What a great first day of school we today!   The children were all so excited to come to class today and everyone signed in and charted their names upon arrival without any hesitation.

During Friday’s Open House, each child created a small project with their parent, tracing, cutting and pasting to create a “Kissing Hand” to keep at school for their first arrival.  Each child was thrilled to find their hand in their work buckets and several of them even spoke their project and the steps they took to create them.

As the children began exploring the classroom, I worked with each child to select some words that had been written on hearts to describe their emotions about coming to school for the first time.  BRAVE   CURIOUS   SAD   HAPPY    EXCITED   EAGER   NERVOUS   SHY   How heartwarming it was that each child selected only positive emotions – they were all happy and excited to be at school, although a few of them were a bit shy or nervous.  Upon identifying their feelings, each child helped to tape those emotion/hearts beside their personal “Chester” (character from the story).

Once the children had time to explore the classroom and complete their “getting to know you ” task with me, we cleaned up and headed to the carpet where we sang a fun GETTING TO KNOW YOU song, said the Pledge of Allegiance, sang God Bless America and even did calendar and picked jobs for the day.  After eating snack (and practicing self-service) we once again moved over to the carpet and read our story, sang some songs and created an adorable craft which supported the story once again.

It was such a great day, full of kindness and enthusiasm. I am so excited to really get to know all of the children and their families.