First Week FABULOUS!!

Happy Friday!!  Well, technically it is Thursday, but it is MY Friday.  We have a county-wide teacher inservice day tomorrow, so no kiddos.  We also have off for Labor Day, so the littles have a four-day weekend to relax and recuperate from the first week of kindergarten.

When my kinders came for Entry Conferences I let them pick a Dragon to get their picture taken with.  I used the pictures for their locker labels.

Since we started on Tuesday and there is no school tomorrow, our first week of school was actually only three days.  Oh, and one of those is our county-wide 'early dismissal' day.  Next week is a four-day week, so we won't have our first full five-day week of kindergarten until the second week of September.

Even though it was only a three-day week, I can't believe how HECTIC it was!!  It's amazing how, every year, I seem to forget just how little my kiddos are when they first start kindergarten.  Everything is so new and big and strange to them, and they need you so much more at the beginning of the year than at the end, when they are becoming more independent.  I am very lucky in that most of my kiddos this year were in a pre-k class last year, so most of them are comfortable with using pencils, scissors, glue, and other 'tools of the trade'.  Many of them can write their name, and most of them are able to recognize their name.  Plus, most of them can count to 20 and recognize the numbers 1-10 AND are able to use one-to-one correspondence.  Attendance at pre-kindergarten is not mandatory in my state and there are requirements that must be met before a student can be enrolled into a pre-k class (at a public school).  I wish that we had mandatory pre-kindergarten.  Not only would it provide more jobs for more teachers, but so many more students would be able to receive the building blocks of education that participating in pre-k provides.  Ask any kindergarten teacher out there if they can tell a difference between students who attended a form of pre-k and those had no type of school-setting, and I highly doubt any of them would tell you no.  Oops, I'm headed off into a tangent...  :-)

I am happy to say that we have already packed a whole lot of learning into this first week!  We have practiced having a fire drill, how to eat breakfast in the classroom, how to eat lunch in the cafeteria, how to walk in the hall, how to behave in special classes, and how to handle dismissal.  That's only SOME of what we've done this week!!  :-)

This weekend I'll be posting my Classroom Reveal Part 1.  I've decided to do this in 'parts' since I quickly realized my goal of Extreme Classroom Makeover is going to be more of a year-long process, instead of the few days I had originally thought it would take.  Silly me, dunno what I was thinking!!  :-)  I hope you enjoy this holiday weekend and take some time to rest and relax with family and friends.  Use this time to re-energize for the coming weeks ahead!!  :-)