First Day!

The first day of school was on Tuesday! For the first two weeks we are only going half day so that we can schedule conferences with parents & their student as part of the WA Kids requirement. For more information on WA kids you may visit their website.

The first day was not bad. I am use to full day so it went by really fast and I felt I was just cramming those poor kids with information. All the Kinders came in to the Kinder playground then the duties gave them name tags to help teachers identify their students. The bell rang and they lined up. Some parents walked into the class with their kiddo to make sure they were settled. Their first assignment was to color a first day picture, besides one student who crying they all seemed ok so I had them say their goodbyes. I felt bad because one parents asked if she could stay all day and I had to say no. What do you guys do on the first day with parents? Last year I had a few stay and it was too much to handle, not enough room, and a huge distraction.

I walked around and wrote the kids names on their paper then we went to the calendar area and sang a song. I played a silly song so that the kids could let loose a little and they did just that.

A parent came in later after having dropped off her little girl and while I was talking to her the little girl who had been crying decided to run out the door (to the playground/street)! I won't lie, I freaked out a little bit! I had to run and get her so luckily that parent was there to help out :)

We talked about rules for the classroom and what we need to do to listen and learn. Many were very helpful so that tells me that some did attend preschool or some sort of school setting prior to Kindergarten.

It was pretty much procedures the rest of the day. I took them on a tour and we visited all the important areas (office, library, Gym, music, art, cafeteria and the 2 playground areas). I thought it was:( important for the kids to practice getting lunch as this is a new procedure and I wanted them to at least have an idea of what they are expected to do. Our lunch ladies were a bit grouchy last year so I didn't want that to happen again but it didn't quite work. :( We have 5 Kindergarten classrooms; 1 English & 4 Bilingual. The English classroom has 30 plus students with 25 being our max! Needless to say lunch was CRAZY!!!

After lunch we scrambled our kids out of the lunchroom... with 2 minutes left of our day we headed to our classrooms. The bell rang but I felt it was important for me to address the going home procedures so I kept them a little longer. I think parents were probably wondering where we were but I feel that this part of the day could have been a break it or make it thing for me and the rest of the week. I'm glad I did it!

Dismissal was a little stressful... I want to make sure I send off these kiddos with the right person and even though I had a list, it made it hard when some people were not as understanding with the process.  I hope that by now they know that their child's safety really is important to me. :)

The afternoons was way easier. I only had 3 parent conferences and it was nice to get to know the parents and child in a different setting.

So, how was your first day?!