Beginning of the Year

So September came and went before I even noticed!  We have been BUSY, BUSY in our classroom lately learning all our new routines. My favorite new routine has to be our Kindness Challenge.  I stumbled across it on Instagram this summer and instantly knew we had to try it out this year.  

Every week we flip the card to see what our "challenge" will be for the week.  It is a great way to start a discussion about different ways to be kind to one another.  

This week I found a great book in our book order "What Does it Mean to be Kind".  It was a sweet little story about things that you can do to be kind to others.  

Today our challenge was:

It could be my favorite challenge to date because the class did a great job interviewing each other to find out 5 new things about each other.  After they were done we all sat in a circle with our partner and shared one thing we learned.  

We have also been doing all things Apple (in September) and love these activities by Linda Kamp.

We do a lot of acrostic poems at the beginning of the year because the kid get the hang of them quickly and they always turn out cute.  

We also learned a little bit about each other by making Tree-Mendous Things About Me

Happenings this week . . .

We are gearing up for Halloween and FINALLY got our door decorated.  October kind of snuck up on me and so we were a little late getting these bats up!  

This 'batty' idea came from A Cupcake for the Teacher.

This activity gave us another chance to practice writing acrostic poems, which we have done a few times lately.  They are getting really good at pointing out these types of poems when they seem them and are proud that they remember the funny name.

We also FINALLY finished our apple books which took awhile but it's OK, because they are super cool and the kids took a lot of pride in finishing them.  

They are filled with tons of fun facts and all sorts of great apple information.  We got these interactive books from Regan Tunstall.  

There is also a pumpkin version which the kids are really looking forward to now that we're done with the apple one ;-)

Apple Week

The end of September brings Johnny Appleseed's birthday (September 26th) and with that comes apple week!  We had so much fun with all of our different apple activities.  We have apple math centers (courtesy of Sarah Kirby) that the kids are really enjoying!  They love working with their friends on these fun games and activities!

We also had an apple tasting day and even made crock pot applesauce.  The kids told me that I was a fabulous cook :-)

 

We are also still in the process of working on our apple science books from Regan Tunstall. These suckers take awhile but are worth it at the end because we are learning so many different things about apples.  I can't wait to start the pumpkin version!