The first week of school can be quite a roller coaster. You’re so excited to jump in and learn about your new students, while almost forgetting just how little and dependent they still are (a HUGE difference compared to how they leave at the end of the year). I’m sure the roller coaster is just as, if not more, windy and bumpy for the students as well. I know for a fact that it’s equally exhausting for everyone involved!
Day 1 was a huge success. No one wet their pants. Only one kiddo cried (for just a second). And everyone got home without a hitch. That’s really all there is to the first day in first grade: survival. Make it through the day. And we did it with smiling faces! 🙂
I tried a new first day activity, following my annual read aloud of The First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg. Each student got to experience the powerful predictions of magic dough. This activity is most definitely going to be another annual tradition for the first day.
If you’ve never heard of magic dough (I hadn’t until literally the day before school started), it’s just homemade play dough that is made without mixing in any coloring so that it starts out white. As students play with the dough, it turns colors and ‘predicts’ how the school year will turn out. It’s also made with ingredients that you most likely already have in your pantry. Like I said, I found out about magic dough the day before school started – I was not about to go to the store at 8 PM on the Sunday before our first day.
I forgot to take a before picture, so this is the “before” but it’s after one good squeeze.
The set-up after making the dough is something that should be done carefully so that food coloring doesn’t show up where it shouldn’t, but it’s not too time consuming at all. You roll it into balls for each student, poke a hole in the middle for a drop of food coloring, and then carefully close the ball back up and put it in a baggie. Each student is given their ball of magic dough along with a poem to explain it’s magical powers of predicting how our school year will go.
For any of you reading that aren’t teachers, but have kids of your own, this activity is easily adapted for at-home fun! The poem can also be adjusted so that the dough predicts anything you’d like it to predict.
After reading First Day Jitters we discussed what it means to have jitters, or be nervous, along with the why’s and how’s of first day nervousness (some years with a bar graph indicating who is or is not experiencing first day jitters). This is when I introduced the magic dough. If it predicts that we’ll have a great year by changing color as it’s worked with, then there is no need for any jitters about first grade!
The reactions of the students to their dough changing colors is priceless! They’re utterly amazed that the dough really is “magic” and are excited to learn that our year is predicted to be GREAT! It’s a very quick, easy, and fun activity to break the ice and ease a few of the unsure kiddos’ minds.
Of course, I can’t do much of anything in school without incorporating some sort of academic something (if you didn’t catch it before, vocabulary was already introduced during our read aloud). As students were playing with their dough, I called out different letters, numbers, and shapes that I challenged them to create with their dough.
I was fascinated with the many different ways students went about making each thing I called out. Some flattened the dough and “wrote” in it with their fingers, others flattened the dough and poked holes or dots with their fingers to create a dotted version, and others made “worms” with sections of their dough that they manipulated into the letter or shape. First graders are so naturally creative!
If you haven’t yet started your first day with students, I encourage you to try out the magic dough activity yourself simply to watch the faces of your student’s light up!
If you’ve already started, there’s no rule that says you can’t predict a great school year on day 2, week 2, or whatever day you’re coming up on. As I mentioned before, an adjustment to the poem could make the magic dough predict something other than a great school year, so it can be used at any point of the year, really! Try it out!
If nothing else, it’s a great brain break between mentally tough activities.
What are some of your must-do activities for the first day or week of school??? Comment below!