First We Learned the Rules...Of Course

Like most other classrooms, the first thing on our agenda was to learn the rules of our classroom.  We started by reading this little book:

First we read the book and talked about the United States having a Constitution, or a set of rules, that is meant to keep things safe, peaceful, fair, and to protect everyone who lives here.  Then we talked about how we want our classroom to be a place that is safe, peaceful, and fair too.  I told them that I had some rules in mind, but that I wanted to hear their ideas for rules first.  As the children shared, I recorded their ideas onto sticky notes.  Then I told them that we would revisit the idea the next day.  When we came together again to discuss the rules, I had Cara Carroll's darling set of rules already glued down onto our "Class Constitution."  We reread the sticky notes and placed them under the rule that was closely related.  After we made sure that we could all agree to to follow the rules, each kid came up and signed the constitution.  Then they were given a face and a speech bubble to decorate as suggested in Cara's package above.  This is a sample of how they turned out:

Aren't they just precious.  I love, love, love them!  And...it will be an awesome thing to connect our learning back to during our Constitution Week study in a few weeks.  :)