First Day of Fun!

Today was the first day with my new class of eager Kindergarten students.  It was a great day!  I have 17 kiddos in my classroom, but more registered today, so I will probably gain 1 or 2 new kids.  We had a busy first day!  It was hard to get the parents to say goodbye, and some cried (which brought tears to my eyes), but after the parents went on their way, we started a great day.  I always start the year off with a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom unit.  The kids love that book and I do too.  We started to illustrate the first page of our wordless story book. That is all I got too, lol.  After talking about the rules and procedures, we visited the cafeteria and Music class.  At that point our morning was done.  We spent the time before lunch passing out our crayon boxes and crayons.  Of course we had to have the talk about being the crayon boxes mommy or daddy and making sure it was quiet and well behaved.  We don't want to loose any of our baby crayons and we don't want them to get loud and crazy or they have to go to the crayon box calm down time out!  My favorite part is when the kids tell their crayons and crayon boxes to make smart choices.  They're so serious and only in Kindergarten will they take that seriously! Haha!  We made it through lunch and survived recess.  We had just enough time to grade our binders, receive our Welcome award, and then head to the bus ramp.  Where did the day go?!?!  It was a great day and the kids seem excited to be at school.  I think we are going to have a great year if it is anything like today!  I hope the rest of you are going to have a great year as well.

Here are a few pictures of the classroom at the end of the day.  I forgot to take them before school started.  I was very surprised at how nice the room looked after the first day.  Like one of my co-workers said, "We're still in the honeymoon phase... just wait!" Haha!  Even if it gets messy, that is ok because that is a part of Kindergarten!

Here is my view from the front door!  Can you tell I love pink!?!?

 View from the front door:

 Math work station board... I will be starting to introduce those next week.

 Rug

 View of the back

 Color tree:

View from my desk 

This is how I collect the school supplies at Meet and Greet and on the first day of school.  I set out tubs on my back counter, label them with supplies from our list, and have the parents and kids sort them when they bring them to class.  It makes it so much easier to put away all of the supplies and saves me a ton of time.  I have them keep their binder, scissors, headphones, and pencil box at their desk so I can label them.  Everything else goes on the back counter.  I was actually very lucky this year with the amount of supplies that were brought to the classroom.  Woo-hoo!

Have a wonderful school year!  Good luck and Have fun!

~Kristen