First Week Photos, Freebies, Finds and Fun!

I survived the first week of school! After having been absent from blogging for a while now, I am excited to get back to sharing! It seems like forever since I've even been able to get on the computer to do anything but school work!

The first week was just amazing! I cannot get over how wonderful my class is! They are so mature and responsible compared to how my first graders were at the beginning of the year! It was very encouraging and I am excited to get into a groove this week.

To encourage more of this outstanding behavior, we started our clip chart today! To make the clips more special, I decided to have the kids paint them. We used a small sponge roller from Michael's and acrylic paint in bright colors. Paper plates were perfect paint trays. The kids got to choose some stickers and gems to decorate their clip!

There is a freebie behavior clip chart at my shop that is editable.

Decorating the clips made them heavy and in the middle of our reading lesson, the center of the chart fell right off the ribbon and came crashing down. It is now stapled to a bulletin board! 

Instead of our I can statements, I chose to add Daily 5 CAFE strategies to the Focus Wall because the kids did Daily 5 in first grade and are familiar with them. Each day, I changed them up to fit the read aloud during story time. With so much time spent on routines and procedures, this was the best way to work in my reading lessons for the first week!

You can grab a CAFE Poster set freebie at my Teachers Pay Teachers shop!

This is our Daily Schedule. It's black and bright of course! Let me tell you, it was followed very loosely last week. I always over plan for the first week! I forget how long it takes to unpack supplies, explain all of the routines, and go over expectations. But it helps to keep me on track for sure!

Two days after the start of school, we had our parent night. This was the first year that I had poor attendance. Ten of the 24 students did not have a parent there. I was all prepared with my PowerPoint presentation full of very important information about the year. Luckily, I had many handouts on the desk for reference and have sent those home.

I had sign-up sheets for room parents and party volunteers just out side the door. 

Each parent received a home practice kit which is a huge bag of books, game pieces, novelty items and ready to go learning activities for home practice. Title one grant monies provide these for all students in the building.

On the desk were several forms to fill out with contact information, our special class schedule, a note about Daily 5, my class brochure and a parent wishes form. Parents always have so much they want to share with you about their child, so they were happy to be able to write their wishes for the year since there was not time to chat!

This is the presentation I used. It is editable and is available at my shops!

Still I forgot to mention certain things like the fact that second graders and cupcakes with frosting that stains clothes do not go well together! There's so much to tell in just 25 minutes! We ran two sessions so that parents could attend another classroom for a sibling at another time. I had only 3 parents for session 2 so it was a little less formal!

We made this adorable craftivity from Miss Kindergarten for our open house display board and wrote a recipe for a successful year! I modified the hat to include their name and a title. I forgot to add the shoes to this example!

Parent wishes shared by Funky First Grade Fun went in this little basket from the Target dollar aisle.

This was the gift I gave my students for the first day of school. It is an expandable file from the Dollar Tree for their prize tickets. I called it a prize pouch. Inside was a homework coupon and this poem was attached.

If you think you might like the prize pouch sign for yourself, let me know and I'll throw it in Dropbox for you to download!

This is our ticket box filled with Mel D's reward coupons! The box is from Michael's too!

This idea is from my teammates! The students write in a composition notebook and the parents write back! There is a freebie sign in my TPT shop!

I've been busy creating signs, signs and more signs! This great editable oval basket template is from Ladybug's Teacher Files. This is what I call my hand-in box for work to be assessed. Next to it is a cup with highlighters and this poster! If you know who has shared this awesome poster, please let me know so I can give credit! Thanks! So many files...

This is the plastic home-school folder the school purchases for all students. It has a clear pocket. I printed a sign on computer paper to match our classroom theme.

Here is our super cute second day of second grade frame. I purchased an open wooden frame from Michael's, glued some letters onto white cardstock and cut around the letters. The pictures of the kids are so darn cute!  Here is just the frame:

This is my student teacher modeling her fine DIY!

Math this week was fun! We did many hands on activities to review sums to ten but also learned how to work together as a group and the expectations for working with manipulatives. This was an activity using two-sided chips. The students toss them and record the combinations for making ten in picture form, and writing equations vertically and horizontally. I love that we get to demonstrate on the Smartboard! Download a recording sheet for shake and toss!

This was an activity for sums to ten called mystery math bags. Students picked out ten items from the bag, sorted them by attribute and wrote addition equations to represent the objects.

This is our sweet year attendance check-in and calendar math. You can see both of them at my shops too!

And finally, my new lamp shade from Walmart! It matches my zebra task chair! What a find!

Thanks for sticking with me for this very long post! There is lots more fun to be had in the second week of second grade so I'll be back with more pictures soon! Hope you all have a wonderful week!