So, you want to know how to teach kindergarten? Just follow these 30 easy steps, and it will all come together nicely.
1. Write a detailed plan to give to your administrator one week ahead of time.
2. Change plan to reteach today’s lesson tomorrow, the next day and the next.
3. Change plan again to accommodate more hands-on activity for the upcoming full moon.
4. Begin daily calendar activities.
5. Listen to a student respond that today is Octember 3rd, and in 120 days it will be her birthday.
6. Call on other students who talk about their Uncle Joe’s birthday, what they are getting for their birthday and how they wish their birthday was today.
7. Begin to go over letters and sounds.
8. Try not to react as one student tells you that a word that begins with the letter D is doggy doo doo.
9. Review sight words.
10. Try to remember that the sight word, “but” must always be used in a complete sentence to eliminate fits of laughter.
11. Begin daily journal writing.
12. Break up arguments over who gets to use the pencil with the good eraser.
13. Tell students to slowly say again the words that they want you to help sound out because you have no idea what it is they are trying to say.
14. Decipher pictures that somehow always resemble a male’s private part.
15. Tie the same kid’s shoelaces for the 10th time in 30 minutes.
16. Practice going over to the carpet 20 times until the students walk without doing cartwheels or pretending to slide into third base.
17. Begin math centers.
18. Redirect student who is cutting his math cut and paste worksheet into one million minuscule pieces.
19. Have students line up for lunch. Reiterate that this is not a race.
20. Have students who thought that this was indeed a race try lining up again.
21. Discuss that cutting in line isn’t appropriate and that in the long run, it really doesn’t matter who is first.
22. Console the kid who is crying because he is not first in line.
23. Take time out for yoga breathing and poses to cool down after lunch recess.
24. Send student to the nurse’s office who was, in fact, kicked in the face during the Downward Facing Dog pose.
25. Rotate Daily Five Centers.
26. Explain to students the directions every 10 seconds until centers are over.
27. Stop centers when students voices are no longer considered “inside” but instead “outside at a heated protest” voices.
28. Mutter to yourself something about “kids these days.”
29. Dismiss students, and answer questions from the parents who did not read the weekly newsletter.
30. Sigh a huge breath, and look for all the missing glue and marker lids that disappear like socks in the night.
