Saturday, August 30, 2014

The First Week of Kindergarten

Whew! I have the first week of Kindergarten behind me! It was really nice to have a three day week too. I have a precious class this year and we are off to a great start! Here are some highlights from the first week of Kindergarten!

The week kicked off on Monday with Meet the Teacher. 


Here is my door! The inside says "Mrs. Chesworth's Class Clowns" and each child has a spot with their name on it. Later in the week, I took I picture of each child dressed up in silly circus gear to go on the door. You will see one of my sweet clowns later in the post! 

Here I am ready to be met!




I always have a Meet the Teacher Scavenger Hunt for parents to complete with their child. It includes things like help your child find their table spot and cubby, find the restrooms, etc. I found the idea on Pinterest and I just tweak it a little each year! I also always make a Step Right Up board so parents can donate any extra classroom supplies that we need. This year I ordered a circus cupcake stand ($6 on Amazon!) and printed what I needed on cardstock with circus graphics of course! It was really easy and cute!  


The last thing on the scavenger hunt was to come find me for a hug and surprise. 
 I gave each child a little tub of cotton candy. You can read more about it HERE.

Wednesday was the First Day of School! I set up a little circus tent photo booth for first day pictures. I made it out of plastic tablecloths! 

Me! First Day of Kindergarten, take 3 as a teacher!

I loved how the pictures turned out! And I have the cutest twins in my class!

Of course, we had some first day jitters! Jitter Juice did just the trick! I loved this idea from Babbling Abby at The Inspired Apple.
 Clearly, Jitter Juice was a hit!

I even got First Day of School flowers from my husband.
So sweet!

The rest of the week was fun too!
We made some Classroom Promises and signed our names promising to follow them.



I also took each child's picture in circus gear! 

This little angel is a teacher's child, so I have permission to share her! These pictures are on my Class Clowns door mentioned above. 

We worked with Play-Doh this week too! Another teacher's child brought enough Play-Doh for the class (THANK YOU! THANK YOU!) so each child was able to choose their own container. I taught them how to make a snake family with their Play-Doh.


Next week we will start turning those snakes into the letters in their name!

All of our writing was super simple! We read Pinkalicious and the New Teacher. The kids wrote my name and drew a picture! Here are a few of my favorites:




On Friday, we went on the BIG KINDERGARTEN GINGERBREAD HUNT! 
This is one of my favorite things all year and I still remember doing it when I was in Kindergarten! All week we read different gingerbread man books. Then on Friday, we planned to have gingerbread men for snack, but they ran away! Luckily, they left us clues so we could chase them around the school. My kids were so into it! 

Here we are looking at the library door! The clue is at the top of the door.


Finally, the clues led us back to the classroom where we found our gingerbread men!

We had to hold them super tight for a picture!!! 

It was a wonderful  (and exhausting) first week of Kindergarten!I'm so grateful for the long weekend to rest and play catch up! Have a wonderful weekend! : )