WHEW! I'm exhausted!

This was our first full week!  I'm not sure who is more tired me or the kids.  It was exhausting.  At home my oldest cut this arm and had to get four stitches, my dog got sick and had to go to vet, and my Kindergartener daughter fell on a clipboard and hurt her chest!  My kids are full or DANGER!  GEEZ!  I think I need to lock them in the house for awhile.  Lol

Well, back to school.  So I got Workstations up and running this week.  I put them in groups of four or five and did four rounds.  The first day, Wednesday, was a little shaky but by Friday they were starting to get the hang of reading the work board and understanding how things roll.  I'm glad we have one more week for me to walk around and keep things moving.  There are some times the kids just need a little motivation to keep going the whole time.
The highlight of work stations was the word wall words stations.  Smelly markers, gel pens to write with will make any kid happy!  I have a big window by the word wall so I got some window markers.  I let the kids write the words on the window after writing them on the paper. THEY LOVED IT!!  By far a fav!  If you have a window I highly recommend it.  Easy Peasy! and the love it!
Here's a pic of a cutie writing.

 

Another favorite is the word work.  I had the kids making words by rolling dice with beginning letters in one dice and the ending chunks in the other.  Then charting them as real or nonsense word.

We got these nice sheet protectors.  It makes sliding papers in a breeze.  The school just gave each of us 20! What a nice gift!  I'm loving them.  No more wasting papers and no more laminating!!

 

Another fun station, I recently made. 

Magnetic words.  I made a sheet for every unit that we do this year.  It'll be so easy to change out.  Just change the copy and get to work.  Students build the words with magnets and then color them to match.  You just have to watch out for the sneaky kid who looks at the letters and just colors them without making the words.  Caught one doing that today!  He had to make them all and show me before coloring!!  Don't think that will happen again. If you use 1st grade Wonders here is the link you can grab your pack and have an easy center for the whole year! 

 

We have been talking about rules and in social studies we were comparing rules from 1860 to rules now.  The kids thought it was funny that kids had to wear long sleeve clothes and have their ankles covered at all times. 

Anyway we came up with our own rules.  So since we are the Coyotes our Principal always says that we HOWL for success. I thought it'd be fun to come up with an acroymn for HOWL to come up with our rules.  The kids did surprisingly well. They came up with some good rules.  Check out our poster!  I'm pretty proud!  Fun times!