First Day of School Books and Activities

I can't believe my brain is beginning to get into 'back to school' mode!

This year my little guy starts kindergarten and my older goes into first, so yesterday while at our local library attending some WONDERFUL summer reading club programs we also picked out some 'school' books!

The kindergarten book choices were easy for me- I have ALWAYS used:

The Night Before Kindergarten

Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten

Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come
and

The Kissing Hand

 but was happy to find some new ones:

Kindergarten Rocks

and this HYSTERICAL story (since I am a boy mom):

19 Girls and Me!

(This would make a great mentor text for writing too- be sure to check it out!)

For my soon-to-be first grader I was going to get

First Day Jitters

but it was out!  I didn't know any other first grade books, so I searched and found:

Pirate's Guide to First Grade:

OH MY WORD!

This book is GREAT!!!

It tells about a boy who truly believes he is a pirate (and speaks 'pirate') for the moment he wakes to 'a slobberin' moist mornin'' (aka his 'great scurvy dog slurped me kisser when I was tryin' t' get me winks!') til his 'captain' (teacher) hands him 'a map where X marked the spot' and he found 'me treasure!'

The illustrations are amazing!  The boy and his surroundings are all in color but then there are pirate illustrations scattered throughout!

The back cover defines all the 'pirate expressions'- I learned a few new ones!

Since I already had a

'Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten'
printable activity for you all to download, I felt the need to create one to go with 'Pirate's Guide to First Grade' for all the first grade teachers out there!

I had my boys give both a try!

First my soon-to-be-kindergartener did the activity to go with Miss Bindergarten:

I L-O-V-E his self portraits!

He added his picture and I wrote his words.

He is all ready for kindergarten!

Next my soon-to-be-first-grader tried out the pirate one I just created!

Before he started I printed the papers and then put a dotted line around the shapes to make cutting less 'stressful!'  You may want to do the same before copying for your students!

We have already read the story a few times, so he was familiar with all the items on the page!

He went right to coloring! 

Then drew himself as a pirate (look at the hook!!!) and started 'decorating'! 

He can't fill in any of the writing yet because we don't have his teacher's name, room number and he hasn't had a 'first day adventure' yet...so it is ready for after Day 1!

Don't try to take that treasure...the sword is set to go down on anyone that tries!

So here are both to download for free:

You can take pictures of the students to put in the frame or have them draw themselves as your 'beginning of the year' self-portrait!

For the pirate one I also included some pirate 'props' to be added to the photo/illustration!

These will make a great Open House/Meet the Teacher bulletin board display too! 

(If you have students with your before those events- we don't have ours until 2-3 weeks into school so parents 'expect' to see their child's work hanging about!)

You can also bind all the pages together to make a class book the students are sure to re-read all year long!

So I hope these make your first day/week planning a bit easier and I hope your new year is 

'A Fiddler's Green!'

(you'll have to read the book to find out what that means!)

Until next post,