Beginning of the Year Fun

I am happy to report I am almost finished with my 3rd week with kids.  It is going great and I am slowly finding by groove with this class.  I wanted to share a few things I did with my kiddos during the first weeks.

I did the Jitter Juice the first day of school.  I used the Fun with Firsties pack by Abbey Mullins from www.theinspiredapple.blogspot.com  (I loved this pack, a huge time saver for me! So glad I purchased it.)  I was going to make the "Jitter Juice" punch... but then I thought of dragging a punch bowl to and from school mixing it all... yada, yada, yada.  Especially on the first day of school.  So I figured out a lazy efficient way to do this.   I bought a few of the flavored seltzer water 1 Liter bottles and a bottle of blue Mio flavoring.  I squirted a few drops in to turn it blue and wrapped a fancy lable on it and Voila!  I have special edition Jitter Juice!

We also made these cute backpacks.  They have a list of items first graders need to be successful in school.  On the ruler, they wrote one of the class rules.  Then the students recorded themselves saying what they want to learn in first grade.  We used www.vocaroo.com to easily record and package their recording as a QR code.  It was so easy.  Check out my previous post on recording with QR codes here. 

I have to share a funny that happened while we were recording.  I was teaching the students how to record themselves.  When it was time for them to speak, I would tell them to "go".  Well one of my sweet little girls was with me and I said "go" and she turned and walked away!  SO the lesson I learned was to say "speak" next time!  Got to love those little guys sometimes.  (Maybe not when one tells you he really wanted a skinny teacher this year, not a fat one like me!  OUCH! But that is a whole different story.)