Five for Friday: We made it!

I almost made it through the first full week back and I'm exhausted. It takes A LOT to make me tired. LOL! The teacher work day was on Monday with Open House that evening but we had our orientation on Wednesday with the incoming Kinder families. There is much to be done in preparation =)

My very dear Kinder teaching buddy found this cute lamp to accent our reading super hero theme. It is awesome and the kids love it! Thank you Lisa!

The kids started arriving so we began separating and organizing all of our supplies for the year. I had to go back in the evening for a couple of hours because there was much to be put away =)

I follow the Kindergarten Teachers Unite page on Facebook and these little chairs seem to be the new thing. I had to throw away my old bean bag chairs so I'm going to try these out. The kids did a great job using them today so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. They are in my reading and library area.

Phew! The first day of Kindergarten may be the longest of the year. Teaching the routines takes forever but I hope it saves us time in the long run. I have a handful more than last year and it really seemed to make a difference. I told my friend that the beginning of kinder is like running a marathon... the first couple of miles are definitely the hardest until you get into that rhythm!

These are some of my favorites for teaching rules in school. "You Get What You Get & Don't Throw a Fit!" is great as is "It's Hard to be Five". We read all of these on the first day and related them to rules we were going to establish in our classroom.

My boys are getting so big. We didn't have any tears or fighting to get up for school (so far). This makes me one happy MOM!

I told you that I was going to try the BLOOMZ app out. I invited the parents in my classroom the night before school and had almost everyone signed up by the next day. They LOVED IT! I took pics of the kids getting off the bus as well as more throughout the day. I was able to send them thru the app and tell the parents what we were doing. I received a lot of positive feedback. If you are interested in trying it out, you can download it onto your phone or tablet. It's absolutely free and it seems to serve as a great correspondence tool between home and school. You can have a volunteer set up, send private messages, organize your classroom calendar, and much more. It's awesome!

LOL! This is what our counters look like in the morning just to get out of the door. It's nuts!

We made our Costco run to get all of the items we were going to need for those lunches!

In going along with our Superhero theme, I gave my kiddos starburst treat bags with a little message them. I thought my helpers were going to get the work done but I think they might have done more snacking. LOL!

Have a relaxing weekend!