Our First Week of Kindergarten!

Wow!! The first week has come and gone! What fun we had!! I am so thrilled to be a part of your child's Kindergarten year! This short week together as filled with getting to know you activities. We also took a lot of time getting to know our Kindergarten routines, the school itself, and all of our new friends older and younger.


Sweet Smiles!


Silly Smiles!

Each day we start our day feeding our brains breakfast. I could not believe how eager the kiddos were to be in Kindergarten and even more so how quietly they worked. After Brain Breakfast, we prepared our bodies for a busy day by stretching and moving at the start of Morning Meeting. This class likes to sing and move! During Morning Meeting each day we met Mr. Rabbit and he helped us get to know one another. Students selected different "get to know you ideas" as we shared our names, ages, favorite foods, favorite color, favorite book, and favorite thing about our first week of Kindergarten. After focusing on each other, the calendar, and the days of the weeks, Mr. Rabbit dropped clues throughout the school and we were able to participate in a "getting to know the building" scavenger hunt. We even found clues outside on the playground.



We read Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten and created our own Getting Ready for Kindergarten brainstorm list. We then took our list and became authors and illustrators creating our own getting ready story book. Checkout our work in our classroom library. Also, check out Willowwind's Facebook shout out photo of our "getting ready" brainstorm published to Willowwind's Facebook page.



If you haven't "liked" WW's page be sure to do so. The page is full of fun peeks into the school day and important announcements. There are some great first day photos of a handful of Kindergarteners and their families walking into school. Check them out! There is also a convenient Facebook button at the top of our website's Welcome page for easy access.

After reading Minifred Goes to School, a story about a naughty cat who never follows the rules, we generated a list of our class rules. Each rule was student created. When our list of rules was complete, we signed the rule promising to do our best to follow our class created rules. Next week, we will become authors again writing class story titled Our Class Rules!

As a whole school, we spent a lot of time learning about school wide routines at lunch, recess, and GD. We had many great student led discussions about enhancing our current routines. We also took a school vote on our first school wide GD read aloud. The overwhelming consensus was that the Willowwind friends would like to read Roald Dahl's Matilda. I am excited to join in with the students as we take time each Tuesday to read Matilda together as a whole school. We love to read at Willowwind - in the classroom and as a whole school. Click on our Book Shelf tab to see the other books we read as the school year progresses.

Our afternoons, together were filled with time to rest our bodies and play in our classroom Centers.


Students build in the Wood Block Center, sort stuffed animals by type in the Stuffed Animals Center, gather materials from the Art Cart Center, and sort and count magnetic money in the Dry Erase Board Center.

We also spent a lot of time outside, enjoying the beautiful weather, as we discovered the "big kid playground" during recess time.


Kindergarten friends seeing how high they can climb on the very first day of school.

Check out more photos in our August 2013 photo album!

Even though the week was short, I am sure your child is tuckered out from a busy three days. All in all, the short week was a complete whirlwind and we were shocked when the week so quickly came to an end. This is an amazing group, and I am so excited for the year ahead. It will surely be a great time with amazing growth all around. Thank you for allowing me to share this journey with you. See you on Monday! I can't wait!