Setting the tone for a new school year is one of the most important things any teacher can do. I think most of us know this, and that’s why so many teachers are asking:

“What do you do during the first hour of Kindergarten?”

For my kinder babies, I try to make even the first hour of kindergarten (and second, third, so on…) match the procedures for the rest of the year as closely as possible.

So, on day one, when they walk in the door:

• I show each kiddo where to hang their backpack.
• We hang it up and then walk to their seat.
• We get out our fluency folder and grab the Play-Dough name mat that is inside.
• While the other students come in and hang up their backpacks, the students already seated roll out play dough snakes and make their names on the mat.

If you want to grab these mats for your first hour of kindergarten, just click the image below and then click, “Make a copy.”

Some just play with play dough and that’s great too! The main point is that they have practiced hanging up their backpack and getting out their fluency folder. These are the first two things they will do each day in kindergarten.

Later the fluency folder will have familiar reading and morning work, but for now, we are just practicing getting it out.

From there, we get settled and go to the carpet. (Our whole group area.) I teach how to walk to the carpet with a whole lot of role-playing and modeling of the expectations. 

Once we are on the carpet, we practice rule one. 

I use Whole Brain Teaching procedures for this. The rules and methods are linked below. 

• Methods Day 1
• Rules

I wanted a different style of poster for my classroom. If you want to use these posters in your classroom, just click below to grab the FREE PDF!

 
We work on the very beginnings of our oral language routines. We further practice those the rest of the week, adding rules 2-5 the following days.

P.S. While you are getting ready for the back to school season, don’t forget to shop all of my MUST-HAVE resources here!