1 week down!

Oh my gosh, I can't believe that the first week of school is already over!  And the best part of it is:  the kiddos are doing fantastically.  I thought it would be more difficult to get the second graders and the first graders feeling like they were on an even playing field with one another and that they are to help each other, not whatever else each other.  But luckily, they have completely proven me wrong!  The second graders are so good with the first graders, and not in a patronizing way either, just in a, "we know how Maestra's class runs, follow us and you'll be fine" sort of way.  It's really cute, and quite endearing.

Ok.  Now the nitty gritty.  I was ridiculously productive today and just feel the need to share with you guys everything that I did!  First off, I finalized my lesson planning pages.  I just made them on word, super easy.  But now I don't know have to pay $10 for a planning book (even though the Dr. Seuss one was SUPER cute.  C'est la vie).  So my morning was spent making DETAILED lesson plans.  It looks a little something like this:

Crazy, huh?  The post-its are on there because they're things I need accomplished right away - they are my priority.  Those things that are not a priority will be stickied below the pink line, and moved up on an as needed basis.

Then I went on to create my reading logs for their homework packets.  The second grade one looks like this:

Pretty nifty, huh?  I modified one for first grade to fit more first grade standards, but clearly as the year progresses and they need modifying to fit their learning needs, these will change.  If you want a copy of them, message me and we'll see what I can do to help you out.  I haven't figured out how to share documents on blogs from your Google Docs, and frankly, it's almost midnight and I am tired.  But I pinky promise I will look into it and post those as soon as I can!






Next, I made these really cool t-shirts for some of my kids to wear.  When I am running centers, etc. I need to make sure I spend as much time running the center as possible and as little time answers little questions and telling kids to stop sharpening their already razor sharp pencils as possible.  So to help alleviate this stress, I made two neon yellow t-shirts.  I will pick two kids (at first at least) to be my mini-maestras.  The other children not working with me will be required to ask my mini-maestras their question BEFORE bringing it to me.

They are nice and super bright so that you can't miss them!

Then finally, and this took the longest, I found these bilingual Brain Breaks here.  I printed them, cut them out, colored the letters, glued them on construction paper, cut those out with a little trim, laminated them, cut them out again, colored some Popsicle sticks and finally hot glued the breaks onto the sticks.  For the sake of getting a picture tonight, I put them in one of our mugs:

Super cute!  But you can't really see a clear example of them, so here is an example of each color:

And now this little teacher is very tired and is shocked that her husband hasn't called 5150 on her yet.  Hope everybody has a great night and a relaxing Sunday!