Wow! Week 1 of school has flown by already and only 9 more
weeks until the holidays. Not that I’m counting already. The kids in the class
have certainly settled and by Friday were not shy at all. I remember starting
last year as the new teacher at the school. The students were so quiet and shy
that whenever we played my ‘getting to know you’ games I could almost hear
crickets! Not this bunch.
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| Blowing our nose |
This week was full of rules, routines and getting to know
you activities. There were many rehearsals of walking around the class, sitting
on the mat, sitting at our desks, staying in our seat, walking to the tuckshop
and how to use our pencils, rubbers and glue (with only 1 glue stick fatality).
Phew!
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| Washing our hands |
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| Walking to the tuckshop |
My favourite getting to know you activity was the silly
self-portraits we made and hung in the room. We wrote things about ourselves
and stuck that page on the body then attached the head, legs and arms. Mine
shows such a resemblance don’t you think? I got this idea from Pinterest by Kallangur State School
The kids had messy fun with this one. Legs, arms, bodies,
heads, scissors and glue everywhere! I’ve made a template to use for this
activity that you can find here or in my Freebies page.
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| Miss Hayley's Silly Self-Portrait |
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| The student's self-portraits |
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| This one is missing a leg! |
We made a friendship fruit salad on Friday after reading the
book I’m the Best by Lucy Cousins.
I can’t claim this idea as my own either I got it from Crazy For First Grade
After reading the book we talked about how the animals were
feeling and why. Then we came up with a list of what makes a good friend. I
told the students each ingredient (or spoon full of fruit salad mix) was one of
those things that made a great friend. After putting it all into a bowl and
mixing I got out a pear that I had fun throwing around my kitchen 2 days
before! It was bruised, brown and it was smelly. We talked about words to
describe the pear: rotten, stinky, yucky, bad. Next we talked about the rotten
pear being like a rotten friend, someone who doesn’t do the nice things that we
put in our friendship fruit salad. I asked if we thought the rotten pear should
be in our fruit salad and the class voted NO. So it was chucked in the bin. Of
course we ate the friendship fruit salad and the kids loved it. I wish I had a
camera with me at that time especially when I pulled out the rotten pear. Now
when the students aren’t being ‘a good friend or class member’ we talk about
being a ‘rotten pear’ and the friendship fruit salad.
I’m not sure about everyone else but Friday night I was
exhausted and couldn’t move off the couch. I hope all the teachers out there
had a great first week back.
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| Had to share this one. My Teacher Aide captured me explaining how to use the glue stick properly. Nice facial expressions :) |
Some more good news: our Internet is back on at school and I
can now print! The classroom has been almost complete for a week but now I have
no excuses I can finish printing my displays and proper labels. Stay tuned for
photos of the finished (is it ever finished?) product.
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