First Week of School

I made it through the first week and what a time we had!  I have 22 students this year, but 5 of them were out on the first day!  The second day I had 5 students out again, but I had a student come who had been sick the first day, and one was gone for a dental appointment.  The third day I had 5 out again and on Thursday the one who had a dental appointment for two days came back and another student who just got back from vacation showed up!

So by Friday I had 19 students with 3 that are still on vacation!  Our state went to the year round system two years ago and it has not been a good schedule.  We have many families that travel in the summer and don't come back until September!!  So needless to say as I was trying to train all the rest and  had students trickling in not knowing what to do and having to repeat myself many, many times!

But overall it was a great week.  This is a cute lively bunch who seem really happy to be back in school. They laugh at my goofy jokes and give me hugs all day long:)

Things that I loved this week.

My new clip chart!  The kids loved this!! Over half the kids in my class are surfers and they thought this was the greatest thing ever!! It helped me focus on the positive and they all wanted to get to Cowabunga soo bad!!

My dolphin magic wand!!

I used this to get attention and we practiced alot!! It's such a soft, nice sound and they were quiet instantly when they heard it! Click on the wand to go to their site:)

My New Rug

What a time saver!! I love how they come sit down in their spot and there is no arguing about where to sit!

My new book bags

I feel so organized and they look so nice with matching numbers where they should hang.

My word wall

We added a few important words and I love that I can just write it on the board.

My new students:)

They really are cute and such pleasers this year:))

Things That Didn't Go So Well

Our new schedule

The whole school is implementing RTI and we have an intervention block the last

half hour of school.  We have also been given a new daily schedule after 7 years of the same one.

I was off the whole week and running late for everything.  Every night I went home exhausted and felt like I hadn't accomplished anything!!

My classroom printer

I am lucky to have a laser printer in my room and have depended on it for two years now.  Well it is not connecting to my laptop and I have not been able to print anything from it, so all my parent letters will be a week late:(

And I still have not found my Bulletin board letters!!!???I just don't know where to look?? I ordered new sets in May with my classroom money, but guess what??  The order was never placed because the money was just released!!! So many of the items I was depending on I do not have:( 

Okay I will stop whining now and end with our fun Friday activity.

I love to have cooking projects in my class.  I call it cooking but we never use heat. I have done this since I began teaching in Kindergarten 20 years ago!! 

Since our first science unit is life cycles of plants and animals I start off the year making fruit salad.

Homework on Thursday night was to bring in a piece of fruit.

I can't believe the spread we had this year!! I have Never gotten a pineapple before, lol!

I have a recipe that we read together, then I call 3 kids back at a time to cut up their fruit and place it in the bowl.  We go over rules of washing hands, not licking the knives, no sneezing on the food and no licking our fingers.  I cut up the apples and core them and they do the rest with a plastic knife.

The rest of the class decorates their recipe page, and then works together on a fruit word search.  I usually do a graph of "What is Your Favorite Fruit", but I just didn't have it together this year!!  I keep their recipe page and we place it into our cookbooks (that I will have a parent make later).

After everyone cuts  up the fruit we mix it up, talk about good manners, serve everyone, and all eat together.

Even the teacher eats some:)

The kids love it and always look forward to the next project:)

Here is the recipe page and the cover I use for our cookbooks.
Just click on the picture to grab it in Google Docs.