Back to School: Activities for the first few days

Over the next few days schools will reopen, it’s time to plan some nice activities for the first few days.

An earlier blog post was about organising the classroom on the first day along with some suggested activities.

For Junior Infants I would begin each morning with some fine motor activities, play dough, beading and lacing. Senior Infants could also work with similar activities. If you are using the early assessment pack, it would be an ideal chance for the teacher to observe some of the children.

Reciting nursery rhymes and singing songs with both classes will also work on phonemic awareness. Sites such as Literactive.com have lots of activities for the interactive white board. Literactive focuses on one nursery rhyme and has additional activities such as sequencing and jigsaws for each nursery rhymes also. I recommend working on one nursery rhyme each day for the first few weeks.

If you are beginning Aistear, the first few days are the ideal opportunity to focus on the story, the oral language and other activities that link to the topic. I try to use traditional tales as my first topic in Aistear. Tales such as The Gingerbread Man and Little Red Riding Hood allow lots of integration with nice activities for the first few days. Retelling the story using picture prompts or masks, play dough activities for fine motor, class discussion to introduce the concept of characters are some of the many activities you could use in the first few days.

Storylineonline is a great site where children can listen to stories read by a number of actors. It may not have traditional tales but there are nice stories for class discussion.

For the first few days I wouldn’t start any workbooks, the first few days are about establishing routines, classroom management and getting to know your new class. While the children will be anxious to get started on all their new books I would take the time to enjoy doing lots of different activities instead.

If you have any questions on this blog post feel free to send me an email, or comment below to share some ideas for activities for the first few days.

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