Thank GOODNESS for Labor Day! :)

Hey friends! Long time no chat! Is anyone else as thankful as me for Labor Day? Whoever decided we should start school, then have a holiday 5 days later was BRILLIANT! :) Keith and I have some wedding stuff, and I have some SLEEPING to do, and our house is well, a disaster. So, thank goodness!

Anyway...have I told you how amazing my littles are? Man, they are precious. And I always say that about my kids, but this group is something special. I had my entire week planned with LOTS of routine/rules practice, and literally, I finished all of it in 2 days because they are so focused, ready to go, and literally do what I tell them. It's insane haha. And I know it's still the first week, but they have actually gotten better each day, instead of the other way around. But, here's the kicker. I only have 10 of them. :( That's right...10. My school does Dual Language, and we opened up 2 Way Dual this year. There are about 20-30 kiddos in each grade that don't list Spanish as their first language, so they were always in my room. The ESL room...and we were always the craziest! :) But this year, those parents had the option of putting them into Dual so they can learn Spanish while the other firsties are learning English. Make sense?? But, my 10 babies and I had a super first week! Here are some of my favorite activities from the week, and a few classroom photos!

 So...my friends are all about being mathematicans and scientists! :) We spent about 10 minutes with each math tool (cubes, pattern blocks, linking cubes, counters, shapes), etc. and talked about how we might use them. Then we added them to our chart. I will definitely be using this chart EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. when my littles are solving problems. They can and should be using tools! :)

 Of course, we did the What's in Your Heart lesson to kick off Writer's Workshop. My favorite one on my heart is Naps. That's right...I love naps, and could probably get a few shared writing out of it, haha. And check out one of my firsties hearts. So precious.

This stays in their Writer's Notebook, along with their ABC chart that we have been practicing using and they got to color to make it their own. All of those super cute line drawings are from Scrappin' Doodles.

 We have U-Time each Monday, which is when we practice College Readiness skills...things like setting goals, being a good group member, asking for help, etc. Our very first lesson was on the 1st day of school. We made an anchor chart for things a good friend says and played Inner/Outer circle to practice. 5 of my littles sat in a circle in the middle, and the other 5 formed a circle around them and faced them. They said kind things to each other, and then rotated to the next kiddo. One of the ones that we practiced like 5 times was "Can I Play With You?" In my room, the answer to this question is always Yes! So, we practiced that. :)

We did a little read the room activity, and they recorded Words I Know and Words I Don't Know on a T-Chart. That led right into this anchor chart when we talked about what we can read. See "You Tube Lyrics?" right there. Here's how that conversation went:
Firstie- We can read YouTube!
Ms. H- Well, that's a super idea, but usually we are listening to music or watching a video. Most Youtube videos don't have words.
Firstie- But some videos have the lyrics. And you can read the comments on the bottom.
Ms. H- TOUCHE! : )
So, of course, I added it to our chart, hahaha. :)

After reading Miss Nelson is Missing, we sorted Silly Choices and Smart Choices. This is also when I realized that I had some READERS!!!! I pulled this out, and a few of them were just reading all the little strips. I was shocked! And so happy!

We brainstormed words for each letter as a class, and then they chose some and illustrated them for our Word Wall. And of course, we added their names. :) The sight words under A and B are what we talked about this week, and practiced. And HALLELUJAH, we played a game on Friday afternoon and most of them could recognize all of the words! So, I felt comfortable adding them to our Word Wall. One of my boys said "Why isn't Blue on Blue Paper?" In my head I thought, because I printed these randomly...but out loud I said "Touche" again! hahaha! They are too smart for me! I'm not crazy that the words aren't in a line, and I think it might be a little hard for them to differentiate the words, so that's definitely something I'm gonna work on.

We brainstormed what Scientists do, and questions we have that we want to answer in Science. Like...how does a rollercoaster work, do frogs have eggs or babies, etc. Then, they drew themselves being scientists, and I scribed for them. Their Kinder teacher is amazing, and I can tell they are totally budding little scientists. Like I said, because these babies are SO well behaved, and because there are only 10 of them, we have pretty much started Stations completely. I haven't quite finished our I Can charts, so I'm not posting those, but they are my weekend project. We made little charts together, but I'm going to fancy them up and add pictures so they are easy to use. Buddy reading, Book Bag, and Read to Self are pretty easy to explain and they are super at them. We haven't built our stamina up yet, so we are only doing them for about 5-7 minutes, but still...so proud of them. OH...that reminds me...I mentioned that I was doing Daily 5 this year. Well, my sweet friend that was going to do it with me left for Pennsylvania (BOO! :( ) and with a brand new team, I wanted to stick with Debbie Diller so that I could give them any resources I was using. So, I'm doing the stations I did last year...here's hoping I can start D5 next year. :) We are also doing Pocket Chart and Word Work stations already. (I know right...last year, pretty sure I didn't have 5 stations until the end of the first 6 weeks, ha....they just weren't ready). They only have a few choices in each station, and they are really easy activities. In Word Work, they are typing their friends name, and building color words.This week, they will also be building our sight words from this week (there is 5 of them), probably with letter beads and maybe Wikki Stix.

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At Pocket Chart station, they are matchng their friends' names to pictures and sorting them by the number of letters in their names. This week, I'm adding Environmental Print match, upper and lowercase match, and number words (I THINK!).

And lastly, I leave you with the organization that I stole right from Pinterest...I think some of it is from LadyBug's Teacher Files. And let me tell ya, the kiddos love it, and it has made using supplies SOO much easier. Happy Saturday! :)