We did it! We survived the first week of kindergarten! I am so lucky to be working with the best partner teacher on the planet 🙂 And we absolutely have the best class in the whole entire world!
We met our adorable class on Tuesday; they were so eager and ready to learn! I just love it! Here’s a look at what we did in our first week!
First Day of School Pictures
We took our first day pictures with the cute little “K” for kindergarten! {huge thanks to Michelle from Apples and ABCs for this adorable idea and tutorial!! As you can see, I pretty much copied her exactly ;)} Each student stood in front of the wall holding the K. We use these pictures for their first writing assignment and then put them in their memory books.
We read our first read-aloud, Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten and then brainstormed some ideas on how we get ready for kindergarten! We completed this readers response and drew pictures to match. The students wrote {or attempted to write} their name on the line. While the kiddos were drawing their picture, my co-teacher and I walked around the room asking the students what they did to get ready for kindergarten. We wrote their response on their paper.
Brown Bear Craft
We read Brown Bear Brown Bear and made these super cute puppets. {Thanks Mrs. Ricca for the freebie!} We practiced identifying colors and following step-by-step directions. I would say “everyone point to the bird!” and all the students would touch the bird. Then I would ask “Do you remember what color the bird was in the story?” Some students were able to read the text under the picture too! Then I would say “everyone find a red crayon and hold it up in the sky!” Each student grabbed a red crayon and colored the bird red. We did this until we colored every animal from the story. We even sang our color songs while we colored! My class did such a fabulous job!
{download the brown bear freebie here}
Finally, we cut and glued our work onto a brown paper bag and used our puppets to retell the story to a partner. It was absolutely adorable!
Math Practice
During our math block we made our September calendars. Each student chose one color crayon and traced all the numbers on the calendar. We will use these calendar pages every month so it was a great introduction to our math routine.
We used our “4 corners, 8 corners” cutting strategy to make our apples {you can find more easy crafts here!} and glued them to the top of our calendar.
Working on Shapes
We also met some new friends! Each day we learned about two shapes, and on Friday we played the shape game! This was the perfect introduction to our shape unit for the second week of school.
My class absolutely loved these! We learned each poem and talked about the characteristic of each shape. We even learned that Sandy Square has a booooyfriend 😉 After we introduced each shape, we hung the posters in our classroom for students to reference throughout the year.
Click here to grab these shape posters for FREE and learn about the other shape games we play!
This was definitely a long, but very fun-filled first week of school!
Now it’s time for some classroom pictures!
Classroom Photos
We are so lucky to have such a nice sized room! We spent a few weeks over the summer getting it set up. We used plastic tablecloths to back the bulletin boards and added some cute borders.
Setting up for the First Day
First Day Treats
Finally, I made these sweet treats for my teammates to celebrate our first day! A cute little tag tied to a bag of chocolate kisses. I’m so fortunate to work with such a wonderful team and we all need a little chocolate pick-me-up at the end of a long first day 😉