The First Day of School was a Success!

Hi everyone,
I just wanted to let you know that we had a great first day of school!  Today we spent time getting to know each other.  The children learned what they need to do to be a good listener. (Raise our hand, wait until it is our turn to speak, listen to who is speaking, look at the person speaking, sit like a pretzel, and keep our hands in our lap.)  After that, I read the children The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn.  It is a story about a young raccoon who does not want to go to school because he will miss his mother.  The mother raccoon kissed the palm of his hand.  She told him whenever he begins to feel sad think of the kiss that is always in his hand.  The young raccoon did the same for his mother.  At the end of the story, the children had the opportunity to trace their hands and color them.  I cut out the traced hands and sent them home with a little project for you to do, if you chose to do so!  After our project, I showed the children all of the toys in the classroom and demonstrated how to play with each one.  Each bin is labeled with a picture of the toy as well as the the words.  This is to help the children know what is in each bin, learn that everything has it's own place (very helpful when it is clean up time) and help the children begin to recognize and become familiar with words!  The children then had indoor playtime, lunch, rest or quiet play.

Tomorrow we will begin to learn all about our school rules!

I hope everyone had a day just as wonderful as we did!

Jeanette