OH mylanta! The first week of school was...hm...exhausting, overwhelming, intense, and surprising! I cannot believe how little these little munchkins are and how varied their experience with letters, sounds, numbers, names, and school they are. I have a three students who have NEVER been in school before, one child who speaks no english and just moved here from Mexico, and several who have been to pre-school (which is GREAT!). They sure are cute, but boy. Kindergarten is SO different from First Grade. I know it's only a 1 year gap, but going backward in time makes a huge difference to going forward. They're quiet a talkative and moving bunch, so I'm going to have to try a lot of different strategies to keep them safe, engaged, and focused on learning.
Here's a short summary of what we did this week. Forgive me for not taking more pictures, as I mentioned they are quiet the busy bunch and it's just me in my classroom. No helpers, aids, or parent volunteers so I snag pictures when I can.
On the first day, I had the kids write their names. About half of my students can write their names, half don't know ANY letters and just scribble. This was a really good informal assessment that allowed me to grasp each student's current letter knowledge and ability to write and read their name.
We learned about the safe spot as always. This year, I read the books. They liked these a lot.
I had to make our safe place book a little easier for the children this year, but I think the lesson went really well and I've even had 3 kids use it since we discussed it. They breathed, hugged our stuffed animal, chose their emotion on the "how they were feeling card", and came back to the carpet when they were calm. It was pretty cool! I do have one girl who goes to it for the right reasons, then plays....so there still is work to be done!
We also decorated our safe keeper sticks and have started that as a part of our morning routine.
We practiced sounds and letters of the alphabet with song, dance, and was introduced to the letter of the day worksheet they will be doing in reading centers once we get going.
We took a tour of the classroom, of the school, library, and met our guidance counselor and new librarian.
We also started our sight word poetry instruction. Each week we have a new poem we focus on. We read it every day. Act it out, Do Hickety Pickety (focusing on the sight word from the poem), Illustrate it, and do activities based on the sight word for the week. They liked this a lot - especially the one with play dough.
We explored our Math Materials and got a chance to just "play" with our manipulatives. On Wednesday we learned about math journals, (pictured below). I gave them a small cup of buttons and they had to count them writing the number they had and drawing a picture. Friday we practiced a mock up centers rotation where they sorted by shape, color, and size. It was rather intense and if I could change anything from this week it would have been this!
Of course we practiced rules, good and bad choices, and ways to be helpful. We did a good choices bad choices sort as a class after reading "No David!" then had them work at their seats sorting their own pictures.
Lastly we learned about science, who and what a scientist does. We did a skittle experiment which they LOVED! They were super calm and engaged. Then we learned about science tools with Sid the Science Kid and the next day predicted weight with a scale, estimated how many drops of water could fit on a penny, and explored our hands with a magnifying glass.
All I can say is I'm glad I made it through my first week. It was a TOUGH. I saw this awesome meme online and I just had to post it because it's exactly how I felt Friday afternoon as I left school.
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