Day 2... Check!

Hello! Today was MUCH better than yesterday. It may or may not have had something to do with the magical pharmaceutical cocktail I pounded before school and then again at lunch. Praise the lord for sudafed.

Anywho, I tried to take a few pics of some things we've done over the last 2 days, but am still stuck with my dreadful reliable iPhone 4 with a dreadful meh camera.

First day of school is always a whirlwind. I started off by giving my firsties a tour of the school that included a trip to the cafeteria with our lunch numbers so we could practice putting those pesky numbers into the keypad then walking to our lunch table. Don't ask my how 2 of my kids managed to lose their lunch numbers between the entrance to the kitchen and the checkout computer. When we got back, I read one of my favorite first day of school books, Wemberly Worried. Love her. She cracks me up. What I love most about this book is that while some of her worries are things that students might actually worry about, the majority are silly worries, which always lightens the mood of my students. We spend so much time talking about our own silly worries that they practically forget that they're supposed to be worried about school. After reading the book, I gave my kiddos some time to write about what makes THEM worry, and we made this adorable (and super easy) Wemberly craft. The writing prompt and the craft are both from this awesome FREE Wemberly pack that was made by one of my favorite PA bloggers, Wendy, from Read With Me ABC.

We also started this awesome first week of school book. Each day they write a new page for the book about what they did that day. Love love love it. It's part of this back to school pack, that's also filled with TONS of other awesome activities that I can't wait to use! Great TpT find...

Today, I started introducing Daily 5 to my kids. I'm going to try my best to follow the suggested pacing guide in the back of the book, so today we talked about reading the words and reading the pictures, as well as expected behaviors during Read to Self. Right now, it sort of feels a little like dog training, but I think we'll get there! Overall, I was impressed at how well they responded to it, and can't wait to practice again tomorrow!

Today, I also used David Goes To School to introduce our school rules, the "4 B's..." (Be respectful, be responsible, be honest, be safe.) I LOVE LOVE LOVE David Shannon books, especially the David series. My kiddos were laughing SO hard, and it was very easy to create this list of "No David" behaviors and "Yes David" behaviors. Loved the conversations we had. I wrapped it all up with this fun little David craft, that's also FREE on TpT here. Another wonderful find!!

Have you done anything fun to start the year? I'm always looking for new ideas!