Survived week one!

So after a much needed break, I'm back. I did officially survive my first week of teaching, despite several moments there when I was sure I would make a much better waitress/secretary/summer camp counselor forever (still my back up plan.) Thank goodness for Megan and AnneMarie for listening to the sob sessions.

My kids are ADORABLE, still complete babies, but oh so cute! One boy even told his parents he loves me and always sits next to me in our circle.

I finished my plans for this week at 4:00 this afternoon and was even able to go out to dinner and the movies last night and lunch today. Hopefully I won't be as tired/manic this week, too, since everything should hopefully be done.

I have Back to School night this Thursday night and I keep laughing, thinking of student teaching. I was completely terrified for Back to School night--silly now, because looking back I didn't have to do anything!!

We launched our writer's workshop last week and it required me to come up with some stories to model for my little writers. I wrote about feeding the goats at camp--no mention of the goat photoshoot-- and my second day I had to revise my work. I added a stick figure AnneMarie (completely forgot to take a picture of my beautiful illustration) and then modeled how that made me think of another story. I told the firsties that one time AnneMarie and I were creek stomping and fell into the creek. Well, they went absolutely wild and couldn't talk about anything else for the whole day. Every question they had to ask was how we got out of the creek, if we got hurt, did we get muddy, did anyone take a picture of us, etc. If I had been in a fourth grade, one of the kids would have been like, "Miss Smith, that's crazy," and that would have been the end of it. Maybe the first graders care more about my safety?!

On Thursday morning, our first full day of school, I got a new student. Lucky number 13!

Friday we wrote notes to put in each other's buckets. We are bucket fillers in my class, based off the book Have You Filled a Bucket Today?. Their notes to each other were adorable! They mostly talked about how they liked each other's shoes, we'll have to work on complimenting people for their personality and actions, not their clothing. I even got a few notes in my bucket: my little boyfriend said that he liked my hair and my watch.

I know I haven't uploaded pictures in forever, so here are the latest shots (stay tuned this week for adorable photos of our classwork!)

Overtaken by schoolwork...

Books for the first few weeks

To Do list #4237505623

My new homemade planner

Yes, complete obsession with planners.

Reading corner first day of school!

Our first morning message

this area has already been rearranged...

Have you filled a bucket?

Job chart we're starting this week

Check in for lunch so we can maximize learning time

Ready and waiting for kiddies

Chunking wall

Classroom rules, we need to add one voice at a time!