Opening/Morning Meeting

Every day and kindergarten we being with the same morning routine... Students come in, begin their morning work, and when tables are called they begin to unpack. When the unpack they turn in their take home folder to my basket, hang up coats and bags on their hooks and order lunch on the front of my desk. Ordering lunch doubles as my attendance so students who bring their lunch have that choice to choose from.

When everyone has unpacked, completed their warm-up, and has ordered lunch we are ready to meet on the carpet for our opening and morning meeting. Each day I have a helper of the day, this is the only assigned job I have in Kindergarten, and that student leads us through our plans for the day. Often they have to identify and write in beginning sounds, circle word wall words, add endings, or chunks of words we have worked on. We read the plans aloud as a class before moving over to our calendar routine. 

My helper of the day leads the class through our calendar activity.

This is everything we did for calendar in September.
(Oh it's not the first day of school just the 2 in the tens place
fell down in this photo.) It's the 21st day of school!

a. Flip today’s calendar number over. 

b. Add today’s pattern piece 

c. Put in the cards: Today is, Tomorrow will be, and Yesterday was. 

d. Get the dry erase marker and mark off the next number on our 100s chart or add  the next number on when greater than 100 days. 

e. Place Value: Add a straw to the ones place, count the ones, and flip the number card to match. Count the straws in the tens place, check to see that the number card below matches. Continue in the hundreds place. 

f. Dress Froggy to show today’s weather. Add the words to Today’s weather is.. 

A view from January Calendar routine. Patterns get harder, pennies
are added on plus counting students each day. This month we will
begin using the number of girls and boys as an addition problem
in our morning calendar.

g. Add a penny to the daily chart to represent what today is worth. 

h. Count the number of girls, number of boys, and number of students present today. The helper should add the magnetic numbers to show each amount. 

i. Student says “Go get pencils” kids will go get pencils from tables and return to the carpet. Teacher passes out the students calendars in the basket below the board kids will return to add today's date and the weather to their own calendar.

j. Movement Activity 

On the top are our short vowel posters to practice the sounds. 
Below is the daily calendar my students fill out as a part of our opening.

Also depending on what we are studying through out the year we identify letter sounds, vowel sounds, or even word wall words in poetry.

Want to see more from my room?
Visit my Room Tour blog posting from a few weeks ago!

In poems we identify word wall words, chunks, or punctuation marks.