First Week Fun!

Exhausted.  Utterly exhausted.  Every bone in my body aches.  My feet literally feel like someone took them off my body and completed a marathon before attaching them back to my legs (because, let’s get real… this body does not partake in running so someone would literally have to saw my feet off in order for them to run a race!).  
My tan has faded.  My workouts are nonexistent.  The bags under my eyes are back in full swing.
It’s definitely the first week back, can you tell?!  I’m in my tenth year of teaching and I can tell now more than ever that my body doesn’t remember what it felt like to be in the twenties!  I’m getting old, y’all!
Thankfully we’ve had a really good week so far and we’ve been able to accomplish a lot in a little amount of time.  We’ve gone over the procedures, gotten to know one another, and talked a lot about being a good friend and student.  We’ll finish off the week fine-tuning everything so that we can get 100% started with curriculum on Monday!
My students loved reading The Recess Queen and completing this writing activity from Smitten With First!

Today we read “How Full Is Your Bucket?” and talked about filling up each other’s bucket!  I’ve had zero time to make a cute chart, so this had to do!
Then, we wrote 3 ways that we could fill a friend’s bucket.  They were supposed to write in sentences, but apparently I didn’t stress that enough, ha!  Thankfully we are working on that skill next week 🙂  You can download this activity here!
96dbb dsc 0980    16b1b dsc 0982

 The first day of school we read “Pirates Go To School” to go along with our school wide theme.  We made these pirates from Babbling Abby.  They look so stinkin’ cute hanging up in our hallway!
2a5bc dsc 0983   c77ce dsc 0984
 Today we tackled our Student Generated Alphabet.  This is a big undertaking every year, but I always love the impact it makes in my classroom.  I decided to do things a little differently this year.  I put my students with a partner and gave them between 2-3 letters to focus on.  We did a little word/alphabet scavenger hunt around the school.  They took one of the iPads with them, a sticky note with their focus letters, and walked the hallways of our school.  So, if they had the letter B they may have taken pictures of a broom, bow, and brick.  They could take as many pictures possible as long as the object started with their focus letter.  When we got back to the room they searched through their pictures, decided which one to illustrate, and got to work!  It definitely helped having the pictures when it came to illustrating!  They were a little too chatty in the halls, but I wanted to incorporate technology and a school tour somehow!
 I have learned to be very picky when it comes to these drawings because they are going to hang up all year long.  I am very thorough in my instructions because I don’t want any scribbling or sloppy work!  
 They also finished up their Spanish alphabet!  We can now check those off of the to-do list!
Phew!  I’m even more exhausted now!  I really do love my new group of kids.  They are so precious and loving.  I can tell it’s going to be a wonderful year!  I’m going to go eat fast food and take Joelle to church!  Then it’s bedtime, folks!

75

Hi, I'm Amy

Hey, y’all! My name is Amy Lemons and I am passionate about providing students with both engaging and effective standards-based Math and ELA lessons.

FREE SAMPLE OF ROOTED IN READING!​

Sample a day of Rooted in Reading with these lesson plans and activities for Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary, and Grammar!

4 Responses

  1. I used your alphabet idea last year and they turned out super cute and fantastic! The key to our success tho was that it was our first Big Buddy/Little Buddy activity and they worked together on them. We received a lot of compliments! Thanks!