All About Me

Well we officially survived the first full week of school. I am already so excited about this school year and we have barely even started. First I have to brag on my class a little bit because they are absolutely precious! They are so sweet and so well behaved that they make it easy to love them already. I am always excited about the first week of school because I get to know all of my students a little better and I get a jump start on assessing everyone so I can have a better starting point of how I can best tailor my lesson plans to make sure I am working on each and every single students level. You may think this is impossible with 22 students, but it is a skill any teacher can develop with lots of multitasking and a little creativity.

We kicked off our first week of school meeting a new friend who helped us learn all about the different parts of our bodies. If you haven't met him yet his name is Mat Man and he is a really useful guy. Since we are learning all about ourselves this week we will be drawing some self portraits and Mat Man wanted to make sure everyone wasn't leaving out any important parts like an arm or a foot. Throughout the school year our friends will draw several self portraits so we can look back and see what they have learned and how their skills have grown. You will be so amazed how all of our skills develop and change from month to month. I actually think that is my favorite part about being a teacher, well that and all of the sweet hugs! I love getting to be there when a friend has been working on a skill and they have that

After we met Mat Man everyone recreated their very own Mat Man by following my step by step instructions. Direction following is one of the many skills we will be working on throughout the entire year. 

 

On Tuesday we learned about something that makes each and everyone of us special! 

 Our Names!

We started off the day by playing a really fun game and a new song. Each week when we learn a new letter we will sing a song called If Your Name begins with (The Letter) Please Stand Up and whoever has a name that begins with our letter of the week gets to stand up and tell us about their name and their letter. On this day instead of just singing about 1 letter we sang our song and each time I would lay out colorful cards with our friends letters on and if I called their letter they would come up and get their card. Everyone did an awesome recognizing their letter and we had a blast singing our song. 

After we learned everyone's letter we watched a story called Chrysanthemum all about a little mouse who had a very long name. We learned how our words can hurt our friends hearts and that no matter if we have the same name or a different name we are all special because God made us exactly how he wants us to be. After watching the story everyone practiced tracing the letters in their names and then we counted how many letters were in them.

 On Wednesday we read the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. This is such a fun book to introduce all of the letters and my friends loved getting to yell Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. After finishing our story everyone made their very own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree, but their coconuts had letters on them and the letters spelt out their names. Everyone worked to spell out their names with their coconuts and then they counted how many letters were in their name and we transcribed the number.

 

On Friday we read a story of St. Theresa and how God used the stars to create spell out her name. St. Theresa knew it was God speaking to her and she knew God loved her. We talked about how God speaks to us and tells us he loves us everyday and how we can talk to God by praying to him each and everyday. Everyone decorated a beautiful star just like God used to spell St. Theresa's name.

 This week for jobs we worked on a  few different projects. Our first job was to decorate the first letter by using our fingers to peel off stickers and place them all over the first letter of our name.

Next my friends drew a self portrait and practiced tracing their names.

I think my favorite job this week was the self portraits each student created. They all turned out so cute and unique just like each one of my friends.

Last but not least everyone used their fingers to rip strips of paper to decorate the letters in their names.

Since this was our first week of jobs I we decided to take it easy and only rotate through 4 different activities so on Friday we completed our very first journal page. Since we have been learning all about ourselves and our names all week we decided to continue the trend with some more name letter tracing and one more picture of our cute selves.

Once again I am calling our first full week of school a win!!!!