this, you would need to buy candy (which is why I say, you can totally substitute this for something else that you already have.) I have even passed out crayons! It works great! I write this on an anchor chart on the board and then we go around sharing! I usually try to make sure all of the kids have one of each color. If not, that is okay too. Depends on how much time you have to share! Miss Decarbo has an amazing activity that you can grab for free as well! Simply click HERE and look at the PREVIEW of the resource. The PREVIEW can be downloaded and has the Magic Dough instructions and recipe for FREE. She did this on purpose, I promise. :) I encourage you to buy the WHOLE resource because it is amazing. But I promised FREE, so you can just grab this recipe for free. I did this with my 3rd and 5th graders....they loved it. Never too old for things like this. Also, we wrote about it. The kids really enjoyed making this. I also think it is important to start understanding your students. I always do this Reading Interest Inventory with my students. It is fun for the students to think about the different things they like (and dislike) about reading. I always emphasize being honest. Sometimes they want so badly to please us that they don't tell us how they really feel. This is especially true at the beginning of the year. I talk to them about my likes and dislikes with reading. This seems to help the students be more honest. I think we have all done this before but I have created free tags for the bag activity. I love this All About Me activity. All you need are brown paper bags and this free tag. I did share a Teacher Tip on Instagram last night though. I always have one of these made about me for the first day of school. I find it is the easiest way to explain it, it eases nerves and is a great conversation started with the kids! These are made to fit the bag even though they are bigger in the picture below. Lastly (because I could go on forever...) if you don't follow Jennifer Findley, she is great! I love using this free resource full of back to school (or first few weeks of school...because...life happens) activities. They are really great for multiple ages and my students are always so engaged when using these! I really hope these tips have been helpful! If you have a free resource in your shop for back to school...drop the link in the comments below! Sharing is caring! Happy Teaching! Hillary (affiliate links are provided for your convenience)
tote bag inspired by enhypen! bags are corduroy material, sized 14 in by 14 in. they have pockets on the inside as well as a button to latch the bag closed. can carry a lot; i used it for school and had a computer, ipad, pencils, chargers, etc. inside the bag and held up very well! no problems with washing the bag and the embroidery won’t budge at all. i take custom commissions as well so feel free to message me if interested in that. FOR PERSONALIZATION: if you want anything changed to the design, feel free to say so in the personalization section or message me! bag and thread color changes available!
I can't wait to show you the amazing pattern tester versions of the Emerson Crossbody Bag!
It's a fabulous benefit if you can take for granted if you live in a place where crime is low and no one is ever going to be dipping into your purse. But
Before you start wondering why I’m sharing a 60-minute project on 30 minute crafts… let me explain. This bag takes about an hour to make… but you can make a version in 30 minutes, and I’ll give you the steps on how to make a 30 minute version right in this tutorial. Basically, the 30 […]
