I wanted to show off this welcome bulletin board outside my classroom.  I am a BIG believer in covering bulletin boards in the kids' own art, but obviously I could not do that for the first day of school.  The school had hung these new bulletin boards outside our classrooms over the summer, and mine was covered in owls - yeah!  So....I looked on Teachers Notebook and found this adorable owl welcome banner to print, cut, and hang. Here's the link to the shop where I found it.  I downloaded the black and white ones for FREE here.

And here are some of my beginning of the year Fine Motor Tubs.  The kids do these for a few minutes as they arrive and unpack in the morning.

 These are those foam cubes that the Dollar Tree carries.The goal is to use the chopsticks to build towers.  I have had the "training" chopsticks since my own kids were little.  I believe we got them when we ate Chinese/Japanese food at a restaurant.

  Most of these spinning tops came from the birthday party section at the grocery store.

I have wanted to do this  marble and bath mat activity that I saw on Prekinders.com for a long time.  I saw the little ducks on clearance at Target this summer and knew it was time to stop thinking about it.