Back to School with Miss Bindergarten*
*I plan on reading one Miss Bindergarten book each day during the first week, we will revisit these stories during the year or when an occasion arises (such as a student being hosptalized/planning a field trip and certainly the 100th day of school.)
Miss Bindergarten Books
Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for School
Stays Home from Kindergarten
Has a Wild Day in Kindergarten
Plans a Circus with Kindergarten
Celebrates the 100th Day
Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten
I read Miss Bindergarten
Gets Ready for Kindergarten on the first day - I read a page and we
looked around the room to see if there is anything familiar and I talk
about how I got ready. We identify students
with names that matched the alphabet letter. We talk about how the students got ready for school. By the time the book is finished everyone will have heard everyone else's name and they will be familiar with the room.
Our school is under renovation this summer, this is going to give me the perfect opportunity to make a photographic record of how I got ready for kindergarten. I'll probably make a book that will be placed in the reading center.
You can have the students make a class book by illustrating a page that shows what they did to get ready for school. It would be cute to find a backpack shape for them to draw their picture on. (Many back to school books have shapes such as backpacks, computers, etc.)
You can make a color
copy all the animal pictures in the back of the book and place them on
index cards and write the kind of animal that it is beside each picture
(begin the animal word with a capital letter). Laminate. The
students can match these cards to the correct letter of the alphabet for
practice in letter discrimination. If you write the animal type using
all lowercase letters, it also becomes an activity in matching capital
letters to lowercase, since the letter cards are capital letters and the
animal type begins with a lowercase letter. For some students, you
might want to write the beginning letter in a different color ink to aid
in beginning letter discrimination.
Point out how each
character's name rhymes with something they are doing. Help students to
create rhymes using their own names. Print their rhymes and attach them
to their mobiles.
Miss Bindergarten Stays Home from Kindergarten
1. Talk about the days
of the week: Is there something the class does routinely on certain days
each week? Are there individual activities students do on a weekly basis?
2. Have students pick their favorite day of the week and illustrate why it is their favorite.
Sympathy for Others
1. Discuss times when you have not felt well. Share the things that cheered you up and made you feel better. Ask students to draw a picture of a time when they were not feeling well. Ask them to show what made them feel better.
2. Create "Get Well" cards. This could be done at a specific time when someone in the class, another teacher, or the principal is sick. This could also be done at any time during the year for children at a local hospital.
Helping New People
(Such as the Substitute Teacher)
1. This is a great book to use in preparation for a time when you may be out of the classroom. Introduce your students to the idea of another teacher supervising them. Describe the ways in which they could help the substitute.
2. Talk about what it feels like to be a new member of the class. Ask them to remember how they felt on their first day of school.
Bindergarten Takes a Field Trip with Kindergarten
This book introduces students to the basic industries of their town or neighborhood, and learn basic geometric shapes.
1. Introduce shapes and their names, using large cutouts. Talk about what shapes you can see in everyday objects around the classroom.
2. Divide the class into shape teams (circle, triangle, etc.). Ask each team to draw the things around them that have their shape. Let them explore the classroom and playground for help (e.g., square windows, rectangular door, etc.).
3. For a rainy day, hold a scavenger hunt in the classroom. Hide objects that represent all the shapes around the room. Each team then has to collect the objects that have their assigned shape.
4. After these activities, have the members of each team draw and cut out their team's shape. Ask each student to write the name of the shape on one side, and list or draw objects that have that shape on the reverse side. Attach the finished cut-outs to their individual mobiles.
Miss Bindergarten Plans a Circus with Kindergarten
Goal: Introduce students
to animals and their characteristics, discuss basic alliteration, and spend
a fun afternoon at your own circus.
Animals and Alliteration
1. Each student in Miss Bindergarten's class is actually an animal (i.e., Danny is a dog, Matty is a moose, etc.). As you read the story, point out these animals to the class and ask them to identify each animal. Introduce various characteristics of each animal (e.g., elephants drink through their noses, iguanas smell with their tongues, etc.).
2. Each character's name begins with the same letter as the type of animal it is. Ask students to imagine themselves as an animal whose name starts with the same letter as their first name and have them draw a picture. Attach the pictures to their individual mobiles.
Miss Bindergarten Has a Wild Day in Kindergarten
This book introduces
students to important people in their school and life cycles. It also tells
a humorous story about catastrophes that happen at times. This book would
be very appropriate for revisiting during the spring.
A coordinating activity would be to graph of all your studentsí names by first letter. Make a graph with 26 columns (one for each letter of the alphabet) that is at least 5 inches wide. Write, or have each student write, their name on a 3 x 5 index card. Then have each student tape their name card in the appropriate column according to the letter his or her name starts with. Discuss which letters have the most name cards, which have the least, the same, and which have none. Then have the students try to come up with names for the letters without name cards.
Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day
· Begin discussing the value of the number 100 with groupings of 10. Show students a bundle of 10 pencils and a bundle of 100 pencils.
· Create a "100" bulletin board. Choose a theme: the ocean, the forest, a zoo, etc. Prepare photocopies of 100 fish, trees, monkeys, etc. Have students decorate them and then post them on the board.
· Have each child trace their hands on several pieces of construction paper and then decorate them. Place hands in a row throughout the classroom, or down the hallway, counting and grouping by 10 until you to reach 100.
· Make macaroni necklaces using 100 pieces of pasta.
· Have each student bring in their own collection of 100 things (for example, crayons, pennies, buttons, etc.). Students can do this at home with help from their parents.
· Ask each child to illustrate the number 100 by completing the following statement: "100 things I want to . . . " (Suggestions: eat, draw, make, have, sew, paint, color, etc.) Attach their statements to their individual mobiles.
100th Day Party!
Spend the day doing everything in sets of 100:
· Exercise 100 times (10 jumping jacks, 10 toe touches, 10 shoulder touches, 10 claps, 10 hops, etc.).
· Observe 100 seconds of silence.
· Time how long it takes to walk 100 steps.
Make "100th Day Snack Bags"
· Distribute one brown paper bag per student and have a decorating session using the number 100.
· In 10 separate bowls, place enough snack foods for each student to take 10 of each. You could use mini pretzels, mini marshmallows, raisins or other dried fruit, small crackers, gummy candy, or popcorn.
· Allow each child to count out 10 pieces from each bowl for their bag. Close the bag, shake it up, and enjoy!
The 100 Guessing Game
· Fill a variety of jars with various quantities of items like buttons, beads, bows, marbles, golf tees, etc. (Only one jar should have 100.)
· Number each jar. Then let each student guess which jar contains 100. Pin the 1 on the 100.
· On a large piece of poster board, allow the whole class to decorate the number 100. (You can do this ahead of time.) At your party, under adult supervision, blindfold each student and let each child try to pin the 1 on the 100. 100th Day Award
· Create a template certificate that reads "__________ has completed 100 days of kindergarten," with space to insert each student's photograph.
ideas came from members of listservs that I belong to, personal ideas and
ideas from the web.