First week back!

So this was my first week back - with kids.  It's been a great week, but I am EXHAUSTED! 

I stayed late after school today, thinking I would have all of my plans done for next week by the time I left.  Ha!  Not even close.  But, I DID get centers planned for next week.  That's always a hard task for me, especially the first ones of the year - trying to decide what's going to be "just right" for the new group of kiddos.  Anyway, I wanted to share a couple of the centers that I'm going to use for my first week of centers.

One of the centers I am planning on putting out is a listening center.  The students will listen to If You Take a Mouse to School.  After listening, I want them to think of an animal they might take to school.  Then they will illustrate what might happen if they take that animal to school and write a sentence or two.  Here's the paper that I made to go with it.

One of the other centers I will put out is a writing center to go along with the book Froggy Goes to School by Jonathan London.  We've read the story.  At this center, they will pick the picture that represents how they go to school.  After cutting it out, they are going to illustrate and write about how they go to school.  After they are all complete, we can make it into a class book.

Another center that I am planning on having them do is a write the room center where they will sort the students' names by the number of letters. 

Those are a couple things I'll be using next week.  Maybe you can use something too!