[Twinsmom]

My students' first day is this Wednesday. We will not start "teaching" until the following Monday. So... I have three FULL days to go over procedures, rules, policies, textbooks, etc. I am glad I have plenty of time to do that, but I would like to add some fun things as well. I plan to use the necklace glyph, mentioned in an earlier post, a student interest inventory, and a bio-poem. I am still thinking I need a few more activities to do. What are y'all planning to do the first few days?

[missmac100]

I do several get to know you activities such as having students in a ciricle on the carpet and passing some item (stuffed animal, school items etc...) and have a basic question such as "What's Your Favorite Color?"

favorite animal, book, movie etc... The only one who shares is the one holding the item and everyone has a turn to share.

Students like hearing what others like and you learn a lot about them.

I also bought "All About Me" posters which I let them complete in small sections over the 3 days.

This year, I think I am going to also put out math manipulatives and allow the students to explore how they work and also introduce simple math games to see how they work together. I never seem to have enough time to let them explore manipulatives as they should but I think these 3 days will be a great way to allow more "free exploration" before I begin official math lessons with them.

[SusanTeach]

I have my notebook at school where I wrote it all down, but here are a few other ideas for you:

1. Double bubble (or venn diagram) comparing 2 classmates (let them pair up).
2. People Bingo
3. Team Building scenerios (let them get into groups to decide how they'd handle different situations: new student, someone drops something, etc...).
4. Construction paper cut-outs of T-shirts letting them write/draw about their summer break - then hang them up between 2 drawn trees (or let them share and then take them home if you have no place to put them).
5. Word search - using the students' names - you can go to www.awesomeclipartforeducators. com/worksheets/schoolwordsearch.cfm. to create one.
6. Several picture books (mentioned in another post).

That's all I can remember.

[PopcornNhugs]

Someone else mentioned this one and i am going to use it this year.

Group students into two groups. Tell them that they have to put themselves in birthday order, but there is not talking or writing...only hand signals. I will quickly find out who my leaders are and see how creative they can all get.

Also, on the third day or so, once a lot of the rules and procedures are out of the way, I'm going to have my students write letters to themselves. In it, they can include what they hope to learn this year, who their friends are, what kind of grades they hope to get...anything related to their life. I will then pass out envelopes and they will seal them right then and put their name on the outside. I haven't quite decided if I will pass them out around Christmas time (middle of the year) and have them write a new one, or keep it the whole year.

I have always started school on Wednesdays, too. We have found that starting in on the curriculum on Thursday is much better than waiting until Monday. It takes awhile for them to ease into everything anyway. We start doing some of our testing those first few days, too. Monday is the first full day of everything, but you can start Math worksheets, Reading, Language, Writing, penmanship etc.

[Gina TX]

Y'all have some great ideas.

Susanteach, I have arranged my desks into groups of four this year. I would like some more ideas for team building if you don't mind. I think that's something I would like to try.