It’s the beginning of the year, so that means the focus is on procedures, names, and starting to teach content in fun, engaging kindergarten-friendly ways! This blog post is packed with everything I have done in my classroom during week 2 of school. These ideas span years of kindergarten!
This year is a little different for me because I get to be a stay-at-home dad, so I can spend more time with our daughter and prepare for our second daughter, due on December 21!! So, each week for Schedulin’ Sunday, I will post ideas and resources that I use in my classroom for that week in the school year. Each post will also contain links to previous years’ lesson plans!
Kindergarten Lesson Plans: Week 2
Click the links to download our FREE lesson plans for week 2 and the beginning of the year!
2022-2023
2023-2024
2024-2025
You can get our editable lesson plan templates by clicking this image:
Kindergarten Lesson Plans: ABC BOOTCAMP
Week 2 means it’s ABC BOOTCAMP time! We start ABC BOOTCAMP the second week of school, so we can start on Monday and get a whole week of learning. Not only are we learning sounds, letters, letter formation, working on fine motor skills, and more, but we’re also establishing solid routines. ABC BOOTCAMP works in any order, with any curriculum, or as a stand-alone curriculum. We follow the order of our required curriculum, so the sounds for week 2 are: M, A, T, D, and O. And yes, ABC BOOTCAMP is aligned with the science of reading and uses research based best practices.
For each letter/sound, we do a circle chart, explicit handwriting instruction, and make a hat!
These are the new hats included in our TKS BOOTCAMP kit. The students get to choose from two hats. One requires a little assembly, and the other is just color and cut.
Phonemic Awareness Bootcamp
This week, we also start Phonemic Awareness Bootcamp. We know how important phonemic awareness is for our students. We start phonemic awareness with sentences. And we connect phonemic awareness to concrete objects. This week we learn that sentences have a “who” and a “do. We get to identify the who and do, and we get to make our own fun sentences.
Beginning of The Year Read Alouds
This week’s beginning-of-the-year read-alouds focus on names, being responsible in the classroom, and having fun!
Miss Nelson Is Missing-this classic is a great discussion starter for behavior and consequences. We also use it to discuss what kind of teacher we want our teacher to be.
We even make our own Miss Swamp!
And yes, Miss Nelson even makes an appearance.
Your Name Is A Song-This week we continue working on names with our favorite name book! And our favorite name activity: torn paper names!
Kindergarten: Beginning of the year math lessons
Week two math is all about numbers and counting. We use Number Bootcamp to work on number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, counting, and math vocabulary. Then we do some fun hands-on math lessons to practice counting to 10.
Our first math lesson is counting pigs. We read the book Ten Pigs An Epic Bath Adventure. And then we count pigs into the bathtub. We do this whole group and independently.
We also count gumballs into a gumball machine!
Beginning Of The Year Lessons: Germs
Let’s face it. Kids are germ factories. They pick their noses. They cough in your mouth. And real talk: they lick things. That’s why we have to teach them about healthy habits and good handwashing. So we do a fun science unit during week 2 all about GERMS! We learn about germs and good handwashing. Then we do a really cool experiment where we get to use glow soap to see if we are good hand washers!
How To Use School Supplies
This week we will continue learning how to use different supplies.
Beginning Of The Year: Hopes And Dreams
This week, we also share our hopes and dreams for the year. The kids share all the things they want to learn. I use these all year to try to incorporate as many of their hopes and dreams into our classroom as I can. to start the lesson we read the book Big Plans and then we turn and talk to share our big plans.
Beginning of the year: DATA!
True story. This is the week I start to formally collect data. Now, I like to try to get data the first week but let’s face it. The first week of school is vile and unhinged so we probably don’t get a lot of data collected. This week we use ESGI and our checklist pages to start gathering data so we can form small groups, start centers and make better instructional choices. Bascially, we’re collecting data and using the data!
If you use the code SMORGIE to sign up for your FREE trial of ESGI you get 60 days free which means you have plenty of time to asses and get your data then you can act on the data. Yep. 60 days free. Use it. And you’re data doesn’t disappear at the end of the trial! Sign up at www.esgisoftware.com using code SMORGIE!
CLICK HERE FOR THE CHECKLIST PAGES!
Beginning Of The Year Resources
Here are some more resources that can make your planning and prep easier!
