First Day of School Activities Blog Hop!

Hello Everyone!

I am excited to be teaming up with a great group of bloggers and hosted by Mackenzie from
Brownbag Academics.  This blog hop will give you a number of great ideas that you can use right away on the first day of school. 

Since the first day of school is very hectic for first graders, I always like to break up the long first few days with literature and craftivities that go along with the literature.

My favorite first day of school book is, "First Day Jitters" by Julie Danneberg. 

I start out by telling them how nervous I get on the first day of school, even though I am a teacher.  I will ask them to think to themselves about one reason they were nervous this morning coming to school.  I will then give them an opportunity to share with a partner near them, and then finally I will ask for volunteers to share their jitters coming to school this morning. 

Nancy Vandenberge over at firstgradewow.blogspot.com has a great resource that I use bits and pieces of.  You can get her 13 page download with activities HERE. 

Another activity I will conduct with my students is an I Have Who Has activity whole group.  I will have students pick sticks for partners (their partner will have the same sticker on their stick) and they will share a card.  I will give them time to figure out the words together before starting the activity whole group.

I have the complete short and long vowel packet in my store HERE!!  You can also get the Freebie version of just the short /a/ activity as my store featured download freebie HERE

I always start teaching mathematics the first day of school and one activity students love is this one were they roll a die or dice (depending on grade level) and then practice writing the quantity of number in circle groups of 5 and leftovers.  Building this understand of the quantity of 5 will help ensure they meet the end of the first grade goal of fluency of numbers w/in 10.

Get your copy of this activity HERE  Once we work on this in class then I will send another copy home with my students to get in the habit early of learning at home.  The fact that we have already practiced during the school day will increase the likelihood they will actually do the homework because they already know what is expected of them. 

Finally, since it is so important to work on classroom expectations starting on day 1, I am going to share my Whole Brain Teaching rule cards I created for my classroom.  If you have not tried this method of classroom management then you are missing out!!  I love trying new things in my classroom as long as they work and when I tried the Whole Brain Teaching last school year, my whole classroom management was so much more manageable.  For more information about this FREE resource click HERE.

To get a free copy of these 5 rules to display in your classroom please click HERE

Check out what other teachers are doing on their first days of school below by clicking on their links.  This is a wonderful opportunity for you to get a few steps ahead before your school year starts!