I have taught kindergarten for 20 years. I know: that’s a long damn time.
The first day of kindergarten activities are very important.
By trial and error, I have managed to have a relatively, smooth as you can get while herding cats into a fenced area, first day of kindergarten.
Everyone has a different schedule so I will not take you through a play-by-play, but I will offer ideas, hints, and freebies for a fantastic start to a new school year. I find that the first day is always the hardest day of the year in K, so please know if your day totally sucks, it does get better.
Drop Off
Kiss and Go, Kiss and Go. Send a letter home explaining the importance of modeling enthusiasm toward school and not making a big deal when dropping students off. Kids take signals from parents about what they should be afraid of.
When Kids Enter
It is best to establish structure right away. Have them find their names and sit in their seats. Everyone has a different approach, but I like to model rules and procedures as they come up instead of going over them for two hours at the beginning of the class.
I then like to call them over to the carpet area or any area that you have where they sit on the floor so they will be in closer proximity to you. As they attempt to call out and tell you their pets’ names and that they had pop tarts for breakfast, reinforce what you should do when you want to say something.
Helpful HInt: Model the length of a response as kindergarten kids can easily take up an entire thirty minutes with one very long detailed story that never has a point.
Model this by playing a get-to-know-you activity.
Possible questions for the kindergarten get-to-know-you activity:
Tell me about your favorite animal.
Tell me your favorite toy and why?
What do you think you will learn from kindergarten?
Who is your favorite person and why?
What is your favorite food and why?
This provides an excellent opportunity to explain your behavior reward system as the students follow the rules. Praise for good listeners and students not calling out does wonder on the first day.
Behavior Management
When thinking about your behavior management system, try to keep it simple. Desk pets are a great way to reinforce positive behavior. They can be bought on Amazon for fairly cheap. Click below.
Give everyone one at the beginning of the day and take away when a rule of two is broken.
Give everyone daily and let them exchange for another if they are doing a great job.
Class Dojo points can be given for good behavior and when a certain number is earned they can switch their desk pet for another.
There are different ways they can be implemented according to your management plan, which can be changed if things are not working.
A behavior management plan can always be changed and tweaked as one thing that might not work for challenging students. Individual plans may be necessary for these students.
Books to Read on the First Day of School
Kissing Hand– Click the picture to download The Kissing Hand Freebie
Click the picture for the first day of kindergarten freebie activity.
Fun First Day of Kindergarten Activities
Centers are a big part of kindergarten. I have always used hands-on centers as part of my math block. Students at this age love to manipulate and move around. I always station my centers around the room and have five centers per week. Students do a different center each day completing all five within the week
Playdough Center Task Cards
Five-year-olds love playing with play dough, and it is great for developing fine motor skills that will aid in cutting and writing correctly with a pencil. Click now for a free playdough shape task card.
Read Aloud Extension Activities-Having center activities that are related to the
a book that has just been read is a good way to make connections and build motivation toward reading.
The first week of kindergarten is the one week of the year where I like to write out extensive plans for what I am going to do. Of course, I never get to everything that is planned, but it makes me feel more confident and prepared.
Who’s prepared for the first day?????????? It will go smoothly, but I can’t promise you that.
Developing fine motor skills in kindergarten is harder than it sounds. It takes time and practice. Kids at young ages have often developed bad habits like holding their pencil with their fists or even stranger grips. I have seen them all.
It is very important to break these habits early on. There are fun activities and products that can aid in developing fine motor skills in kindergarten with your students and your own children. Here are some:
Develop Hand Strength
There are so many fun ways for students to develop their hand strength while developing fine motor skills. Kids will love the following:
Use a spray bottle– Give your children or students a spray bottle and tell them to water the grass. If you are at school, you may not want them to squirt each other with them.
Crumple paper– Have students write their names or a sight word. Afterward, have them crumple it up and shoot it in the trash can. Big fun!!
Use tongs and pom-poms- At a center or a sensory bin, have students use tongs or child tweezers to pick up colored pom-poms or small pieces of paper.
Teach students how to hold the pencil
In order to develop fine motor skills in kindergarten, students should practice, practice, practice. A good pencil grip is a key to success. But, students often come to you with bad habits. Here are ways to break bad habits.
Use golf pencils- Ticonderoga has some great golf pencils that force students to use the correct fingers and not grab the pencil with their fists. Because they are tiny, there is a need to pinch the pencil at the bottom.
Hold a small object with pinky and ring finger- Have students pinch the pencil at the bottom with their thumb and pointer and use the middle for support. Have them hold a pom pom with their pinky and ring finger in their palm. This will make sure they are using the correct fingers.
