Ask me about Tuesday, August 29, 2023

Today was an awesome second day!  We came in from the outside line-up and began to learn our morning routines.  We just focused on unpacking today, so the children had to turn in their yellow folder to the blue basket, put their lunchbox and water bottle in the lunch baskets outside our door, and hang up their backpack on the hook.  They were anxious to play with play doh at their tables.  We will be adding on to this routine, but I am taking things slow to help them adjust and not worry about remembering too much yet!  
We have another special morning routine and that is to listen for the music "Oh What a Beautiful Morning," by James Taylor as a signal to clean up and come to the edge of our carpet.  We pass around a hello each day.  We will be saying hello in different languages throughout the year.  This week we are saying "Aloha."  They also need to say the name of the person next to them.  If they don't know their name, they quietly ask.  
The children drew a self-portrait today.  I will hang this up for Back to School Night, then we will put it in our time capsule as part of a collection of papers that we will look at when we open the time capsule the last day of school.  They also had to stay in their seat and work the whole time.  It's a hard thing for kindergarteners to understand that they can always add more details to their work and that they may not get up and down from their seats, but most of them did a great job today!
We passed the Talking Carrot again today as part of getting to know each other.  The children said their name and told us their favorite place to visit.  We are really working on learning the names of our friends as a "Get Along Goal" for our class.  
Today the children got to play.  Montgomery County requires 20-30 minutes of play each day in kindergarten.  The play is to be directed by the children, and they make the choices of what to play with instead being assigned by the teacher.  The children had a great time today with many choosing to get the play doh out again, but others building or playing in housekeeping.  Tomorrow we will open the art station as an option during play.  I use musical transitions throughout the day, and today I introduced our clean-up music to the children.  When they hear this song come on they are learning they need to stop and clean up.  They are to try to be on the carpet by the end of the music, which helps move them along!  
We read a book from our Benchmark reading series about rules today.  We started talking about why rules are necessary.  Ask your child to tell you why rules are important at school.  We will be talking more about rules this week and will establish our classroom rules.  

I really enjoyed today.  I got to see the children playing together and having fun.  I also got to talk a little more with individual children and got to know them better.  I know it's going to be a great year!

​Miss Wolfe