First Grade Fun and Some Kindergarten, Too!

Whew! Every year when school starts I forget how hectic the days are.  I'm barely holding on some days (like today) when I'm trying to cram so much into 40 minute time slots.  I thought I'd do a little update on what first grades' been up to these first weeks of school.

The first time I see them, we talk about rules and procedures (boooorrrrriiiiinnnnngggg, but so necessary) and with the few minutes we have left I read It's OK to Be Different by Todd Parr.  Then, I give each student a 6" x 6" square of white paper and let them do their own version. They only have a few minutes with their papers and markers, but I want them to color as much as they can. Here's the bulletin board I made of all of them together: 

And some close ups:

And my personal favorite:

It says "accesorizing" because she wants everyone to know that it's OK to accessorize!

Today was the second time I saw one of my first grade classes, and we did some painting:

Next time, we'll read some Dr. Seuss and make an awesome collage out of our papers!  This is always a great project to liven up the halls.

Speaking of liven-ing up, kindergarten had some live fun today, making glasses to remind them to look at things closely like artists do:

I just made a template out of old cardboard (I think it was a Pepsi box), traced it 3 times on tagboard, and then photocopied it 30x to have enough for the grade level.  I pre-cut the eye holes for them, they just color with markers and cut them out.  I love this project because it's a quick and easy way to see who has control over their cutting (I keep masking tape close by to tape any mistakes on the back of the paper).  They are super proud to wear their glasses home!