Week One, Juggling Act, and Some Short o's

The first week is officially under my belt.  It was two days professional development/work day and three days with students.  It was a long week and I am still E...X..H..A..U..S..T..E..D.

It is weird.  Every year I seem to forget that I need to "relearn" the juggling act.  Daycare drop off, pick up, school, cooking, cleaning, homework, bath time, being a mom, wife, sister, daughter, friend......(you know I could go on).  This year I added another time sucker into the mix, exercising.  For a million years, I have procrastinated, put it off, not made time, made excuses, just flat out would not exercise.  But this summer I finally found something I like and I am not wanting to give it up. And so it becomes part of the "juggling act" this year.

I missed out on my favorite linky this Friday.  But I still had some randomness from my week to share.

First of all...after a long (but good) work day and a long (but good) Open House night, I came home to this:

That would be my Ruby's hair (4 year old).  Oh that girl!!  So after my first day of school--with kids.  We took a trip to get haircuts.

Our first couple of weeks we teach our firsties whole group.  Sound crazy?  I love it.  Since we are departmentalized...they will have all of the first grade teachers.  We take turns teaching and testing.  We pound out all of our "getting to know you" activities and beginning of the year assessments all together.
I was in charge of the "whole body listener" activity this week.  I read "Falling for Rapunzel."  This book cracks me up.  It is a good illustration of not listening and rhyming (it has some great vocabulary too).

Last year I went over a "whole body listener" poster that we found.  But this year I decided to have the students label my drawing (I read Smarter Charts this summer and I am trying to implement their ideas).

For phonics last year I did a lot of Powerpoints for my struggling readers to teach how sounds work and come together to make words.  When I looked back at some of my posts, the Powerpoints were all over.  My goal this year is to create sheets that correspond to the Powerpoints to get the engagement level up, up, UP!

 I can't wait to see how these sheets work out this year.  If you want it, you can click on the photos.  I will be happy to email it to the first three people to comment on this post.  Just leave your email.

Here goes week two!!!