It's Spring Break for me!!
I have been a busy bee the last month preparing for the Texas Kindergarten Conference. It was oodles of fun and I LOVED all of the awesome, dedicated kindergarten teachers I met. I presented about guided reading, writers workshop, STEAM, and morning meetings. I thought I would share some of my morning meeting freebies and information with you!
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I begin each day by wearing my greetings apron at the door. I simply attach three different greetings to it and the kiddos choose how they want to say hello to me upon entering the classroom. The cards are from Resendez Rocks' TPT shop.
I even wore this apron in Ukraine to teach English last summer.
Once the bell rings for the announcements to begin, my cuties join me at the carpet and we listen to announcements, then begin our morning meeting.
We start by choosing a cool cat helper. I simply flip a paw to the next student.
That student helps with everything for the day. Their first task is to flick the greetings spinner. This was a make and take item during my presentation. The spinner tells us how we will greet each other. Here is the link to grab the greetings so you can make your own spinner!
Some of the ways we greet each other include a Hollywood hello, in which we use a karaoke microphone to say hello.
This fun microphone is on Amazon.
We also give a pat on the back with a fluff stuffed gardening glove - another make and take item from my presentation.
Another fun hello is learning a foreign way to say hello.
These are from Lakeshore, but I made a smaller set that you can grab for free in my TPT store. Just click the pic below.
After we greet each other we go over the schedule for the day...
...then we welcome back anyone who was absent the previous school day with our mascot - Coder Cat. (Our school name is Coder and our school colors are orange and black, so I found this cutie kitten to be our mascot.)
Coder Cat says "You've been gone. You've been missed. Where would you like your Coder Cat kiss?" Then the returning child points to their arm, nose, etc. where they would like a welcome back kiss.
Once we finish welcoming returning students, then we begin our morning message. We fill in missing sounds, find wight words, chunks, reversed letters, and capital letters that should be lower case.
Here is a video or our morning message.
Once we complete our message, then we stand on our Sit Spot paws and "close our eyes and visualize a _______" in which I state something they can be that relates to our learning. This tells my cuties how to transition to our Promethean board to wiggle with Go Noodle so we can have a brain break before beginning Daily Five.
I use my Rocky the Raccoon puppet to help my littles remember to close their eyes and visualize since this is one of our comprehension strategies from my Beanie Baby Strategies product. Once we are at the Promethean, I use my magic wand to everyone back into children so we can dance. They love it!
That's about it! Lots of learning for the first 15 minutes of the day and a lot community building!