First Day of Kindergarten

That day is here for a lot of us and just around the corner for the rest! The first day of kindergarten!!!! Our to-do lists are multiple pages long and our heads are full of all the ideas and things we want to get done in our classroom! On top of that we need to start planning our first day of school! Ahhhhh!!

I remember when I first made my transition from teaching 3rd grade to kindergarten and having absolutely no idea what the first day of kindergarten should even look like!! I was incredibly overwhelmed and spent hours upon hours trying to find ideas. Even after teaching kindergarten for 5 years, I still forget what I do on the first day of school! There is so much growth that happens throughout the year that when the new school year begins, I like to refer to my first day of school plans. Thank goodness for those!!

Over the years, I have come up with some important things that I always like to include in my first day of kindergarten:
1. Make the day fun!
2. Create a warm, safe, and comforting environment for the students.
3. Begin routines, procedures, and expectations from the start. SUPER SUPER IMPORTANT!!
4. Include lots of hands-on activities.
5. Have lots of interactions with each other.
6. Play
7. Have FUN!!!

There are so many amazing and wonderful first day of school ideas. I wanted to share with you my first day of school plans in hopes that I can give you some new ideas or help a new teacher who may feel as overwhelmed as I did my first year! Here they are:

Most of these activities can be found in my TPT Store and some are for FREE!! Click on the pictures to check them out!

If you are interested in reading about what I do the rest of the first week, you can check out my post from last year all about the first week of kindergarten HERE. There are FREEBIES included in that post too!

I hope you enjoy my first day of Kindergarten plans! Something so important to do at the beginning of the year is to really start the year off with practicing routines and procedures. I can't tell you how important this is. By having routines and procedures practiced and set in place from the beginning of the year, it really helps with behavior, classroom management, and also creates a safe and comfortable environment for your students. I have learned the hard way of not having these set in place from the beginning of the year!

I hope you all have an AMAZING and FUN first day of school with your students. It is so much fun meeting them and they will love you to pieces from the start!

Happy Back to School everyone!!! :)