First Grade Adventures

So I can pretty much summarize the past month of my life in this way:  wake up, shower, eat breakfast on the way to school, teach, plan/clean classroom/call parents, drive home, plan, eat dinner, plan, go to bed, wake up and repeat.  School has been my entire life.  I have 26 first graders.  Which, in case you haven't been surrounded by 26 6-year olds recently, is a LOT of first graders.  But they're so adorable.  My favorite part of the day is Writers' Workshop.  I love seeing the things they decide to write stories about.  Last Friday, my most favorite student showed me his story that was something to the effect of "I love animals.  Animals are nice.  I love sharks.  Sharks are big." And he had drawn a picture of a shark swimming in the ocean.  I told him it was a great story (and it is for first grade) and gave him a high five.  Then he told me that he was going to start a new story because he is a great writer.  Which he is, but to be fair, I call them great writers when we're on the carpet and I tell them every day about the things that great writers do.  So he's not really full of himself; he's repeating the phrase that he hears all the time.  


I've also started a prize box in my room where students can use their classroom dollars to buy prizes at the end of the day.  I spent about $100 the other day at Target, buying things for the prize box.  Mostly from the dollar spot.  Prize box is another really hilarious part of our day.  The prize box basically has stupid $1 prizes in it--like finger puppets, blow pops, fruit roll-ups, slap bracelets (which I think I had when I was first grade), Halloween visors, sticky notes, etc.  There are lots of Halloween themed things in Target's $1 spot right now, so all my kids think Halloween is right around the corner because we have so many Halloween themed prizes.  We also do our Super Star student at the end of the day.  I found really big star stickets in the $1 spot that say "super star student" so each day whoever gets the most money is our super star of the day.  I'm surprised how into being the superstar they get and how excited they are to visit the prize box each day.  


I promise next time I blog I'll talk about something besides school.