The FIRST Day of School....

We had a TERRIFIC first day of school! This morning we began the day will the Sensory Pool full of letters.  We identified letters, talked about the different colors....and even tried some spelling!  I was really impressed with how engaged everyone was!  I'm happy to report....there weren't nearly as many tears as I expected!.

We cleaned up the letters and started our morning circle time.  The kids sang "Hello Neighbor" and had a great time interacting with each other during the "greet your neighbor" part where they shake hands....and the ever popular "boogey on down" where they dance. During morning circle we talked about the calendar, the month and the day of the week. We also took turns introducing ourselves while we rolled a ball around the circle. The kids passed the ball around the circle and, together, we all counted how many new friends we have in our class!

The kids had a blast playing on the playground. It was super hot....but with so many new things to explore, they didn't seem to mind at all!  They had so much fun riding bikes, playing in the sandbox, climbing on the equipment, and meeting the Weekday School kids. When they heard it was time to line up....I was surprised at how ready they were to go inside and hear the story.  I told myself it was because they were all so excited to learn....but their hot sweaty little faces might have been a clue that there was more to it than that!

Our story today was "Everyone Has a Name" by Richard Browner. The story gave clues about different animals and the kids had to guess their names. The kids favorite animals were the rabbit, lion, turtle and elephant. After reading the story we made a graph to see how many letters were in each kids name. They counted the letters in their name and used a sticker to record it on our graph. After the graph was finished we counted the totals. The kids used the graph to describe which number had the most kids and which number had the least kids. To the kids, it looked like a fun counting activity with stickers....but they were doing MATH!!  And....they were having fun doing it!!

For art today the kids made Name Art. They had to find the secret message written on their paper with paint. The kids had a choice of red or blue paint...some once they realized that both colors mixed together would make purple....we had an unplanned science activity going!!   Once they painted the entire paper they could see their names! When they dry they will be able to trace over their raised name to practice the letter formations.

Everyone was very hungry by lunch time. The kids worked hard all day long and they were excited to relax and talk with their friends. We ended the day with music before packing up to go home. It was a great first day...can't wait for tomorrow!