Our First Weeks in Pictures (with Freebie)

September 1, 2014

I’ve survived three weeks of school and things are finally slowing down some. Those first few weeks are so hectic with meetings, paperwork, and all those back to school extras. I also hurt my rotator cuff in July and I’ve been having to go to physical therapy twice a week after school. I’m glad for a long weekend to relax and catch up on some things.

Last night, I went to the first football game for my Vols. It was kinda strange since it was on Sunday but the game rocked. We were picked to lose my many people but the game was never close. I have season tickets to the games and I’ve stuck through the bad times lately. I’m hoping we are on an upswing this year.

It poured down rain for a while before the game started but once the band hit the field, the sun was out and there was a rainbow in the sky.
Okay, now onto the pictures of our first few weeks.
We started our time together with this fun activity from Linda Kamp. It was so cute! Linda’s pack really saved the day. I have a craftivity for this book in my Back to School with Books pack that I had planned on doing. Well, our copier that runs construction paper broke and got taken away. Now, my entire school is operating with 1 copy machine that doesn’t run construction paper. Grrr! It’s been 3 weeks and we still don’t have another copier. It’s highly irritating! We did one craft by tracing the pieces on construction paper and there’s just no time for that. Too slow for me and the kids.
For Linda Kamp‘s activity, I pretended like I had been waiting on the kiddos all summer and I wanted to know where they were. I was going to do what they had been doing all summer before they came but we had already talked about that so I had them list something they had to learn before they came into second grade. I got some really great answers.

We also did this page from Linda’s pack. I loved their answers. My favorite answer is below. “Pretty soon, I’ll be able to boss someone around.” 🙂


In math, we started off the year with Amy Lemons’ “Let’s Get Started” unit.

I loved using the silent puzzles to promote teamwork without talking.

I found this cute green owl at Hobby Lobby. I hung it on the cabinets behind my small group table. I love that I can hang cards on rings on the hooks for its feet.

We spent the first week working on Hope King’s paper bag book. I loved how these turned out but they were so much work. Next year, I’m going to have to be more choosy about what is included. Considering everything takes so long at the beginning of the year, these books were a big undertaking.

We have been working on complete sentences. I loved this sorting activity from Teachers Clubhouse and the kids did too.

 We also played the Sentence Showdown game from Teachers Clubhouse to review.

We had Open House this past week. I found these magnetic business cards at Office Depot. I thought these would be perfect for sending home my contact information with the parents.
 These business cards are adhesive and you can just stick your contact information (business card size) on the top. Easy peasy!

I used the format below for my business cards. I just copied them on cardstock and cut them apart. 
I’ve made these editable so you can use them too. You just need to be a Facebook fan to grab these freebies.
https://www.facebook.com/SwimmingintoSecond/app_208195102528120

https://www.facebook.com/SwimmingintoSecond/app_208195102528120
Also, I’ve had lots of questions about my next Reading Street unit. I am making units for each story but they will be slowly posted. There’s just not much time to work on them. Thanks for all your sweet comments and I’ll do my best to get them posted soon.
Have a great day! Good luck to all those who start school tomorrow.

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2 Comments on “Our First Weeks in Pictures (with Freebie)

  1. Oh my gosh, Courtney! How did I miss this? Thanks so much for sharing about it! I love the responses from your class…hilarious! It looks like they had a lot of fun!

    Linda

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