Our First Day!

Today was our first day back at school!  Well.... our first day of "real school" :)

Monday night we got everything ready - shoes, uniform, backpack, lunchbox and red bag with 8-10 things that represent Luke to show and tell.

School starts at 7:45, but we were needing to run through Starbucks (duh!) and be there in plenty of time to get my classroom open, walk Luke to class, take a few pics, etc. so we left before the sun was up.... which stunk for pictures at home.

Flash on = washed out.

Flash off = blurry.

Oddly enough - my iPhone does a better job in these situations.

Mason (and his cowboy jammies and crazy cup) wanted to come with us.... and not just come with us - drive us. :)

And Griffin waved bye bye about 32 times :)

When we got to school the light was better and I was able to take another picture - except he was NOT in a mood to smile because he was READY to get in the classroom!

We fist bumped goodbye and he was off!  Such an independent and confident big boy :)  

Thankfully, when I picked him up he held my hand all the way back down the deck. hahaha

Meanwhile in my classroom - I had my six classes back to back for 25 minutes.  My voice was totally gone by period 3 which made the last half of the morning SUPER fun :)  I did a quick introduction of myself and went over their binders and then did a really fast and fun activity (I'm going to try and post more teacher ideas periodically for all my teacher readers!).

In their table baskets I had a few pencils and a pad of sticky notes.  On the sticky notes they had to write a "tweet" with the hashtag #mathis

They could write whatever they wanted as long as it was appropriate and 140 characters or less (just like Twitter!).  On their way out of class they stuck them on my whiteboard and then later in the day I went through and highlighted a few with little bubbles and my own hashtags in return...

Compliments always go far with me :)

In case you're not versed in middle school handwriting, the one below says #mathis fun because I get to have food in class :)  Last year I let them snack - this year it's a new policy, hence my #uhoh, #notanymore and #hangry hashtags :)

 I didn't tell them that I would be responding to them - so it will be fun to see what they think tomorrow :)

I also picked a few that I'm going to use as "discussion points" or prompts for a Math Journal....

"#mathis the universal language" - Do you agree or disagree?

"mathis not used in real life" - What do you want to be when you grow up?  Do you think you'll have to use math in your profession or home life?

Today is a full day for me and another half day for Luke - prayers that I can actually speak (and swallow - since I haven't really eaten in a couple of days!) :) hahaha  Both important functions.

Thank you for all your sweet "First Day encouragements" on Instagram and Facebook!  I appreciated all of them!!!  Y'all are so sweet :)

Don't forget that today at 8 am CST my What Griffin Wore blog goes live with new clothes!!!  We're making room for Fall over here!!!