Day 1: Year 2

My first day of kindergarten....


Oh what a day!

When I was blog-surfing looking for new ideas for the first week of school, I saw a really funny little thing a teacher had written. She said someone asked her what she does for the first days of school and she said she didn't really remember. It went something like this "The days are such a blur and I don't really remember. It's like childbirth... if you remembered it, you'd never do it again."

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! So true!


Well, here's how my second first day of teaching kindergarten went:

I'm exhausted, hungry, head-throbbing and COVERED in snot... but I'm alive!

(Literally... the covered in snot part is honest... coughed, sneezed, breathed, and cried on)

I have a class full of CUTE little kinderbabies - TWO of which can already read... I mean no just "cat...an...my...I" but I mean "I can write my name... and Welcome to Kindergarten". One could read every page of David Goes to School. WOW. Can't wait to start DMA testing these little nuggets!


I am SO glad I made so many plans for the first two days of school. The amount of stuff I had planned could probably last me 4 days. But I always feel so inefficient and unsuccessful when I don't get to check off everything on my lesson plans. Mind you, my first days of school plans aren't real lesson plans, they are three pages of paragraphs to walk myself through tons of activities. I still feel unaccomplished, nonetheless.

The first couple hours are the CRAZIEST. That's when you've got 15-22 little, brand-new, never-been-to-school-for-a-full-day-before (or ever) babies and their parents standing around waiting for you to tell them what to do! AH! The kindergartners this year were a little different than my kinders last year (if I am remembering correctly). This year, no matter what directions I gave them, they would much rather follow me around talking in their cute (but loud) little voices. It was so strange. I would take one to their seat, tell them what to do, and I'd be on my way to do the same thing to another student, and that SAME KID was right behind me saying "Teacher! Teacher!"

I was like "I just put you in a chair! How are you already right behind me following me around and how long have you been there?!"

I decided to help the families help me out, I'd make a powerpoint slide show to tell them what to do "put the supplies away in appropriate bins around the room, sign-off on how the child will get home, help them pick out a locker, write their name on their paper, etc."

Didn't help. It was like the stillest flash-mob ever in my classroom! Yikes!

After we got the families, supplies, "where-do-I-sit"s, "I-miss-my-mom"s, "is-it-time-to-eat-yet"s, and "are-we-going-outside"s sorted out, we got to begin our day.

I even wrote lesson plans and can hardly remember what we did!

We read lots of books, practiced cleaning up our crayons and pencils many times, practiced following directions with my "Ms. Temple Says" game (like Simon Says, duh!), made a "No, David" chart, showed how we wrote our names on the first day of school on a chart to do over again at different times of the year, I introduced "Suzy the Super Student" (I made that up off the top of my head when introducing the How to Be A Good Listener poster --- she needed a name!!), we explored manipulatives, practiced sharing crayons by coloring in a blank crayon worksheet, read and colored my "My First Day of Kindergarten" book, read and played the "Who Took the Cookies From the Cookie Jar" book and name game, and that's basically it!

I guess I'll do the adorable Pete the Cat: Rockin' in My School Shoes book and tour of the school scavenger hunt tomorrow... I didn't get a lunch break to set it up during! As well as a bunch of other stuff.

I now have a lot of the little, time-consuming things to do like creating math journals for all of my kinders and firsties, revise/edit the info packet for the parent meeting next week, figure out what's wrong with our schedules and what's up with our duties... etc. FUN things like that.



Time to take the pup for a walk, SHOWER (yuck!), eat dinner, and probably pass out a lot earlier than expected.

I'm so glad to have a job that no matter how crazy or stressful or upsetting things get, it can still make you laugh EVERY day. The kids make me laugh, the situations make me laugh, my coworkers make me laugh... Like Pete the cat says... "It's all good!"