Happy first week of school and happy almost first week of school for those who have not started yet! I hope every had and has a wonderful first week! I started back with my students on Monday and we had a wonderful week! My new kiddos are absolutely adorable and so precious!
I currently have 18 students on my roster which is crazy for me to see! My first and second year of teaching kindergarten I had 30 and 34 students. My third year I had 23 students and now I have only 18! I keep asking our office secretary if some students haven’t shown up yet because I can’t get over how low my roster number is!
Our first week of school consisted of getting the students comfortable in their new classroom, meeting new friends, learning the rules and procedures, learning our names, math, reading lots of books, doing crafts, and lots and lots of FUN!!!
I teach in a school with a very high ESL population and most students do not attend preschool. The first week of school is very tiring for them and a HUGE adjustment from being away from home and having to be in school for an entire day. I am SOOOO proud of how well my kiddos did though and can’t wait for all there is to come this year!
Here is a look at our first week of school with TONS of FREEBIES for you to enjoy!
First Day of School
I had them color a picture. I will also have them color this picture on the last day of school to show them how far they have come!
Your can grab this first and last day of school coloring pages HERE
We read ‘The Gingerbread Man’ story. He left us a note at the end of our story that said he was coming to visit our school, but we had to find him! We looked all over the school but could not find him anywhere. We almost gave up and went back to our classroom, but there he was!!! Right in the middle of the carpet and he brought us some gingerbread cookies to enjoy!
We talked about our first day feelings and each student came up to the pocket chart to share with the class how they are feeling on the first day of school.
We read ‘The Kissing Hand’ and made these adorable raccoons out of hearts that I found from HM Conyers
On the back of the raccoons, were the students painted handprints. After the handprints dried, each student kissed a sparkly heart sticker and placed it in the middle of their handprint to give a ‘kissing hand’ to their families when they go home.
I also attached a poem to go along with the Kissing Hand. You can grab it in both English and Spanish HERE.
The first day of school was so wonderful and I was so proud of my students! I gave them a special treat bag for having such a wonderful first day of school!
I have the treat bag labels in both English and Spanish for FREE! You can grab them HERE
Each student also brought home their purple folders today! This is their folder that they bring to school everyday. The handprints help them know what needs to be returned to school and what needs to stay at home. I also placed my Parent Handbook Flip Book and other papers from the school in their folders for those who did not make it to Meet the Teacher Night.
Here are activities we did the rest of the week:
A lot of my kiddos are still working on identifying and learning how to write their names. So, we did lots of different name activities.
We traced our names.
We rainbow wrote our names:
We made cute name caterpillars!
You can grab the caterpillar circle templates HERE.
We practiced mixing up our names and putting them back together the correct way. They did great with this so I allowed them to switch chairs with a friend and try to build their friends name! They loved that and did a wonderful job as well!
We started working on our Back to School Memory Books. We started by drawing a picture themselves and writing their name. We will keep working on this memory book next week!
We started to learn about the letters ‘Mm’ and ‘Oo’ this week. We saw who has those letters in their name. If they had that letter in their name, they got to wear the letter necklace for the day! I have these A-Z letter star necklaces and this pocket chart activity for FREE! You can grab this activity HERE.
We also practiced tracing and writing the letter Mm. We found the pictures that have the Mm beginning sound. This activity for the letters A-Z can be found HERE.
We learned about the number zero this week! We practiced rainbow writing the number zero.
We also practiced tracing and writing the number, the number word, and finding the number zero.
You can grab these number zero activities for FREE HERE.
Our sight word focus this week was the sight word: I.
We wrote the word ‘I’ and then drew a picture of ourselves since ‘I’ means yourself!
We traced and rainbow wrote the word ‘I’.
You can grab both of these sight word ‘I’ pages for FREE HERE!
At the end of the week, we worked on another page of our memory book. We colored how we felt on the first day of school and then color how we felt at the end of our first week of school.
Then, we made a large class graph of our first week feelings.
We recorded our first week feelings data!
We read our very first book!! I told them that they would learn how to read a book all by themselves this week. They thought I was crazy when I told them that, but by the end of the week they were so so proud of themselves when they were able to read their book on their own!!
Gluing can be kind of scary. I know I was very nervous my first year teaching kindergarten! I have a ‘One Dot Club’ in my classroom. Students only get to be a part of this special ‘One Dot Club’ if they can learn and show me how to make small one dot glue dots. They get a chance to join the club by practicing filling in the star with small glue dots. In the end, they get glitter all over their glue dots if they do it correctly. This also means they are in the club!! They get so excited when they are in the club!! I crack up a lot because during the week they are reminding their friends when they are gluing to make sure to use a small glue dot. I hear them say that they won’t get to be in the club anymore if they make big dots. Too funny, but at the same time I never have any gluing problems!!
We made pencil pennants for our hallway!! First we made the pencil pennant. Then, I allowed my students to choose from different papers to draw themselves. They wrote their names on the gray strip in pencil and then traced it with marker. They also glued their picture on their pencil pennant and I hung them up on a string for everyone to see their wonderful hard work!
To celebrate our first week, we made ‘My First Week of School Hats’! On the hats, we added badges about the new things that happened during our first week of school.
We made handprint puzzles! I got this wonderful idea from the amazing Deanna Jump.
A lot of the activities you saw above came from my Back to School Activities Pack! You can grab these activities with so much more included HERE or you can click on the picture below. We will be doing lots more of the activities from this pack next week.
You can also find a lot of the name activities that I have made EDITABLE for you to use in your classroom. You can check them out HERE or click on the picture below:
I hope you all have a wonderful and relaxing weekend!
Thank you TOO MUCH! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE learning with you Jaime! You have helped me so much and made learning fun for my students! You are my idol and I am extra grateful for ALL you create and share! How did you make the name tracing and rainbow writing practice, Please?
Thanks, Jill 🙂
Hello, I love your page! Thank you for all of your great knowledge and information! Please tell me where can I find the rainbow writing template for the students to practice writing their names? Great idea!!
Thank you!!
Hi Jill!! Oh my goodness you are so incredibly sweet and kind!! You made my day!! Your words mean so much to me! I am so happy that your students have been having so much fun learning!
For the name tracing and rainbow writing, I made them with some bubble fonts but do not have a template quite yet. That is on my to do list and am hoping to get to it soon! I have a bunch of name activities I have been asked about that I hope I can make editable for everyone to use! Thank you so much again and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the week and start of the school year! 🙂
Hi! I made those name writing activities, but do not have them accessible quite yet. That is on my to do list and am hoping to get to it soon! I plan on making a name activity pack that will have a bunch of activities and will all be editable. Thanks so much for your kind words!! 🙂
Hi! Do you have the file for the pencil craft? So cute!