Use a pencil grip- These pencil grips show students the correct way to hold the pencil. It is easy for them to remember. They have a place to rest the middle finger. Students put their thumb and pointer in the correct spots.
How to Cut with Scissors
Open shut, open shut. That’s the way we cut cut cut. Fingers on bottom and thumb on top. Do not let the paper drop! Open shut, open shut. That’s the way we cut, cut, cut!” That is just one cute little chant that helps aid in developing fine motor skills in kindergarten. Here are some more fund activities.
Have kids lay on their tummies- Have students lay on their tummies on the carpet with scissors and paper. They have to use their elbows to hold themselves up, so this forces proper technique. They will not be able to turn their hands around. Students also love this.
Teach students about Allie the Alligator. They love to stick their thumb in the alligator’s eye and their fingers in the belly and chomp, chomp, chomp.
Use Playdough for developing fine motor skills in kindergarten.
Students in pre-school, kindergarten and first grade, and even much older love to play with playdough. There are many task cards that students can use to build letters, numbers, and fun pictures.
Students are learning their common core standards while developing these skills in an age-appropriate manner.
This will strengthen the fine motor skills of young students. Have them cut playdough with playdough scissors as well. Students love this.
Also, picking up tiny balls of playdough with tweezers is a motivating and productive activity in developing fine motor skills in kindergarten and pre-school students.
Have fun with fine motor skills
Students need these prerequisite fine motor skills to be successful in school. It is the foundation in which readers and writers are built upon.
Using engaging activities that are developmentally appropriate is always necessary in order to build student confidence and success.
Students will not get frustrated if they are having fun.
There has been a lot of discussion about the use of sound walls in kindergarten vs word walls. Because I am all about what works best for my learners, I researched the sound wall completely before deciding to discard my word wall which I have had a lot of success with. Here is what I learned.
Sound walls in kindergarten are focused on the phonemes that individual letters represent. It makes the connection from speech to print.
They are organized by phonemes and not by the order of letters in the alphabet.
Students are taught the positions of the mouth and voice intonations when sounds are made and are then divided into categories.
Stops
Nasals
Fricatives
Affricatives
This is an in-depth program based on the Science of Reading. Students learn how to make the sounds and how their mouths and voices are used. Walls are created by phonemes. So, if a word begins with SH, they would look for that phoneme based on the category Fricative instead of looking for the S on a typical word wall.
Pros and Cons of Sound Walls in Kindergarten
Pros
Students develop a greater understanding of how sounds are made.
They learn how speech sounds connect to the written word.
Learners can find irregular words by their initial sounds. The word “know” is found under “n.”
Cons
The vocabulary terminology and instruction are hard for young students to grasp.
A sound wall is a very slow-moving process in kindergarten.
Consonants and vowels are separated into their own walls, and this makes having the space difficult.
Personally, I am having a hard time finding where the letters are and I feel this type of structure may be way too difficult in the kindergarten classroom. It would be a long process to get kindergartners to find the words that they need for writing.
Young students know the order of the alphabet already.
Word Walls help students find sight words.
Wall doesn’t separate vowels and consonants.
Cons
Words are placed by a beginning letter which may not be the first phoneme heard in a word.
The typical A-Z format leaves out many common phonemes.
Students can’t always find words that they need for writing.
Should I use a sound wall in kindergarten?
First, if you have been around for a while, like me, when something new comes along we are a bit skeptical. We have seen trends and research come and go.
And, we usually end up taking the good parts but not buying into the entire program.
This is me on this one. Am I going to throw out my word wall in exchange for the latest trend of the Sound Wall? No. I am not. Word walls have been very successful in giving my students tools to learn to read and write and make the transition from spoken word to written words.
It is about giving kids enough tools to have in their toolbox that they will be able to find the one that does the job for them. What will I do? See below.
How do I combine a Word Wall and a Sound Wall?
First of all, it is important to know what your goal is in having a word wall or a sound wall. My goal is to help students become independent writers and combine reading and writing skills to accomplish that goal.
The sound wall takes components of Lively Letters which I like so much better when teaching kindergarten about phonemes and sounds.
First, it doesn’t make things as confusing but still teaches about speech sounds and what our body parts are doing in a fun and motivating way.
Alternatively, creating a word wall that incorporates different phonemes such as th, ar, sh and ch combines the best of both worlds. Students can still look for the beginning sound and find the word on the word wall.
For me, the words that I put on my word wall are the most common words that kids want to use to express themselves while writing and have a hard time sounding out. They like to write about “my friend,” and people they “like.” These are often sight words and heart words that help them compose beginning sentences.
