Ya’ll, here we go! It’s the first week of school! And this is going to be another year of unknowns, challenges, and changes. We are approaching the year with an open mind, positivity, and excitement. I mean, we are actually starting in-person and not virtually this year so that’s already better!
District Guidelines
- We are required to wear masks indoors but not at recess.
- We can have shared supplies, centers and our rugs.
- We are keeping our enhanced cleaning procedures (wipe down surfaces throughout the day, steam sanitize the room daily, hand sanitizer/hand washing throughout the day, steam mop the floors daily, etc)
Lesson Plans
As always, you can download our weekly lesson plans by clicking on the image!
You can get our EDITABLE lesson plan template by clicking on the image below:
The First Day
Our first day (actually, our first two days) is half days! We’re mostly focused on not losing anyone and getting everyone home at dismissal. We’re also focused on establishing procedures and routines and building relationships!
We start off with arrival. The kids have coloring pages to color. And then we have our very first morning meeting! Everyone says their name and Mr. Greg shares about kindergarten and our classroom! Then we sing!
Our first read-aloud is The King Of Kindergarten. This is the perfect first day of school read-aloud because my students can connect with the story and the character. After reading we make a chart to show what King did to get ready for the first day and what we did to get ready for day 1!
The students draw a picture of themselves as a king or queen!
We also do name writing on day 1! We all write our names on our charts! Then we do independent name writing. These are saved and we bring them back on the last day of school to show our growth!
Then we go to brunch and work on walking in the hallway! After brunch, we use our School Supply Research Project to learn how to use crayons!
To practice with our crayons we color a soccer ball. I chose a soccer ball because it has many different sections to practice using various different colors!
Click the image below to get your freebie!
First Day Hats
Finally, we make our first-day hats! Actually, they’re pre-made! I just have to staple them and put them on the kids!
The First Week
Our first week continues with procedures, procedures, procedures! And more procedures!
This year our district has adopted a new curriculum We are being required to use the curriculum, but we will continue to add in our own fun, creative lesson plans, ideas, and resources. And we will continue to bring the FUN to kindergarten!
We will read the book, Wild About Books and discuss how books help us learn. We will do rhyming words, and an I Notice/I Wonder chart! (Stay tuned for our newest Read It Up resource for this book!)
School Supply Research Project
During our first week and beyond, we use our School Supply Research Project to learn how to use our school supplies. The students generate the rules for the supplies and I record their answers!
To practice with our supplies, we do our supply puzzles. We get plenty of practice with numbers, coloring, cutting, and gluing!
Directed Drawing
Last year during our virtual first week, we did our first directed drawing! It was such a hit that I am making it part of our first-week traditions!
The directed drawing is from Graphics From The Pond! CLICK HERE!
Math
We start math on our first full day (which is technically day 3 of school)! We start learning our number and counting songs and we kick off NUMBER BOOTCAMP!
As part of our Number Bootcamp, we learn to explicitly write the numbers!
Our first math game or math activity is a super simple number recognition game. The idea is just to see if students know numbers. I give each student a number mat and simply say a number. They either point to the number or put a manipulative on the number.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR NUMBER MATS FREEBIE!
As part of our math curriculum, we’re also doing a favorite colors graph! Students will share their favorite colors and use a sticky note to make the graph. Then we will count to see how many of each color there is! We will use our Brown Bear Brown Bear creation for our color graph!
Foodie Fun Friday
Our very first Foodie Fun Friday lesson has been a tradition in our class for years! We make schoolbus cookies!
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