First Days of School

The first few days of school can be pretty scary for little ones, especially kindergartners. The first few weeks are usually spent getting to know each other, getting to know the school, and learning all the new procedures. At my school we spent the first week of school focusing on all the procedures and school rules that are new to the students. We do this by participating in activities that focus around our main literature that week, which includes The Kissing Hand, The Day the Monster Came to School, and the different versions of The Gingerbread Man. We read The Gingerbread Man, The Gingerbread Baby, The Gingerbread Cowboy, The Gingerbread Girl, and The Gingerbread Man, Loose in the School. If we have time we also may read The Stinky Cheese Man. After we have read and discussed all the different books we compare & contrast the characters from the books.

While reading the The Gingerbread Man on the first day a note left by the Gingerbread Man falls out of the book! The kids get so excited. The note tells us that he has escaped & that we have to find him. This is a great way to take a tour of the school & allows students to become familiar with the main office, the nurse's office, the cafeteria, the gym, and the library. As we go on our search a faculty member from each location reads the students a note left by the Gingerbread Man that gives them a clue as to where they should look next. In the end he leads the students back to the classroom where a Gingerbread cookie is waiting on each child's desk. They just love this!!! As they take their first bite into the cookie we take a note of which body part they bit first to graph. What a fun first day already!

The photos above show the students listening to The Gingerbread Cowboy at the listening center, making a Gingerbread Man using chalk, sequins, & red squiggly strips, reading their Run, Run phonics book, making a Gingerbread Man using brown snips, and matching numbers with the correct number of dots on the Gingerbread Men.
Click on the link below for a baking cookies sequencing sheet:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dxi7yxnatfk48sh/wk2_cookies_sequencing_sht.docx
Click on the link below for our Gingerbread Man class book:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hr9vkbxhiv4u6w6/wk2_my_gingerbread_man_bk.doc

The link to a Lunch Number Practice flipchart for Active Inspire created by Brandie Simmons

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c4vykh14yrg7h21/Lunch%20Number%20Practice.flipchart

Do your students have to learn their lunch numbers?

A kindergarten teacher at B.V.E., Brandie came up with a neat way to help students identify numbers and create their lunch number. You may be thinking "How are students suppose to remember a lunch number if they can not even identify numbers?". We think the same thing! Brandie created a template that looks like the key pad in the lunch room where students punch in their lunch number. Students place the numbers under the key pad creating their lunch number. Velcro allows the numbers to stick. We alo practiced our lunch numbers by writing them on dry-erase boards & typing in the numbers on jumbo calculators purchased from the Dollar Store. 

 

On the first day of school students can find a Welcome Bag on their desk filled with goodies. Click on the link for a copy of our welcome note- Welcome Bag Note

 

I found this cute Gingerbread Man puppet idea when I googled images for puppet ideas on Google.

 

Click on the link to view my 2011-2012 Lesson Plan: Gingerbread ManLP2011-12.docx