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

Peanut Butter & Cupcake!

If you've never read Peanut Butter & Cupcake! you need to - as soon as you can.  I was lucky enough to be given the book as a gift from a former student.  What a great story.  The pictures are so fun and it really has a great message about friendship.  It is the perfect book to read at the start of the school year when the kids in your class are just getting to know each other.  

For starters, it is an easy book to work on basic retell comprehension.  It works really well with my firsties as they are still just beginning to become comfortable with that skill, especially right away.

This book also leads to a discussion of what makes a good friend:
How does a good friend act?  What do they do for others? etc.

I wanted to do something that had the students working with a partner-preferably someone new to them so they could make a new friend (just like in the story).

For this activity the partners have to figure out something that is the same about them and something that is different.  For a challenge, have them come up with different same/different ideas.

Click here for a link to this activity!