Day 1 of the school year...

Yahoo, the students arrived today.... Where did the day go?  It seemed to disappear in a whirl!  We had a fantastic reunion and really did have a lot of fun beginning to get to know our new environment and one another. We had an awesome scavenger hunt with some very tricky close up photos to be located and extended by sketching.  This was an awesome way to find our way around the class and work out where everything is!

We had our first early morning jog followed by fruit and water break while we chatted on the deck!  ( An idea I picked up from Jo at Raumati Beach!

The highlight of the day for me was sharing a story about a teacher (me) who was reported to have 'stolen' an apple, the story grew and mistrust of teacher grew.  https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AbVguMMOMFz2ZGhjOGJtcnNfNDJjeGNwZHFjZw&hl=en_US Ideas shared by Caroline in the Back to School Google Form. 

We went over to the Recreation Ground across the road and played with the feathers from a feather pillow in a swirly whirly wind!  After a good play and photo session I asked the learners to gather up all the feathers to return to the pillow.  Of course after about 10 minutes it was obvious we would never gather in every feather! The lesson is that once our words are out, it is difficult, if not impossible to gather them back in.  We need to be very careful about what we say!  This was a great lesson and very well reported on the blog by Laura and Anahera.
http://stmarys-room6.blogspot.co.nz/2012/01/day-1-2012.html

As I reflect on our first day, I am celebrating many moments of joy.  I am reminding myself to break sessions up into small chunks with many little chats and lots of action in between!  I am reminding myself to plan less, well plan to do less of the plan, and do what we do do well!
A great first day!