New School Year 2013-14

The 2013-14 school year has officially begun!  It is quite a difference from last year.  I went from having 6 students last year to 9 this year.  I must confess that I really like a large number of students.  I know, most people think I'm totally nuts when I say that but to me there is so much less fussing with a large class.  As always, I held my breath the first day with my students.  Most of them already knew me because I had their brother/sister in my classroom or they had seen me at school last year.  A few were new to our school so I prepared for the worst.  I pulled out all the "extra" fun items from last year, I guess I was going for the "WOW" factor and it must have worked because we had NO tears!!! HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY!!!!!!  All in all my classroom is pretty much the same as last year.  Here are a few pictures.

This is my new birthday wall.

When the child has a birthday

we will add another candle to their cupcake.

This is our "Art Gallery".

We hang up very special pieces of art.

A close-up of our "Art Gallery" sign.

I love the lettering! 

My sweet son and his sweet bride-to-be gave me a Cricut Imagine last year

and boy have I used it!

I'm extremely lucky because my classroom is so large.  We have plenty of space to spread out.  Heck, I'm not lucky, I'm blessed.  I work with the most amazing people everyday.  I never say, "I've got to go to work", I say "I'm going to school".  Work is something you DO, school is something I WANT to do.  Okay, okay enough of that mushy stuff, let's see what we did last week!

We really don't have a theme or set curriculum for the first week.  We call it our "Getting to Know You" week.  We spent the first day taking pictures and talking, mostly talking.  I always try and pull out some paint the first day, because well, everyone loves to paint!  Of course we made an apple, but ours was a little different.  As one child said, "it looks like someone ate it already!".  It made me giggle.

 

I hope you can tell, we used our finger prints for the seeds!

On Thursday, we made a giant apple tree!  Again, we used our precious fingers for the apples.

Here is the special little poem at the bottom of the page.

Friday was a very special day!  It was our first "official" Fabulous Fun Friday and we had so much fun!!!  We made our very special "Friendship Pudding".  Now, if you have never made Friendship Pudding you are really missing out on some fun.  All you need is a couple of packages of instant pudding, milk and an empty container with a lid.  This year we used chocolate pudding and an empty Maxwell House Coffee tin.  I covered the tin with some red (our color for next week) construction paper and we added the pudding mix and milk.  Everyone took turns shaking up our concoction.  As we practiced sharing we also practice learning our names.  It was so much fun, by the end of the day we were all friends. 

 

 

While the pudding was setting up in the refrigerator we worked a little more on our sharing.  We covered our big kitchen table with butcher paper and everyone got big cups of paint.  I was careful not to give anyone their "favorite" color.  There was several very sad faces, but I had a plan.  Everyone got busy painting their masterpieces and then the fun began.  We started swapping the paint!!!  Next thing you know, everyone was calling out their friend's name asking if they would swap paint.  It was so much fun!  Here is our masterpiece! 

Of course the grand finale of our day was eating our WONDERFUL Friendship Pudding.  It was a great first week!