Fun Back to School Lesson Ideas - Five For Friday

Happy Friday Saturday, Friends!

I hope you have a had a GREAT week! Our week has been CRAZY BUSY because it was our first week (well 3 days) of school!!!  I can't believe we are really back!  :)

I am so excited to share with you some back to school activities from our week! We are linking up with Doodle Bugs for Five For Friday.

Here we go!!!

We started off our first day back to school by reading one of my favorite books- First Day Jitters. 

The kids love this book (even in 4th grade when they have already heard it before)!!! I tried something new this year that I came up with this summer: a Jitters Jar and Jitter-Free Jellybeans. I am so happy they were a hit! I know I talked about these before in one of my summer posts, but basically the kids wrote all their jitters about the new school year on sticky notes. Then, they crumpled their jitters up and locked them away in our "Jitters Jar." Finally, they ate "Jitter-Free Jellybeans" to ensure that they would have a great, jitter-free year! I also did some other activities to go along with this book. You can view the unit here in our Teachers Pay Teachers Store. 

I gave classroom rules a bit of a twist this year. I decided that I wanted my classroom to focus around the theme of "treat others how you want to be treated." So, as I started thinking about that, I came up with a "sweet" idea: candy. I decided to play off the word "treat" and create 3 rules using candy. You can see my rules below. :)  If you like them, they are included in my Officer Buckle and Gloria Back to School pack.

Amanda made a cute anchor chart to review cafeteria expectations! We got the inspiration for the lunchbox template from Rowdy in Room 300. She has an awesome freebie- Cafeteria Expectations Craftivity. Click here to go to her store. 

We also read Scaredy Squirrel on Thursday because we had a fire drill on Friday.  You may wonder what they have to do with each other.  :O)  Well, in our Scaredy Squirrel pack in our TpT Store there is a sheet that has an exit plan on it.  We filled that out and talked about what we would do during a fire drill depending on where we were at the time.  It was a great segue and we did a few of the other activities in that pack, too!

Finally, we participated in a Back to School Blogger Exchange!

We were paired up with sweet Amy Marie from The Unique Classroom!  I know Amy Marie had a tough job because she was shopping for two people instead of one, but she did an awesome job!  Here is our gift!

Now, Amanda said that we are good at sharing.  And we are.  But this gift is going to make it hard to share.  I will let Amanda have the adorable owl bath mitt since her theme is owls (Amy Marie wrote on the tag that it could be used for a dry erase board cleaner!!  Adorable!).  But as for the rest...we are still working it out.  Amanda does also have zebra print in her room and she is obsessed with chevron right now...so there may be a little tug of war going on soon as to who gets what...but that's what happens when there is a great gift!!!  It's hard to share!  ;O)

Thank you Amy Marie!!!  And don't worry!!  We'll work it out!  I promise!!

To see more about the Back to School Blogger gift exchange hit the button above and check it out!  :O)

Have a great weekend!
:) Stacia