First Day Plans (Linky Party)

The Caffeinated Teacher is hosting a First Day Plans Linky Party today. Go check out her blog for lots of first day of school plans and ideas. Plus, she has great teaching ideas and stories all the time!

My school is a K-8 Catholic grade school, and first through eighth graders start school next Thursday. Kindergartners will start the following Monday. This year, my job is a little different. I will be in charge of kindergarten latchkey (the morning kindergartners who stay full day) and the after care program at my school. Since I'm finishing up my thesis this fall, this should give me enough time to focus on that. Also, my hours are 10:00-6:00, and being most certainly NOT a morning person, I'm pretty excited about that aspect!

My current plan is to conduct the afternoon kindergarten session as more of a pre-kindergarten program. The children will have already had the intensive academic part of their day by the time I pick them up, so I will focus on social and emotional development, with some sneaky academic time mixed in there, of course! It looks like I will have a lot of freedom and flexibility with my schedule, which makes me very happy.

Here's what my first full day with the kindergartners and the after care children will (roughly) look like:

10:00 - 10:30 - Arrive at school, prepare for the day.

10:30 - 11:00 - Pick up my students from morning kindergarten, outdoor recess (weather permitting - though seeing as how today is the first rain I've seen in a LONG time, the weather will most likely permit this)

11:00 - 11:30 - Circle Time: Introductions (will pick a simple game for this - possibly, rolling the ball to another person or making a spiderweb of yarn), Schedule, Calendar (count to today, identify the day of the week and the month, write out the date). After calendar time, we'll walk around the room to look at the different areas: writing/art center, dramatic play area (if any bloggers out there want to send some play food/pots/pans/plates/cups/utensils to Ohio, I'm your girl!), manipulatives center, and the dollhouse and play animals area. Currently, I plan to operate this classroom very free choice. Once activities are introduced, children will be allowed to choose when/if they want to participate in them. We will do larger projects that will be more "mandatory" from time to time, but my main goal is to foster social and emotional development through play and peer/adult interactions.

11:30 - 12:15 - Lunch and recess

12:15 - 1:00 - Rest time. The kids have cots for naps, but since they are five years old, I don't expect all of them to actually nap. I will let the children pick 2-3 books, and the rule will be that as long as they are quietly lying on their cots, they can look at the books.

1:00 - 1:15 - Read Aloud. I will most likely read The Kissing Hand or Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for the First Day of Kindergarten.

1:15 - 2:00 - Choice Time. The children will be allowed to investigate the areas of the room we explored earlier. We will review the rules and the areas before the children make their initial choices. For now, I plan to let the children move around the room as they choose (one rule, though, is they must clean up one activity before moving onto another). If that ends up too chaotic, I will reevaluate.

2:00 - 2:20 - Clean up, Closing circle.

After Care:

2:30 - 3:00 - Check in, snack, change clothes
3:00 - 4:30 - Outdoor play (or play in gym if weather is bad)
4:30 - 5:45 - Free play in the cafeteria - board games, coloring, etc. - and homework time
5:45 - 6:00 - Dismissal

After Care is very open-ended, mostly just providing games and activities, helping with conflict resolution where needed and making sure all children get where they need to be at the end of the day. Because children are allowed (with permission) to attend various after school activities and help in classrooms, I plan to keep a very organized binder with each student's information on where they go each day/for how long/emergency contacts/etc.

I was in graduate school full time last year, so I haven't been in a classroom since July 2011. I'm excited to get started again! Here's to a great year!

Go link up at The Caffeinated Teacher! Looking forward to reading all of your first day plans.