Miss Amy's Schoolhouse

Today was our first day of kindergarten for the 2013-2014! It was so much fun!  The children were all sweet and excited to be here.  Today they were strangers, but I know by the end of the year we will be family.

For me, the first day of school is always unique every year.  I try to follow the same plan every year, but I always find something new and different to do.  Like a new management system for lunches or a new way to line up.  Today it was a new way to start off the year writing.

The school that I teach at has very strong academic expectations, especially in writing, which  fits well with the new Common Core emphasis on writing.  This year in my Back-To-School packet I created, I added a writing activity, which now turned into our first class book!  I love doing the class books and especially love at the end of the year when I raffle off the different ones to the students.  What a precious keepsake to have for your lifetime!  Anyway, back to the class book.  I am sharing it with you all, because it was so easy to do and the results were fantastic!

We read the book, Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready For Kindergarten.  It is a great first day of school book to read!  I love it because the pictures are so detailed about all the different things people do to get ready for school!  Plus, the author uses alphabet order for each character, which is really fun as well. After we read the story, I had the class go to free play centers which consisted of legos, books, puzzles, and a special color sheet on which they traced the lines using markers, practicing the fine motor skills.  While the free play centers were happening, I called small groups over to work on the writing page.  I had them draw the pictures describing step by step their own getting ready for kindergarten process.  Then I wrote the caption underneath as they dictated to me what happened.

The results are below!  They did a great job drawing pictures to describe how they got ready for kindergarten that morning.  There were lots of teeth being brushed, lots of pancakes eaten, lots of new backpacks, and lots of car rides to school!  They loved connecting their real-life experience with the book!  Here are the pictures:

I finally finished my whole TpT Back-to School theme using the Common Core Skills.  What is a really neat feature just added to TpT is that you can now find items by the exact common core skill!  Makes searching for that perfect lesson or activity that much quicker!  Here are some previews from the theme:

     Hello!!! It is that time of year again!  The time I love to walk through Wal-Mart, and Target and see all the fresh new school supplies!  I've always loved buying school supplies, so I guess it is only fitting I became a teacher!  Yesterday I bought myself some NEON Ticonderoga pencils at Target!  They are so fun and only $2.00 for ten!  Miss Amy will have some very special teacher pencils this year!  (By the way, Ticonderoga pencils are the BEST out there.  They are more pricey, but I promise they are more durable than any other brand.  And I should know, after all I teach kindergarten.  They can be pretty destructive!)
    Anyway, also in exciting news, I've finally opened my very own Teacher Pay Teacher store.  I'm starting off small.  My first thing to offer this week is a series of Math activities that are perfect for individual work, whole group work, or even center activities, all around a Back-to-School theme!  It is great to fill in those days before curriculum starts (which we all know can be a headache to try to plan), as a supplement to curriculum, and especially for new teachers to begin to create center activities!  Here are some sample pictures of the activities: