Back to School

What a wonderful Christmas holiday it was. Now it's back to school tomorrow. The plan is to get back into routine of things. Here is a simple plan of how my day will go:

1. Greet the students at the door: I do this every morning and actually get them to shake my hand. They find it a little strange at first, but grow to love it and expect it. I find as a teacher that I don't always get to really connect with each student each day, so this morning greeting is a perfect opportunity. I also have a student help me greet every morning as his leadership job in my class. 
2. Agendas: The students will get out their agendas and I will go around and stamp them looking for parent initials and/or messages. 
3. Book boxes: Since it is the first day of the week, the students will exchange the books in their book boxes. They are to get at least 2 novel/chapter book that is a just right (IPICK) book. Then they are given a chance to fill the box with magazines, story books or other non-fiction books that they are interested in. These books will last them the entire week. 
4. Daily 5 Choose: Students will plan their Daily 5 activities for the week by moving the magnets on the board. (I hope to show pictures of this soon)
5. Morning Meeting/Prayer: We take time every morning to meet at the back corner and talk about our weekend (or in this case, our Christmas vacation). Then I record student's prayer requests in our class prayer journal and we pray together. We love this time. 
6. Review of Have you Filled a Bucket Today?. I am planning to reread this story and talk to students about what this means. Then have student journal about how others fill their buckets and how they plan to be bucket fillers.
7. Daily 5: Then students will break into their Daily 5 jobs for the day.
8. P.E.: At the moment we are working on manipulating objects with our feet. (aka soccer skills!)
9. Recess! (15 minute break for me...)
10. Snack/Read Aloud: I am starting Silverwing. It's going to be awesome and will fit perfectly with our next science unit: Hearing and Sound. 
11. Science: Introduction to our new science unit. 
12. Lunch & Recess: I am on supervision for this one, so no break for me.
13. Christian Studies: We are going to look at the story of the tower of Babel. 
14. Math: I am going to introduce the students to a web site called Xtramath. This will be something they can do at home to help improve their basic facts. I highly recommend this site. I'll let you know how it goes. 
15. Library: At this time the kids are going to quickly write in their agendas, tidy the room, stack their chairs and then head to the library where they can pick out 2 books and listen stories. 
16. Home time!! 

That's tomorrow. Sounds busy and it will be. I can guarantee that I will just as tired as the students. I hope all those teachers out there have a great first day back as well.