The First Week of School

Now that our school year is in full swing and the kids are starting to be able to do some independent work, I am looking back at the first week of school and laughing. I was so overwhelmed, stressed, tired, frustrated, etc... I read somewhere that first few weeks of school are similar to childbirth - they are excruciatingly painful, but once you get through them and your kids know the routine you love them so much that you forget the pain they brought you on their way into your world.

I could not agree with this metaphor more. In fact, I loved my class so much last year that I completely forgot the painstaking days of practicing entering the classroom, unpacking, turning in homework folders, finding spots on the carpet, learning to listen, learning to raise our hands, learning our classroom rules, holding a pencil, using a pencil, holding scissors, using scissors, holding a crayon, using a crayon, lining up, moving around the room and the school, following directions, packing up, etc...

I came in on the first day expecting them to get down to business and was slapped in the face with the reminder that before I could expect them to do so, I would have to teach them how to get down to business. So, I scrapped my plans for the first few days of school and recreated a plan that worked for my brand new Kindergartners.

Here is a copy of my lesson plans for the first week of school. Just about every single activity was inspired by another Kindergarten teacher and I will do my best to give you links to their resources and give them the credit that they deserve!

As the students entered the room each morning, I asked them to stay in line and model the correct procedures for unpacking our backpacks one at a time. One by one they would walk to their cubbies and place lunches and snacks inside, turn their homework folders in by placing them in the designated bin, walk outside to hang up their backpacks, and quietly find their seats on the carpet.

Everyday

Morning Meeting: Our morning meeting every day consists of saying a prayer, the pledge of allegiance, singing good morning to each other, taking attendance, and discussing the days of the week (Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow), the date, weather, etc...

Morning Work: For the first week I found cutting practice pages here and made tracing worksheets here for each student to practice writing his or her own first and last name.

Monday

All About Me Graph: I introduced graphs by having the class help me make one of how many boys and girls there are in our class. After we did a few different graphs (favorite colors, shoe color, hair color, etc...) I explained that they would be making a graph filled with information about themselves. They LOVE to share about themselves, and it was a way for me to get to know them a little bit better so this activity worked out nicely. We used this cute "All About Me" graphing worksheet from The Primary Chalkboard's Back to School Survival Kit.

Chicka Chicka Name Craft: First we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, then sang the ABC's forwards and backwards (Instead of, "Next time won't you sing with me," we say, "Next time sing them backwards with me Z, Y, X, W, V, U, T...Now I've sang my ZYX's, bet that's not what you expected!"). Next we completed this really simple craft:

I didn't find a template online for this one, but, as you can see, all you need is a brown rectangle for the trunk of the tree and three green leaves. I told them that they could use different colored crayons and write the letters in their name climbing up the coconut tree just like the letters did in the story.


B.O.Y. Writing Samples: I got this wonderful idea to collect student writing samples at the beginning, middle, and end of the year from Heidi Songs. This has been a really good resource to use at parent teacher conferences. It's also pretty awesome to see how much progress the kids make in writing from day 1 to day 180. I'll share more with you later about how much I LOVE these writing portfolios! You can find the portfolio pages here. 

*I tell them to try their best, but that if all they are able to do is write their name then that is enough for the first day of school. They usually end up looking something like this:

Tuesday

Roll & Graph Back to School: A Teaching Mommy has a great Kindergarten Back to School packet which includes the template to make a dice with different school supplies on it and a corresponding graph to record how many times the dice lands on each item. *If they can handle it I sometimes let the students take turns rolling the dice themselves. 

Brown Bear Craftivity: We read the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, reviewed the different colors we could see around our classroom, and made these cute little puppets from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten. You can find her template here.

Wednesday

Shapes: We used these shape poems and pictures from Miss Kindergarten to look at and practice the names of each of the shapes.

Behavior Sort: After learning our classroom rules (more to come on that!), we completed this pocket chart activity which required the students to sort pictures of actions into categories - "poor choices" or "good choices". You can pick the pictures up from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten blog here.

Thursday

Chrysanthemum Craft: Since my kids had been practicing cutting every single day, I thought I would give them a chance to put their skills to use and cut out the heart shapes that we needed for our Chrysanthemum craft. They did a great job and their chrysanthemums ended up looking really cute! You can find the template for the craft and other Chrysanthemum related activities at First Grade W.O.W.

Friday

Numbers & Ten Frames: On Friday we did a lot of reviewing - lining up, walking around, walking through procedures step by step, and so on. For math, I used these cute number and ten frame cards made by Fran Kramer to introduce one-to-one correspondence and to play a game of "I have...who has (my ten frame)".