Our First Day of School!

This first week of school went by so fast, but the first DAY of school went by even quicker! I got some pictures of the kids while we did our getting to know you game and drank our jitter juice.

The first day of school is spent doing a lot of learning new rules and procedures and some cutsie crafts to take home. The very first thing we do in the morning is go to rotation as soon as breakfast is over. So, after our hour and a half rotation, we came back to the room, did our date, day, month and year on the calendar, buzz book, then played a getting to know you game with balloons! Each balloon had a different question in it that the kids answered after they popped it.

 After our getting to know you balloon game, we read The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn and made a Kissing Hand card to take home and read with our families.

When the afternoon hit, we read First Day Jitters (which is always fun because they never guess it's the teacher with first day jitters!) and talked about what jitters are and some times that we may have jitters. After our story, we made jitter juice to help our jitters go away. It worked!

After we finished our jitter juice snack, the kids played in free centers for the rest of the afternoon until it was time to go home. To pick their free center, they use our Center Spinner that's on the board. They can only go to a center once each week, so if they've already been to that center, the have to spin again. That way, everyone gets a chance to visit all of our centers.

First Week of School Social Studies

Social Studies this week was all about rules, procedures and the people that keep us safe at school.

The first day, we went around the school to find the different parts of the building we visit all the time, and places we may need to visit.


Our second day, we played our Who Am I? game. The questions pop up one at a time and the kids try and guess who the authority figure is before the picture pops up. Each slide has 4 clues about each of the authority figures we see every day.

Our third day, we watched our Kindergarten BrainPOP and talked about if it was the same or different as our day in kindergarten.

On our fourth and fifth days, we made and revised our classroom rules. Once we had a good set of rules to follow, I wrote them on our class rules poster and we all signed our poster.

First Week of School Science

For our first week of science, we talked about making observations and what an observation is. The first day, we watched a BrainPOP on Making Observations. BrainPOP is a really cool site that has videos for EVERYTHING! For certain topics, BrainPOP videos are really good reinforcement and explanation. They have games and quizzes that the kids can do, too!

Our second day of science, we went outside and observed things on the playground with magnifying glasses. 

There was a bug everyone was trying to see

Observing a leaf she found!

Putting cool things we found in our discovery box for the classroom

On our last day of making observations, the kids drew a picture inside of a magnifying glass of something they observed. They drew their pictures inside of their science books.

First Week of School Math!

Our first week of math was spent mostly playing and making sure we used our math manipulatives the right way. On the carpet during calendar time, we practiced writing and making our numbers with dry erase board and markers.

At their first station of the week, the kids practiced playing with the counting bears.

He made a q!

She made a 5!

At their second math station for the week, the kids played with linking cubes.

At their third math station for the week, the kids played with linking cubes.

At my table this week, we practiced counting, reading, writing and representing numbers 1 - 5.

Meet the Teacher!

Thank you to all of you who came to Meet the Teacher this past Wednesday night! It was great to get to meet each and every one of you. I can't wait for school to start Monday! We're going to have an awesome year! See you soon! :)

Back to School!

We have a little under a month before school starts back up! I can feel the nerdy teacher side of me getting excited every time I walk into a Walmart, Target, Big Lots or Dollar Tree. I have to buy something for my classroom! Below is a list comparing Walmart and Target school supply prices and the list of school supplies for our class this year. (Although I get most of my school supplies at Dollar Tree or Big Lots, with the exception of Crayola markers & crayons and Elmer's glue).

Here is a list comparing school supplies at Walmart and Target that I found handy! I found it at Passionate Penny Pincher. She has coupons, store (and restaurant) deals and  ads that are updated pretty frequently. I LOVE it!

You can download a PDF copy of the list to print off on her website from here.

Here is the school supply list for our class this year. Mrs. Lowe's list is identical to this one and the only difference in Mrs. Nix's list is needing a nap mat for her class. Hope this helps!

You can download our class supply list from google drive and print it out here.

I hope this is somewhat helpful while doing back-to-school shopping! Have a great last few weeks of summer!