First Day Fun

This is my first time trying to start a linky party! I'm not sure how successful I will be, but you have to start somewhere, right? And I am inspired. It's that time of year where I am beginning to write plans for the first few days of school. I always write EXCRUCIATINGLY detailed plans for the first few days. My mind is always racing trying to remember details about how each child gets home and repeating names over and over while I try to memorize them. The first couple of days bring back those feelings of being a beginning teacher, and writing such detailed plans makes it so there is one less source of stress. That being said, I am always looking for new inspiration and figured it would be fun if we started sharing our most favorite activity to do on the first (or second) day.

Rules:

1) You may only share your most very favorite activity. That means you may only pick one - torture I know! :)

2) Please add my linky party button (and link it back to this post) when you blog about it so that your friends can get in on the action. - I have tried to make this easy for you by including the html code for you to copy. 

<br /><a href="http://havingfunk-1.blogspot.com/2011/08/first-day-fun.html"> <img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqz9HSkGe2oni2gDmLsFvQLdIAZaR7tkc1dV1zGQdDvMi1p2WKd-iGE_0NYesUTGNrfJ9W_Okbp6_97j24R7XoDgn76qwvxcrAoaSkqBwi3ORBkTDAseH-wo8Pj1gT7OLQH4tqD5w2oP8/s1600/first+day+fun+linky+party.png" border="0" /></img src="https:></a>

3) Please make sure that the link you add is a link to your blog post and not the main page of your blog. This will make it so that other people can easily find what you wrote.

Without further ado:

My favorite first day activity....

...is making these faces! I do this on the very first day of school. I am always amazed at how cute they turn out.  I can not take credit for the idea as I got it from my mentor teacher when I was student teaching.  I think she may have gotten it from Debbi Miller???  (Or maybe Debbi Diller... so hard to keep those two straight!)

I supply my students with two googly eyes and assist them in creating their desired hair-do and the rest is up to them! I hang them around our door when I have a hallway classroom. The past two years I have had an exterior door so we have displayed them in the window.  I love how it represents our classroom learning community. It's amazing how much they really do look like each student.  They are so cute that I leave them up the entire year!  I use multi tone face shaped papers that come stuck together in a note pad.  I buy it at my local teacher supply store, but you can also order them from Lakeshore.  You can find all sorts of cool "hair like" yarns at your local craft store.  It is a lesson in patience, since there is only one of me and most of the kindergartners need help gluing the hair on.  I find that it works best to do it right before our rest time so that I can call over students who aren't sleeping one at a time to finish them up.  I also give each student a card with their name typed in a traceable font to help practice writing their name.  (When I was in first I just gave them a blank index card.)

I can't wait to see what everyone else does on the first day!

-Tammi