First Week of School

 The first week of school. Do I need to say more? Excited, busy, exhausted, did I say exhausted??? There is always so much to do before school starts. I am always so busy getting ready and then before I know it, the halls and classrooms are full. Lots of backpacks, lunchboxes and little ones, talking and laughing with big smiles on their faces.  😀😀

Here's a little peek into our first week of school.....

On the first day of school I took a class photo on the steps of our school.

It is always good to have a group picture that you can use throughout the year. I also took a group shot with our mascot, the lion.

I take a lot of pictures throughout the year. At the end of each school year I print all of my photos. I fill a brag album for each student so they have a way to remember all of the fun things we did. My students absolutely love them! 

Each album has a sweet poem on it. I can't even remember where the poem came from but I have been using it for years. I took an individual picture of each student by our school sign and that will go into their first page of the album. It's always fun to see how much they have grown by the end of the year.

Another first day activity is the mystery box. I use the mystery box throughout the school year. I like to use it to introduce new themes for social studies or science. I also use it for introducing new phonemes and for math concepts. On the first day I used it to introduce myself. I wrote 4-5 things on index cards and pulled them out one at a time.

Then I gave each student a brown paper lunch bag with 5 colored index cards in it. Their homework assignment was to take it home and write 5 things about themselves. The next day each student took turns and pulled out their cards one at a time. It was such a fun way to get to know each other. 
 

There are so many great books to read aloud during the first week of school! One of my favorites is "You're Finally Here!". Have you read it?  If you are interested, you can check out my blog post on this book HERE

After we read the book, we completed this anchor chart.

Then they filled out this book, writing everything they did over the summer.

We finished our first week of school with Art For Kids Hub. My kiddos love Art Hub!!! Rob Hub shows children how to do step by step drawings.  For the first week of school I decided on how to draw a person. My kiddos did a great job! 

 Great first week of school! How was your first week? Share some of your favorite ideas in the comments below.