Pendulum swings often.
Of course, in kindergarten, students are still encouraged to use invented spelling on hard words in order to become creative, independent writers. If students want to spell every word correctly, their independence is shattered and the teacher is overwhelmed with, “ I don’t know how to spell, “skeleton.”
Every new strategy seems to have very good components within them. So, take what you feel makes sense and use it, but you don’t have to get rid of all your old successful strategies.
They will come back around as the pendulum swings.
Cover photo credits from Instagram: @shipshapeelementary, @mrswintersbliss, @learningwithmisspowell
Everybody needs virtual kindergarten graduation ideas this year. Things will look a tad bit different.
They don’t have to be that different though. Take what you do and adapt to the virtual world. Kindergarten graduation is the first real milestone that children have in school. The kindergarten promotion songs and slideshows can still be used and adapted to digital learning.
I have created a template for a digital scrapbook that students are able to edit on the computer or there are also black and white copies. Put a graduation hat on your students to make it official.
Students can write about what they want to be when they grow up and their favorite memories.
Collecting pictures throughout the year and putting them to music is simple and easy these days. This slideshow template makes it even easier. Just add pictures and save as JPEG files. Most phones can do this with a touch of a button on I-MOVIE and other slideshow apps.
Kindergarten is a special year. This is a day that parents will often recall forever. Having a sweet song with adorable innocent pictures often evokes tears of pride.
Put the slideshow in Google classroom or make DVD’s to mail home to the students.
Kindergarten graduation is an occasion that parents and students will look back on proudly. My daughter is graduating from high school this year, but I will always remember her sweet face at her kindergarten graduation.
These virtual kindergarten graduation ideas will help you create a celebration that will be forever remembered and appreciated.
If you are having Zoom or Google Meet classroom sessions, pick one song that students can learn with you. These are some of the songs that everyone loves to sing.
This is honestly my favorite. Maybe, it is because I love John Travolta. Or, maybe it is because it lends itself to the cutest movements ever. Regardless, everyone is impressed with this kindergarten graduation song. Words can be found here.
I found this song when my daughter’s kindergarten teacher used it for her kindergarten graduation. It is so adorable that I asked her for a copy of the words. This song is a timeless favorite.
I love this one as it is so easy for the kids to perform because they are just imitating what you say. The students also love this kindergarten graduation song/chant. They cannot contain their enthusiasm when they say, “Left, right, left right.”
This song is perfect for the last song. It is very beautiful when the kids sing it with the sign language actions. Parents will be extremely touched by this number.
Kindergarten Poem
This is one of the many virtual kindergarten graduation ideas that students can do online. Give each student a letter in the word “kindergarten” and have them create a big picture of that letter.
Also, give them the line from the below poem that goes with the letter. They can then perform this on your Zoom graduation. Mute and un-mute as they say their lines.
K is for kindergarten! Hip, hip hooray!
I is for imagination. We use every day.
N is for numbers. We know, one two three.
D is for drawing, the best you can see.
E is for exercise to keep our bodies strong.
R is for reading books all day long.
G is for good friends. We make more every day.
A is for the alphabet we know how to say.
R is for remembering everything we learned.
T is for treats that we sometimes earned.
E is for excitement. This year we had some.
N is for next year. First grade here we come.
Kindergarten T-Shirts
This is a perfect shirt for this year. You can possibly drive by and deliver the shirt and do social distancing photos with your students.
I was thinking of having a virtual drive by graduation and handing out their shirts and diplomas as they drive by in their cars. Parents can decorate their cars with positive signs.
Of course, I would be wearing a mask and gloves. Make sure you get permission first.
Also, these shirts can be done cheaper at a local t-shirt creation shop. They are happy to get the business.
Our teacher shirt will say “I virtually taught kindergarten.”
Introductions
We all know that parents are going to be looking at one person: their child. Each of those special students should have an opportunity to say something if you are doing the graduation online.
Having the students introduce themselves and say what they want to be when they grow up or their favorite part of kindergarten is very entertaining.
In closing, I hope you found some virtual kindergarten graduation ideas that you can use for this year. To say the least, this was a very unique year of school.
Finding ways to make things special is what teacher do best. I am sure your students and parents will appreciate your effort in creating a memorable experience.
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Teaching kindergarten is tough, but virtual learning in kindergarten is tougher. These distance learning tips for kindergarten will make this transition easier. Hopefully, it will make distance learning more fun for your students.
If you are like me, you would have never ever imagined that you would be teaching five year olds online. Who would have ever guessed these difficult circumstances that we find ourselves in.
