2 Ways To Start Your Morning In Kindergarten

Start your day off on the right foot by creating a structured morning routine for your kindergarten students! Today, I will talk about how to get your kindergarten morning started with simple and easy-to-use worksheets and activities designed specifically for your kindergarten students.

These activities can be done each morning when the students arrive. Kindergarten students thrive on familiar routines and activities that they can independently engage in as they begin their day. Providing your kindergarteners with consistent morning work worksheets, activities, and procedures will help you maintain control over behaviors, offer opportunities for literacy, writing, and math spiral reviews, and allow you to address any unexpected events that may arise.

By maintaining the same morning routine throughout the year, your students will know exactly what to expect when they arrive at school each day. Through trial and error, I have discovered the perfect morning work activities that will help kindergarten teachers guide their students to start the day off on the right track. Trust me when I say that this routine will completely transform your entire day!

The Importance of Procedures

Kindergarteners must be taught rules and procedures. The best way to do this is by providing clear directions and establishing consistent routines through repetition. Giving your students morning worksheets that follow a consistent procedure, review previously taught skills, and adhere to a standardized format will make it easier for them to start their day the right way and complete these morning worksheets independently. This approach will help them understand the morning work procedure.

The Importance of Providing Differentiated Morning Work

Let's face it, we need to differentiate work for our kindergarten students. By providing differentiated morning worksheets, your students will be able to succeed, work independently, and build their confidence.

All of my monthly packets include two levels of differentiation for morning worksheets. These kindergarten morning worksheets offer students tracing and/or writing activities that provide practice and review with letters, sight words, numbers, and more. They are designed to help students become familiar with morning sheets, learn to trace letters, words, and numbers, and color a simple picture.

1. Trace The Morning Message

Students will trace the morning message, which provides them with the necessary practice and spiral review to master sight words, using these morning work packets.

2. Write The Morning Message

You can create your own morning messages for students to write, following the same formats. 

All students will engage in the daily practice of counting and writing numbers using tens frames, subitizing, counting forward and backward, finding missing numbers, and basic addition and subtraction fact practice as the year progresses.

I have included simple and easy-to-color pictures that students will color each morning. This activity will aid in developing their fine motor skills. Even your most reluctant student will enjoy completing the seasonal coloring activity each morning.

Every week or month, when a new skill is changed or added, I take the last five minutes of the previous class to demonstrate and explain what is new. Additionally, I have a master copy of each page that I have completed, which I project on the whiteboard for students to copy the morning messages from throughout the year. As the year progresses, I only display the morning message. This approach allows me to identify students who may be struggling with basic skills.

Each month pack in kindergarten builds on itself and is repetitive, making it easier for students to quickly understand what they need to do with few explanations. I have gradually developed skills each week/ month.

For example, I start with larger tracing fonts and gradually decrease to smaller tracing fonts before completely stopping and having students complete the tasks on their own. You can choose the order of the pages without messing up anything. Every year, I have some students who need to use the morning message tracing pages until Christmas. The morning message starts with "Good morning!" every day.

Then, I add sight words to create simple three to five-word sentences. There are blank morning message pages located on pages 28-47 for you to use, allowing you to easily change what you want your students to write.

Here are some examples and ideas for your morning message:

• Writing a letter each day like "Dd, Dd, Dd"
• Writing a number each day or numbers to 5, 10, 15, 20
• Writing numbers backward
• Writing their name
• Writing a sight word all week student is struggling to learn
• Writing days of the week, months of the year, seasons

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MORNING WORK ACTIVITIES AND WORKSHEETS

Tips

As the year progresses, I will have students take their yellow crayons and highlight the sight words in the morning messages. I will then have them highlight sight words in directions. They will take their red crayons and highlight any words they do not know. This gives me a quick assessment tool. I make sure not to make students feel uncomfortable for not knowing words for this to be an effective assessment tool.

I start off the year by modeling writing, making sure my students understand that each letter MUST touch the lines in the correct spot. I refer to them as "chicken letters", "giraffe letters", and "monkey letters". "Chicken letters" are letters that are only underneath the dotted line and touch the bottom line."Giraffe letters" are letters that start on the top solid line and touch the bottom solid line. "Monkey letters" are letters that start at the dotted line and drop below the bottom solid line. "Monkey letters" always give my students the most challenging time, so we practice these a lot.

I keep the same morning routine all year so my students know exactly what to expect daily. Below you will find my morning routine. If this hadn't worked out so well for me, I wouldn't have shared it with you. Trust me when I say this routine will totally change your whole day!

My Morning Routine

Walk in quietly, unpack your backpack, and pick up the morning worksheet. At the beginning of the year, I place morning sheets on every child's desk until they become accustomed to where to find them. After that, they will start picking up their own papers and begin working on their own. 

As the year progresses, my students become faster at completing these pages, and I start adding another review sheet each day. They still have enough time to complete both pages, except for the students I differentiate for throughout the year. I only require them to complete the morning work page daily. When students finish, they bring me their morning worksheets to check. At the beginning of the year, students often have to return to their seats to correct their papers. However, this doesn't last long once they understand my expectations and are eager to move on to centers.

Students must file their morning work in their folders and proceed to their assigned centers. This applies to everything we do. It's a game-changer for sure!

Next, we take a bathroom break and have our morning meeting. During the meeting, I always review the morning worksheet. We read it out loud together and quickly go over each part. Throughout the year, I will ask students who have shown excellent writing, coloring, or improvement to allow me to use their papers for the morning meeting. I emphasize the importance of neat coloring, avoiding scribbles, having great handwriting, and so on. This approach has worked exceptionally well in motivating my students to do their best.

My teaching career has been a journey filled with valuable lessons and insights, particularly when it comes to incorporating morning work in kindergarten classrooms. Reflecting on my experiences, I am eager to share these valuable insights and practical strategies with fellow educators. By implementing these tips and tricks, kindergarten teachers can create a vibrant and engaging morning work routine that sets the stage for a successful day of learning.

May you have an OINKTASTIC week and may you thrive in your teaching journey!