Helping parents get ready for Kindergarten

Sending your little one off to kindergarten can be emotional. Parents want to make sure their child's teacher will protect, love, and care for their child the way that they do. Our new students are someone's little one all grown up and off starting to have personal rather than familial experiences. 

Parents will eagerly await for their child to stories about school, their new friends, and the new things that they learned. And...our students will often answer, "Nothing" or "I don't know" leaving parents asking, "What DO they do all day."

Preparing parents and new kindergartners for school is equally important.  Teachers know how special each member of their new class will be and it's our job to help all children learn in a safe, exciting, educational environment.

Each year, our district hosts a Bloom Into Kindergarten event for incoming kindergarten parents in May. We meet our new class members and discuss with the parents the expectations for incoming kindergartners keeping in mind developmentally appropriate goals and tasks. Parents and students make letter activities and we discuss the expectations and discuss all the wonders that kindergarten holds. 

We developed a Welcome to Kindergarten packet to hand out to parents during Bloom into Kindergarten, which we go through with them.

Included on the front page is all of our contact information and the first day of school information.  

The following pages discuss:

-Academic expectations and goals

-They way that we teach

-What a day in kindergarten looks like

-All first day of school information

-The kindergarten supply list 

-Apps that we use in school (we are 1:1 iPads)

-Resource pages including proper letter formation, our sight word list, a writing practice page, 2D and 3D shapes, and number flash cards. 

This has been tremendously helpful for our parents that are sending their little ones off to school. The packet gives us a lot of talking points. Many parents are surprised to see what kindergartners are expected to know, but probably more surprised when they know it all at the end of the year! Here is a FREE literacy night presentation that you can use to help keep parents updated on student progress.

I really love this packet because all the information is out there for our parents and we have most of their support at home. 

I made the packet editable (English, Spanish and for TK) for you to use and I hope it is equally as helpful in your classroom! There may be pages that you don't want to use, and you can just delete those out of the PowerPoint. If there is something you would like to see added, I will gladly do so - just shoot me an email! 

What kinds of parent information sheets do you give out? What has been the most successful for you?

Our 100th Day!

The highly anticipated 100th day of school has come and gone for us, but we had oh so much fun celebrating...as 100 yr olds!!

 Don't worry...that's only 1/2 my class.... I do have more students.

Anyways, to celebrate the 100th day & being able to (mostly) count to 100, we decided to dress up as 100 year olds and write about it! And BOY, did they get creative this year! See that little girl with the walker? Her dad made it our of PVC pipe and spray painted it pink, just for our celebration! She and her cousin also had cotton balls glued to the inside of scarves for fake white hair - adorable!

I don't know what it is, but seeing them dressed up as 100 yr olds just had me and my co-teacher just cracking up all day long!! 

We did have to get serious (kind of) for a minute to write about what we will look like when we are 100 years old. Thank goodness we had the Aging Booth app to help with that!

I just downloaded the app to my phone and took a picture of each one of the kiddos. You can also use pictures that you already have. 

How cute are they?! After I take each child's picture on the app I drag and drop it into my writing prompt. Voila  - all set! All we needed to do then is brainstorm what 100 year olds do and then we could get to writing!

This one is my fav!! "I am going to knit in my rocking chair with my knitting and my blanket"

 Love ya girl! "I will teach kids."

 My little athlete here has some lofty goals for 100. But the "I will like to have naps, " is right on point! 

And last, "When I am 100 years old, I am in college." Never stop learning kid, never! :o)

You can grab this 100th day writing and more 100th day activities here!

In other news we made some pretty sweet 100th day hats that made the organizational freak in me go bananas...but the kids had fun...so it was worth it right! ;o)

How was your 100th day? What did you do that fun and memorable!?

Kinder Tribe Blog Kickoff!

It's finally time to announce my newest collaborative project!

What whhaaattt! Fifteen kindergarten blogger friends and I are working together to bring you ideas for your classroom, test out your ideas & activities, and discuss all things Kinder!

The lovely Yukari from A Pinch of Kinder set out designing the blog for us and everyone else has pitched in to create, collaborate, and inspire each other on our journey teaching Kinder and navigating TPT.

Each of our authors has a unique teaching & creative style. We will be bringing a different flavor to the blog with each of our individual posts. Here's a bit about me to get started:

Posts will range from our Original Blog Posts, to What Worked Well Wednesday, and Feature Friday - where YOU will have an opportunity to post, share, and intrigue others!

Check back often for new news, giveaways, and other ventures. Oh and don't forget to get to know he other authors and visit their pages!

Eeeee :o) Hope you are as excited as I am! Let's kick it off with our first linky party below!

An InLinkz Link-up