Calling It A Win

The first week of school is over and looking back I am calling it a big ole win! I feel like we are already settling into a groove and everyone seems to already have a hang of our routine. I might or might not have passed out at 8:04 according to my husband Friday evening, but what do you expect from working your buns off after a summer of leisure. 

We started our week with 3 half days with 6 babies Monday and Tuesday and the last 8 on Wednesday. I loved getting a chance to get to know all of our babies and we had so much fun learning all about our classroom and our school. 

We played a few get to know you games like 

I made my own Cookie Jar game a few years ago and we have used it every year to get to know our friends a little better. I have always used an empty plastic coffee canister as my cookie jar and our cookies are just brown circles with each students name on it. We sing the song and as I pull out each cookie I like to see if my friends can recognize their names so they can come up and get their cookie. It is so much fun and a great ice breaker to get a few giggles out of my friends who might be a little more shy. I am loving these printables from Mrs. Gilchrist's Class  and will definitely be using them next year when I am getting to know my next crop of babies. 

After we learned everyone's names we played Roll a Name where each student got a turn to roll a big bouncy ball to a friend, but before they roll they have to say who they were going to roll the ball to or they could ask the friend their name if they couldn't remember it. After each student got a turn I went around the circle and lightly bounced the ball on each babies head which got the biggest giggles while the rest of the students called out that friends name. 

One of my favorite things we do for the first week of school is read The Kissing Hand

I used to borrow my mother in laws Chester puppet and I even thought about buying my own little raccoon. Sadly I just couldn't justify spending $30-$40 on a puppet so last year I decided to make my own Chester out of felt and I am pretty happy with how he turned out. 

If you have never read this story before I highly recommend it as a back to school read for little ones. The Kissing Hand is a story about a little raccoon named Chester who is scared and doesn't want to go to school, but his mom tells him the secret of the kissing hand. As a mom I am already getting a little emotional about the thought of my girl going to school for the first time next year and I know many of our parents feel the same way about sending their babies off even if it isn't for the first time. Hopefully we can help make the transition easier for everyone and one way we do that is with COOKIES! 

Get it? Kissing Hands!

After enjoying our tasty treat we made a little something to take home to share with mom and dad. I of course forgot to take a picture of our hand prints and we never got a chance to glue the hearts into the palms, but it still turned out as a pretty cute craft. I had each student draw their first day of school on the blank piece of white paper glued to each page. 

 Sadly there is no source for this project. I have it pinned on Pinterest, but the link goes nowhere.

I felt like everyone had fun the first few days of school, but I was ready to get our first full day started and get all 20 babies in the room and get any kinks worked out with our schedule. I have to say we all did a pretty great job on our first 2 full days! Mrs. Douglas is amazing and I know she is sick of me thanking her for being my amazing backup. She cleans up after me, thinks of things I always forget, puts up with my crazy, and just plain ole rocks! We work pretty well together and that just makes everything run like a well oiled machine. Like I always say a busy baby is a happy baby so that is what we do. We try to limit down time as much as possible and we keep everyone busy with fun books, songs, and activities.

Thankfully we didn't just eat cookies all week we actually did a little work too. 

On our first full day Thursday I wanted to really settle into helping our friends make good choices and we talked about being a Bucket Filler and A Bucket Dipper. I found this cute way of explaining making good choices and not good choices on Pinterest of course. After reading Have You Filled A Bucket Today? each student got a turn to tell me either a Bucket Filler or a Bucket Dipper and we wrote them on a happy and a sad bucket. This year instead of earning tokens to fill our cups we are earning sticks to fill our buckets which they can do by keeping their clips on our happy colors on our Cool Colors Clip Chart. 

I was very excited that a few friends already moved their clips up to blue and purple! 

After rereading The Kissing Hand again with all of our friends we made our own Chesters as our very first project of the school year.

On Friday we continued talking about making good choices by reading The Peace Book and learning about our Peace Table. This is where friends will go to work out any issues and sit when they need a moment to calm down. After we read our book we made our own Peace Chesters using hearts. 

After working so hard I decided we needed one more special treat for our first week of school so as our friends were finishing up their Peace Chesters each student got to put together their Recipe for a Successful School Year and then we had to eat it of course

Enjoying our special recipe

Later in the afternoon we made Friendship Necklaces, crowns, bracelets, etc. by lacing colored pasta, which the Little Lady (my little girl) and I had so much fun making the night before, onto pipe cleaners. 

I loved both of these projects and we will be doing them every year from now on! 

I am so so so happy with our first week of school and I can not wait to see how much our friends enjoy everything we have planned for All About Me week next week!