First Day and a Giveaway!
Posted by Diane Badden on 09 Aug 2012 | Posted in: Drawings and Giveaways, Teachers and Teaching
Y’all know I have a weakness for school supplies, right? It’s a mini addiction. It’s not as severe as my love for chocolate, but it runs a 
close second. So far this back-to-school season, I’ve purchased pens, notepads, crayons, paper clips, binder clips, hand sanitizer, folders…the list goes on! Even my colleagues have begun to raise their eyebrows at my stash! But I have a plan.
During the next three weeks, we’ll have five giveaways. (I think I just heard a “Yippee!” or two. 
) Each giveaway winner will receive a free book from The Mailbox and some back-to-school supplies from my stash. It’s my way of saying “Thank you for striving to be the best teacher you can be!”
So let’s get started!
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What’s your favorite first-day activity? |
Post a comment before midnight EDT Monday, August 13. Please include the grade level of your students. Then you’ll be entered in our first giveaway!
Love ya!
Diane
Congratulations to Kerri! She’s the winner of our giveaway!
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151 Responses to “First Day and a Giveaway!”
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My favorite first day activity is student interviews. Students pick a partner and then they interview each other with specific questions. After the interviews are over, the students present their partner to the entire classroom.
Today was the first day of school. I teach preschool special needs in an elementary school. I enjoy the story The Kissing Hand. The students’ hands are then traced and each child decorates their hand (today was using markers-could be heart stickers, paint etc.) and brought home to their family.
I teach Pre-K in an integrated classroom. I hand out All About Me white lunch bags at an Open House prior to our first day. The bag contains a few Welcome ‘goodies” like a pencil and apple stickers and include directions for families to decorate the bag and fill it with 3 items that will tell us about their child. We then will share our bags the first week of school. The highlight is when the teachers share their ‘All About Me” bags. What fun and a great way for little ones to feel welcome.
I always make a “friendship” salad on the first day of first grade for our snack. I get various fruits that each students gets to add to a large bowl. As they add their fruit they talk about what makes a good friend. At the end one students adds whipped cream (or yogurt) and we mix it all together. While mixing I talk about how being a good friend isn’t just one of their ideas, but all of them mixed together.Just like one piece of fruit wouldn’t taste as good as all of these together. It is enjoyable for the students and works really well in giving them social skills language.
Oh, I teach third grade
My first day activity is a getting to know you activity- this year we will make a pie graph using their birth months. We are going to have so much fun!
Reading the kissing hand of course!Favorite book - I still get tears in the back of my eyes - and this year I am sending my first born to college for the first time. Whole new meaning to the “first day” this year for me. My first day is also my youngest’s first day of high school, my daughter’s first day of her senior year, and my oldest son’s first day of college - I exhausted already!!! Oh and nervous - I love my job but that first day I am a bunch of nerves!!!
I love playing People Bingo on the first day. It gets my high school kids up and moving and getting to know each other.
I teach threes and fours and always take a picture of each student when they come in on the first day. This picture is used for many activities throughout the year. We also sing and play name games throughout the first week. I enjoy reading Spot Goes to School by Eric Hill because we can compare our school to Spot’s and the children enjoy lifting the flaps.
I teach 2nd grade, and as a character/class family building exercise, I like making “rotten banana” fruit salad with my class on the first day of school. As we assemble the salad, we compare the pieces of fruit to qualities a good classmate might have. Then I pull out my rotten banana and try to add it to the salad. Amidst a chorus of “No’s,” I explain how one rotten banana can spoil the whole fruit salad(or classroom game/activity). As they enjoy their snack(without the rotten banana), they also complete a color/writing page of a bowl of fruit. The students must label each piece of fruit with a word/definition/sentence of a positive characteristic they will try to exhibit or that they will look for in their classmates. The students always love it.
My favorite first day activity is making t-shirts (paper) with drawings by the children about themselves. It lets me get just a glimpse of who they are. Kindergarten is so fun!
On the first day of preschool we day a scavenger hunt of all our centers indivdually with each child and talk about the center