Welcome to all of my new Super Kids!
I’m so excited to welcome all of my new families to a new and exciting year of learning together. This year I am teaching a grade one class that is full of energy and ready to learn! This past week I had the opportunity to meet my student’s families through virtual opening day conferences. Of course I would have loved to welcome all families into our classroom, but with the times we are living in this wasn’t possible just yet. I’m crossing my fingers that this situation will change sometime throughout our school year together. I still can’t believe that many of my families haven’t been inside our beautiful school yet since their children were in Kindergarten last year and we had restrictions then as well. I view this blog as a change for my families to get a peek into our school year together and to feel like they are an important part of our learning.
Many families shared that their child was nervous about starting school and worried about what the first day would be like. I made a video of myself reading a new book that I got in the summer to help with these worries called “A Letter From Your Teacher: On The First Day Of School” by Sharon Olsen. Many students shared with me that they watched it at bedtime the night before the first day of school. 🙂
The first two days of school flew by. The Super Kids were busy learning routines, learning what recess looks like, and making new friends to play with. Being at school for a full day is always a HUGE adjustment for grade one students. Some think it’s home time at lunch, but we’re getting used to it one day at a time. 🙂
I read the class another book by Sharon Olsen called “Our Class Is A Family”. We talked about how we will be spending a lot of time together this school year and we want to feel safe and happy together. We came up with a few promises for the class contract that we will be making next week.
The Super Kids learned a dice math game called “Tug of War”. This math game practices turn taking, one to one matching, and fair play. It was wonderful to see partners excited to play together and congratulating each other when they won a round.
After reading “The Pigeon Has To Go To School” by Mo Willems, the class dove into our Mo Willems book bin from our classroom library.
Many choose to look at and read the pictures during our quiet time after lunch recess.
We brainstormed and made a list of how the pigeon felt about going to school and how we felt about going to school. Our list included being nervous, shy, excited, scared, and happy. Each student picked a feeling word for the pigeon and one for themselves and wrote it on their book page for our first classroom book. Our book will be put into our classroom library this week. The class was so excited to be authors already and it was only the second day of school!
Friday afternoon we drew our very own pigeons with a direct drawing lesson. We first drew the pigeon on whiteboards before using sharpie marker to draw one on watercolour paper. Then we painted them and got creative with our pigeon’s surroundings. We can’t wait to put them on our bulletin board on Monday.
It was a beautiful day on Friday. After snack we headed outside to play together on the structure before it was time to go home.
I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend and I’m looking forward to seeing my class on Monday. Take care.
Mrs. Didyk