The First Few Days of School

Those first few days of school are always a blur in kindergarten.  Did everyone eat and make it home?
I wanted to show you some EASY activities your kiddos can do while you get beginning of the day things together or a great way to practice your routines and rituals.  You could put these in a "center" and practice what a center looks like.  These would be great to use while you are practicing of cleaning up.  Play for a few or 10 minutes and then practice picking up quickly and quietly.

This is a simple bird sorting activity.  Any color sorting activity should be easy for all students and if it is not, pair up students to work together on it!

These number matching cows are great because any academic level can do them.  They can be matched by color OR they can be matched by number/number of spots.

My son got these books for Christmas one year, but of course they would be perfect in the classroom!  Each book can be read to your kiddos by pushing the buttons on the Me Reader.  Each page is color coded with a shape, so they will know what button to push!

 Finally, a good old box of blocks!  This is open ended and lets your kiddos explore.  You could give them a certain number of blocks and tell them to create something or just let them run wild!

Leave a Comment activities, color words, first day, matching, math center, morning tubs, numbers, sorting

First Day of School and a FREEBIE!

It has been awhile, but this week was our district's first week of school and today was the first day for kindergarten!  This post is going to be so random, but we need to play catch up!
Last weekend I found the PERFECT rug for my classroom!  You might of seen this on my Instagram!  I got this from Sam's Club for $20!  It fits perfectly in my classroom and I will be using it for my listening center!

Call me crazy, but I threw away my behavior chart last week while I was setting up my room.  I read so many great articles about why teachers don't use them!  I took a Responsive Classroom training this summer and really LOVED it and want to implement some of those strategies in my classroom.

Now we are back to today!  We colored, we cut, and we explored pattern blocks.  My kiddos loved making creations.  This is the perfect addition if you ever have extra time...if that ever happens ;)

And after a successful day in kindergarten,  Chipotle was a nice treat for dinner :)

I didn't get pictures of us doing this, but we did the "Welcome to Kindergarten" as morning work and the first day of school template we wrote our name and drew a picture of something we did on the first day.  Click here or on the pictures to grab a copy for yourself!

Are you in school!?  How was your first day?

5 comments first day, freebie

Back at It!

Well, we have survived the first couple of days of school.  I say survive because it is this hot:

And my school does NOT have A/C!  Talk about sweaty!  I decided yesterday to skip the gym because I sweated enough at school.  Today we took "ice breaks"...aka we rubbed ice over our faces and neck, then got all goofy because who has an ice break at school!?  My kiddos are great and the principals are doing anything to keep us cool.  Bringing us water, ice, and popsiclse!
Besides all the sweating we have been doing some school related activities!  My kiddos are so eager to learn!  All day yesterday I heard, "When is math?"  "When is science?"  "WHEN ARE CENTERS!?"  I had to explain it was the first day and we couldn't do everything on the first day.  So when I said we were going to explore snap cubes everyone was cheering!

After we explored our cubes, I started making up story problems for them to solve using the cubes.  Then of course I let my kiddos come up and make up their own story problems!  Yes, one of the problems included Christmas presents and underwear.  I am loving these new grades!  Even though a couple tried to tell me they were in 2nd and got all "confused" when I caught them in their little lies.  My new life as a 1st/2nd grade teacher!:)

12 comments connecting cubes, first day