We have Winners and a New Back to School Starter Kit

The Super Summer Giveaway has officially ended ! We have two lucky winners!

The winner of Bundle #1 is: Kristi Haggard

The winner of Bundle #2 is: Laura Schachter

Check your in boxes ladies !

Meanwhile back at the homestead I have been madly creating a new product and updating some older ones. My brand new product should really help you get back to school! I used to use this hodgepodge of activities from all different sources during the first few days of second grade. This time I decided to make my own – that way I would have exactly what I needed and was useful and not waste my time or my students’ time!

Here is my new Second Grade Back to School Starter Kit!
(Don’t worry if you teach first or third grade- I have back to School Starter Kits for you too! Just follow the link to my store and type “Back to School” in the search box)!

New Back to School Starter Kit for Second Grade

Now, I know you can’t see the thumbnails too well here, so scroll down for details!

The official list of activities included is:
Write the Numbers 1-50 in Color and b&w
(Write the numbers 1-100 is a separate file in this zip file)
Capital and Lower Case Letter Assessment
Short addition assessment
Short subtraction assessment
Back to School Question Circle
A Friend Like Me Scavenger Hunt
What I Want to Learn About in Second Grade (with and without sentence starters
in both Handwriting without Tears lines and regular lines;sentence starters included for first and third grade, too)
Classroom Scavenger Hunt
Chrysanthemum – inspired Name Graph and Questions
Fall Antonym Fun Game
Spelling Assessment

But.. let me give you some visuals and short descriptions for some of them!

I always like to assess handwriting the first day of school so here is a quick little page so you can find out if your students know some of their letters. As you can see I included many of the tricky ones like b and d, q, g and p (I think p is tricky because many of my second graders would write the lower case p sitting on the line instead of dropping down under the line)

I also take a look at counting. It is informative to know if kids find this easy or struggle. Sometimes they might skip a number or you may see backwards numbers which is helpful to know right off the bat. I also have a 1-100 sheet included too as well as a black and white version of this one. I know most of you aren’t going to copy this on a color copier for the class!

I love games so yes, I included an antonym game. This is similar to other antonym and synonym games I have but has a back to school theme and some new words.

Books ! In the past, I had the chance to write a letter to students who were going to be in my class and give it to them either at the end of the school year or mail it to them over the summer. I would ask them to pick one book they read this summer and bring it to school on the first day. You could do the same and use that book in this activity. You could also ask students to read a book in the classroom during the first few days of school.

This activity requires you to pair students up as you see fit. Depending on the student, they may need some assistance from you to complete this activity. I also have a modified version included if you’d like to use it that is shorter and requires less writing.

I teach second grade and every year on the first day of school I read Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. One of the things I do is make a class name graph. I included this page if you wanted students to do their own. Then you can ask questions and do some math with the graph in addition to discussing how everyone’s name is unique and special.

The kit contains cards for a scavenger hunt that names important locations in many classrooms and common items that children need to be able to find. Directions of how to use them are in the kit. It’s a fun first day activity to do pretty early in the day!

Also, if you like long images, looking at some sample pages on this may be right up your alley!

I hope this kit ends up being helpful for some of you as it is for me! You can see it at my Teachers Pay Teacher’s store by clicking on any of the images above or click here. ~~The good news? To celebrate back to school it’s on sale for almost 50% off!~~ Wow!