First Days of School Photos

This is how we create a story map. Children pair up on either side of the bulletin board paper to paint their character. What a great way to start the year working together!! I "pre-fold" the paper into sections - the fold line help the children see where their paint stops. I pin this to our "Circle Time" bulletin board where, on another day, we add color word cards and character pics to the map, while retelling the story.

Each child has a sentence strip cut in half with a set of dots representing each character. We retell the story together, reciting the text and add each dot together. I use this to teach appropriate use of glue and to assess story retell, left to right, attention span, etc. I chose not to use characters, but only the colors that represent the characters.  Since K's are such literal thinkers, this allows them to think in a more "abstract" way - which promotes number sense.We wear this as a headband when completed.

This is a page I downloaded.... I added the lines for cutting (later). I carry this page on our school-wide character hunt and color each as the children find them. After the hunt, the children color their own with markers. I ask them to outline the character with marker and fill in with crayon. I use this activity to discuss appropriate marker use, assess fine motor skills, recall, attention span, attention to detail, etc. At another time - usually on the next day, we practice appropriate scissor use and cutting on the lines to make character cards which go home in a decorated bag.

Carson Delosa now has a bulletin board set of Brown Bear with Eric Carle's illustrations. This year I will use these for our character hunt, placing characters in strategic locations that the children will visit often.
After the cards are cut, we put them into this is the bag to take home.  The note on the front asks parents to send something back to school the next day that is their child's favorite color. The child dictates to me their favorite color and I write it on the "blank line". This activity helps to ensure that parents see the cards for retell at home and gives them an opportunity to reinforce what we are doing in the classroom.
We use the painted story map to sort the items brought from home, counting for "most", "least", "same", "equal", etc.

This is another option for story retelling. The bears are precut by a parent. I normally don't precut anything, but for this activity, this early in the year, cutting the bears is not my priority for this lesson. The children glue the bear to the front of a toilet paper tube and roll their story strip up and put it inside the tube to take home. This is how we take home our headbands now, but you could do this several ways.

I used the same page of characters to make a sorting page using m-n-m's and/or Skittles.
I ask the children to tell most/least/same/etc. We also attempt writing numbers to represent each set. This tells me exactly where I need to start with my math instruction and how to group my children so that each table has a diverse group of abilities.