The first days of kindergarten can be nerve wracking for both you as a teacher and for your students! Many of your students may have never been in a school environment before. Many may have never left mom or dad or whomever watched them in their home. I don’t know about you, but each year I’m a tad nervous because it’s a whole new year and a whole new group of students I don’t know! Although it can be a bit frightening, the first days of kindergarten can also be exciting and fun if you are prepared and remember to keep things simple.
Where do I start on the First Days of Kindergarten?
The most important thing to remember about the first few days of kindergarten is to keep everyone safe, get them fed, and get them home correctly. Make sure you keep up with all of your kids during transitions to lunch, specials, and recess. Make sure everyone eats their packed lunch or gets lunch from the cafeteria. Put everyone on the right bus or home with the right person during car rider line. Did you do that? Then your first days of kindergarten were successful!
How to Teach on the First Days of Kindergarten
Staggered Entry
I’m not sure how your school does it, but we have staggered entry at the beginning of the school year. That means students are divided into three groups with one group coming Monday, one group coming Tuesday, one group coming Wednesday, and then everyone coming on Thursday. While this is great for getting to really know your kids in a small group, assess everyone, and teach routines in a small group, this also means that as a teacher I have four first days of kindergarten. I definitely get a lot of practice with routines!
Morning Meeting
At the carpet I love to start with a read aloud to engage students in stories right away. We teach about how to sit on the carpet, keeping our hands to ourself, learning to listen to stories, and that we can enjoy reading and listening. I also point out proper book care and usually have them do some turn and talks while we are in a small group so turn to their partner and tell their favorite part of the story or something like that.
While at the carpet we’ll also do a simple name game song such as “Who Took the Cookie from the Cookie Jar” so students can learn each other’s names. We’ll have a bathroom break in the classroom and talk about when to go to the bathroom, hand washing, etc. I usually finish this carpet time up with a few calendar songs while I label any school supplies that students brought in.
School Tour
One of my favorite things on these first days of kindergarten are the school tour! This is an important time to practice walking in line quietly, following the teacher, and having some fun. You can easily make this a scavenger hunt by hiding things around the school and then having something waiting to surprise the students when you make it back to the classroom. We visit all the important areas and practice routines while we are there: ex recess rules and a short recess break, going through the cafeteria line and pretending to throw away trash and leaving in the lunch room, practicing dismissal routines, etc.
After the tour we regroup and discuss safety drills. I find it really important to practice a fire drill with each small group of students so that it’s not scary to them and they know the routine. This also helps because we usually have to have a fire drill the first week of school since we are required to have one every month.
Behavior Modeling
“David Goes to School” is one of my favorite read alouds for behavior modeling. The students always get a kick out of recognizing all the behaviors they should NOT do and think it’s funny when I model those same negative behaviors. We follow the story up with a good choices/bad choices pocket chart and behavior sort of their own.
We’ll practice doing some of the good choices in our classroom, do some alphabet workout songs, and practice writing our names before we start washing our hands and preparing for lunch. Learning to listen to a story appropriately, respond and complete activities, and move from one thing to the next is laying the foundation to our writing routine, reading routine, and word study routine we will use during the year.
Lunch
What is one of the most important things to do on the first days of kindergarten as well as everyday? Lunch! I always tell new teachers we are just trying to keep them safe, fed, and sent home correctly. Making sure each student has a lunch whether it was brought from home or they get it from the cafeteria is an important part of our day. We are learning where we sit, how to stay seated at the table, working on opening containers, cleaning up after ourselves, and more. There are so many things to learn in each part of our first days of kindergarten!
Self Portraits and Math
After lunch I love to give students a blank piece of paper and absolutely no directions and tell them to create a self portrait. I explain that this means a picture of themselves but don’t tell them anything else or model. These are great to keep to show progress later in the year after we have modeled how to create detailed illustrations.
For our math portion of the day we will do a few math movement songs, a number bingo game on the SMARTBoard so we can practice taking turns and using technology appropriately, and then explore math manipulatives. I like to have students explore these now so that when we are using them for math purposes they have already seen them and understand they are not actually toys. During this exploration I usually start Leapfrog Letter Factory and utilize this time for students to have some quiet time if necessary and perform beginning of year assessments.
Play Centers
We play every day in my classroom, including the first days of kindergarten! My rules for play centers are that there are three students allowed in each center. Students can change centers as long as they clean up and the center is available (less than three students playing). I teach expectations for kitchen, blocks, puzzles and more during this time so students know how to play safely and how to clean up. During play centers we will go to the bathroom again and prepare for snack and recess.
Snack, Recess, and Afternoon Meeting
Students bring snacks in my school but I always have extras in case they don’t have any. While they are eating I remind them of the safety rules for the playground and then we go out for recess. This is always a favorite time of the day! After recess we pack up and have our afternoon meeting before dismissal. What was their favorite part? How do they feel about kindergarten now? What are they excited about tomorrow? Make sure everyone goes home correctly and you have done your best job on the first days of kindergarten!
First Days of Kindergarten Takeaways
The first days of kindergarten are full of excitement! With these ideas you can help tame chaos, know your students, build a community, and set the tone for the year! Be sure to check out my Back to School Kindergarten Routines post to see of all the little things you want to think of ahead of time!
Stress Less with These Print and Go Lesson Plans for the First Days of Kindergarten
Simply print and either gather the picture books or use your favorite back to school read alouds to be ready for your own first days of kindergarten. You can modify based on if your school uses a staggered entry or not, but either way you will have three days of kindergarten ready to go. It may be a lot to tackle in the beginning, but kindergarten is simply the best!
