Ya’ll, here we go! It’s the first week of school! This year is going to be a good one! We are approaching this year with an open mind, positivity, and excitement.
And if the first week isn’t crazy enough, ya’ll, we bought a new house and our closing day is Friday of this week. So, my class will have a sub on day 5. It’s ok. Everything will be fine. Right?! Because of being out on day 5, I won’t be starting ABC Bootcamp until next week. I usually like to start on Day 3 but this year, it just won’t work with our schedule. I don’t want to start it and then have to a miss day of doing it right after starting. You always want to be consistent with ABC Bootcamp! Always start it when you know you’ll be able to continue it every day!
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 and making sure we get fed! We’re also focused on establishing procedures and routines and building relationships! Oh, and we make sure everyone knows my name is MR. GREG and not “teacher”. This is important so when someone asks who their teacher is they can say your name! Trust me. On day 1 no one leaves until they know my name!
We start off with arrival. This year the kids will have our new morning bins/morning tubs/STEM bins to explore and play with. 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!
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!
We will read The Queen Of Kindergarten and discuss all the things we did on the first day of school! Then the kids will draw a picture of themselves as a king or queen!
We will read the book, Wild About Books and discuss how books help us learn. We will do a notice and wonder chart and work on comprehension!
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! These puzzles are great for cutting practice, coloring, following directions, and learning how to use our glue sponges!
Another way we practice with glue sponges is using squares of paper! I cut the squares and the kids glue them on paper.
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.
The next day, we explore our manipulatives more. Then we do a counting game. I give the kids paper plates. I say a number and we put the correct number of manipulative on the plate! This helps me see how well we follow directions if we have one-to-one correspondence and know numbers!
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR NUMBER MATS FREEBIE!
Foodie Fun Friday
Grab our Foodie Fun Friday creation for all the details and directions for these and 34 recipes!
Our very first Foodie Fun Friday lesson has been a tradition in our class for years! We make school bus cookies! And it’s not even on Friday! We actually do this on our second half day of school!
We also do Friendship Salad this week! This lesson is all about establishing the classroom we want. Kindness, hard work, sharing, happiness, and NO ROTTEN BANANAS! This is just fruit salad. After we add all the ingredients, I pull out a rotten banana and the kids scream that we don’t want that in the bowl and we talk about how we don’t want any rotten bananas!
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2 comments
Jason & Greg…I remember seeing a video segment on how Greg makes his perfect circles for his circle maps. I think it involved a paint stick. Can you refresh my memory on where to find that clip?
Yes, a paint stick with holes drilled in it!