Our First Days

Our first few days of school were filled with "get-to-know-you" and learning activities. After Mrs. Johnson gave us a Teacher Test as a way of introducing herself, we introduced ourselves. We found letters for our names and came up with adjectives to describe ourselves. It was so fun getting to know everyone!


After introductions were made, Mrs. Johnson read First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg. This book tells about a girl who was extremely nervous about her first day at a new school. She tried everything to keep from going, but Mr. Hartman made her go. It turned out that she was a TEACHER! Can you believe it? Mrs. Johnson explained to us that even teachers get "First Day Jitters."After reading the book, we created a bubble map. In the middle, we drew a picture of ourselves. In the bubbles, we wrote about our feelings, fears, and excitement about coming to school on the first day.


On our second day, we learned more about our class mascot - FROGS! Mrs. Johnson planned many "froggy" activities for us. First, we read about frogs in our science books. We saw a diagram about the life cycle of a frog. Mrs. Johnson explained that diagrams are pictures that teach you something. (We'll need to know this in third grade.) We made a flip book of the five stages of a frog's changes, or metamorphosis. We also compared and contrasted frogs and tadpoles on chart paper. We learned so much about frogs! After all the fun activities, Mrs. Johnson let us make our own frog from a paper plate! It was so fun!!


During math, Mrs. Johnson read A Quarter From the Tooth Fairy. This book talks about a little boy who received a quarter from the tooth fairy. He kept buying and returning things because he changed his mind so much. But, each time he returned something...he received other coins (not a quarter). We talked about the different ways to make a quarter. Mrs. Johnson even demonstrated using overhead coins.

After the book, we completed a Monkey Math activity. Mrs. Johnson gave us a price list of different letters. We wrote our names, and we computed our total cost. We were able to see who were the most expensive and the cheapest students in the classroom.

We had fun and packed first days of school! We know we have much more to learn, and we can't wait to get started!