Favorite Friends

Oh my goodness the first two weeks of school have knocked me out. Completely. There are at least eight ideas bouncing around in my head that I've had no time to write about. It's wrecking my whole reflection plan.

Last year I wrote speech bubbles for a bunch of Mo Willems' characters hanging around our classroom. This year, thanks to the brilliant suggestion from our librarian, I had the kids do them instead.

I shared the ones I had created last year that couldn't be erased with the students. I talked about how I had looked at the characters and thought about what they might be thinking that would be about first grade. Then I sent them off in groups of three to do the same. I was concerned that this was a bit of a stretch. I was completely wrong.

I'm an especially big fan of the mom and Trixie from Knuffle Bunny. In case it's hard to read, mom is saying, "Why don't you like first grade?" Her facial expression is perfect. 

Trixie looks exactly like a younger sibling who is desperate to go to school with her older sister. 

It took a bit for us to get the spelling, upper and lower case letters, and punctuation correct, but they stuck with it and worked together. It was a highlight of the start of our year together.