One Week & 20 New First Grade Friends Later...

What an A-W-E-S-O-M-E week! I had so much fun with my new friends and I learned more than I ever expected from my rock star cooperating teacher. She was so wonderful to me and I am so thankful to have been placed in such a great school. 

I got to teach basically every single day, and on most days, I taught three subjects: math, science and social studies. My kids learned about the past and how different it was to go to school, the differences in technology and the differences in recreation. We got to play lots of "old school" games on Wednesday and they LOVED that.

This was my first full week EVER and I just loved it. I got a sense of what it's like to have to really use time management skills as well as classroom management skills, both of which I severely lack. Maybe not severely, but definitely lack. I realize now that it truly is a process and these things will take time to get used to. I am being proactive in that I am reading up on these things and I took tons of notes and pictures of the cute little classroom that I was in all week. I am using so much of her stuff because it worked. This classroom was very well put together and the kids knew what was expected of them and also knew the consequences if they couldn't follow directions.

Here are some pics of my new friends doing some of the activities we worked on throughout the week. These are from Monday when we made our little cloud booklets. I got this idea from The First Grade Parade (of course).






These are from my favorite math activity that I did with my buddies. I was so proud of how much they learned about graphing and sorting. They were even able to answer some questions that involved interpreting their graph information. They did me proud!!




Here are a few pics from our "old school" game day. They loved it and I was really proud of my ability to come up with this lesson. I am starting to think like a teacher!!!!



Here is a snapshot of one of my little friend's writing journals. During writing workshop, this little gal wrote about Mrs. Brown. Which incidentally started a trend and by the end of the week, I think most of the kiddos had written a story about their new pal Mrs. Brown. Ha! This one says, "Mrs. Brown is the best teacher ever in my life."  Ha! Poor little dear - she's so sorely mistaken! Ha! But I loved it and it melted my heart.
On my last day, we did a really fun mystery box activity that I found and purchased from Babbling Abby's TpT site. (Just another fantabulous teacher that I love to get ideas from - check out her teaching blog here.) The kids went NUTS over it! I bought them some Play-Doh and put it in this little box and attached these cute little labels to it. I did it a little differently than what was included in the packet that I purchased. We did a 20 questions game and then they made their guesses based on what they discovered through their questions.

Ultimately, they guessed that it was Play-Doh and they loved it. When I said my little farewell speech, I couldn't help but to cry and I know the kids thought I was nutso. Ha! But they did make me promise to come back and see them, which I plan on doing the week after Thanksgiving. I love my new first grade friends!

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