But, here we are. Thrown into the unknown: Google Classroom, Canvas, Google Meet, Zoom, Nearpod, Seesaw, Jamboard, Google Slides, Kami, The new buzzwords are endless and completely overwhelming. I am an older teacher, and I thought I could never do it.
Guess what? I am doing it and I am finding my groove. Here are my best distance learning tips for kindergarten that will allow you to get your groove back.
Sing, Sing, and Sing some more.
Even if you don’t sing well, give it a shot. Have a few students unmute their mics and sing with you.
Pick one to do a duet. They love that.
I love to find familiar songs and use them to count, spell sight words or basically teach whatever. We count by 10’s to the song Hi Ho the Derio. I spell “like” to It’s a Small World. Spell “there” to the tune Celebration.
I teach a song about learning to cut to the tune of ” Where is Thumbkin?”
Who is cutting? Who is cutting? Thumb on top. Thumb on Top. Fingers on the bottom. Fingers on the bottom. Chop, Chop, Chop
Or, here is one for the vowels to the melody of “Bingo.”
There are five vowels in the alphabet and we will sing their Name-o’s.
A-E-I-O-U A-E-I-O-U A-E-I-O-U And that is all their Name-O’s
There is a vowel. It’s name is A
And “A” is their Sound-O
“A” “A” “A” “A” “A” “A” “A” “A” “A” “A” And that is what is sounds like.
You can do this for each short vowel sound. The kids can get up and dance as they sing. I have some great dancers.
Un-mute for awhile.
This is very important to build relationships with you and their classmates. Small kids need and love this.
It is very tough to have all students un-muted at the same time. Small groups work a lot better. I always give them the first few minutes to talk to one another. Muting my mic and camera helps them feel more at ease to talk to their peers.
Having students bring something to share for show-n-tell also really, really gets the ball rolling. Students at this young age love to share their toys and items that mean a lot to them.
Mix it up.
I don’t want to overwhelm my parents. Also, I don’t want kids to not have enough to do if they want to do more. I give a lot of optional assignments.
We use Canvas, so I just list optional assignments and link a Google Slide. I have created many google Slides for math,rhyming, sight words and short vowels.
Young students need a little practice to drag and drop slides, but they learn quickly. The below activities will help you to mix it up and keep it fresh. Your students will be more engaged if activities are varied.
During live sessions, I throw in Number Talks, share my screen for online books with RAZ-Kids and Discovery, and complete worksheets together.
Google is your friend.
Jamboard is engaging and fun for students. Let me walk you through the steps. Also, I will give you a freebie to start.
So, find a picture or worksheet that you want to use.
Screenshot editor and tool is an extension on Google Chrome that makes this easy. Save anything as a Png. Open Jamboard that is located in your Google Waffle.
Click the plus sign on the bottom right. Go to your toolbar on the left side, and choose the add image icon. Find what you would like to add. Matching activities are great.
Share and change settings to anyone with the link can share and edit.
Put the link in your chat box when doing small groups.
Share your screen and explain the steps to your kids. Show them how to find the drawing tools. My students loved this and being able to draw with their friends.
A simple favorite is “Simon Says” but use your name instead. I like to include this game with my learning objectives. When I teach shapes, I say, Mrs. Barton says, “Make a triangle with your fingers.”
Mrs. Barton says, “Find a cylinder in your house.” This incorporates movement, fun and learning together.
On Fridays, I like to play a different game. We have dance parties. I let them request songs that I find on my phone to play.
Go Noodle is, of course, also a favorite.
Give paper and pencil work.
Students in kindergarten need to cut, glue and write. These are essential skills that cannot be learned on the computer.
Deployment of materials is essential. This is how I have the students turn in work also. We have two bins for pick-up and drop off. One packet for the month has worked for my school.
Including fun art projects to go along with stories and social studies and science units has been a hit with the students.
They love to show me their finished projects on our live sessions.
Directed Drawing
Students love directed drawings. They also learn how to follow step-by-step directions. The below robot is one that I used during my shapes unit.
I drew it out first on a whiteboard.
During the live lesson, I gave directions very slowly and made a few things easier for the students. They absolutely loved this.
Some of their robots looked better than mine.
Don’t give up!
I hope these distance learning tips for kindergarten were helpful. We are in un-chartered territory. This is hard. But, it will get easier, and your tool belt will get larger.
Join Facebook groups for distance learning. They have been so helpful to me in learning new skills.
There are positives here. I feel like I am able to talk to my students in small groups and really form relationships. In the classroom, I always felt rushed and had to deal with the behavior of the other students in the room.
Guess what? Students are learning, and they will continue to learn. Let’s stick together and help one another.
