A Successful First Day!

Whew!  Doesn't the first day go by quickly?!  I always overplan and then spend lunchtime trying to figure out how I'm going to make the rest of the morning fit into the afternoon along with all the afternoon stuff I had planned.  Not happening! :)

I DID introduce the book bins, start Daily Five (although I don't call it that because I have yet to get all five parts going in the same school year), and get the kids into parts of the classroom library.  They were so excited to get to pick their own books, and so disappointed when I didn't give them much time to read!  {Happy teacher!}

Choosing books:

Reading.  Engaged.  Delighted teacher. :)

Then there was some writing.  I read Franklin's New Friend and the kids wrote about how Franklin and Moose became friends.  It's a great story for the first day (or week) of school about not judging by appearances and about all the different ways we can make friends with others.

And on the first day of school, they worked on their first assignment COMPLETELY INDEPENDENTLY - because I was moving from table to table labeling pencils, glue sticks, and erasers to get those pencil pouches set up!  NO ONE asked for help (although I certainly would have helped if they had) and EVERYONE finished their work on time. 

(Insert collective gasp.)

Then, later in the day, I looked at their papers.  And ohmygoodness, look what I got ON THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!  Complete sentences!  Beautiful handwriting!  Punctuation!  Detailed pictures!  

{heavy breathing}

Check it out: pictures and captions and THREE sentences!

I gave them a choice to color or not.  They won't always get a choice - sometimes I DO want color - but today it didn't matter.  Choices are good, so I give as many as I can.

Oh, happy teacher. :)

Later was a math freebie from Amy Lemons, another great first day activity and subtle preassessment:

And then, before we knew it, it was time to pack up and go home.  I can't wait for tomorrow!