First Week Back and a Bulletin Board Freebie!

  Hello third week of school! We started back on August 6th with  temperatures of
115 degrees and high heat advisories.    Translation: It's just too dang hot to go outside so all
recess is cancelled.  It's kind of like a snow day but you don't get to stay home!  We had 8 straight school days of this and my kids were getting a little squirrely to say the least.  I have to say though, that I have the sweetest bunch this year and they handled it like troopers.  Me, not so much.
 Otter Pops are my new best friend.

While the sun was blazing outside, we were inside getting to know our new friends, new classroom, and new routines! Here's a look at a few of the things we did the first week:

Every year I have my students make these little goal guys & girls as a way to get them thinking about what they would like to accomplish in second grade.  The booklet has two pages.  One for setting the goal and one for describing how they will accomplish it.  I hang these up in the classroom until the last week of school. When I take them down, we talk about all of the things they have accomplished during the year.

This year in honor of the Olympics, we called it "Going for the Goal!" and added these little

gold medals.

Don't you love the ponytail?


  

Here's a little getting to know you math activity I came up with using a circle map.  

I made this visual and projected it onto my SMARTBoard to introduce ways we can use

math to describe ourselves.

Students drew their face in the center circle and brainstormed ways they could describe

 themselves using math.

We read The First Day Jitters and did a lot of the activities from

 Babbling Abby's Super in Second unit.  I really love her ideas for the first week of school!  Here's one of her activities we did comparing first graders to second graders. 

 I recorded student's thoughts and asked them to explain their

thinking which I added to our map.

With 3 and a 1/2 days to set up our classrooms this year, I still needed a welcome back hallway display idea!   I came up with this quick and easy solution! 

I took pictures of all my new friends on the first day, cut the pictures to fit and

glued them on the little s'mores!

  If you're pressed for time and need a print, trim, and staple kind of idea this is it! 

Wording for K-3 is included.

 You can download it free from my store by clicking on the picture!