The first day of school is always a very exciting and busy day!  We try to take lots of pictures as the children arrive.  These are very special pictures that we always like to include in our scrapbook and end of the year slide show.  Most of the children arrive wearing their name tags that they were given at the Kindergarten Tea (orientation) the day before.  If they don't have a name tag that tells us how they will be going home, then we make sure that this is recorded somewhere on their name tags. 

The following are some of the things that we try to do the first day of school.  We don't always get to everything.  There is never enough time to do all the things that we would like to do! 

 Brown Bear Tour

The day before school starts I place pictures of all the animals in the story in all the key locations that I want to visit.  I put one in the custodian room, another in the office, the nurse's office, the principal's office, the library, the speech and language teacher's room, our Reading Buddies room, etc.  Then on the first day I tell the children that all of the animal have come to school to visit us.  But, the animals  are hiding!  As we tour the school, we find each animal,  At each stop, I introduce each of the staff members to the students. 

(Make sure you have a master plan written down to remember the order of the animals and where you put them!)

These are the picture cards that I use for our Brown Bear tour of the school.  I printed each picture, mounted on blue construction paper and then laminated the page.  

These colored pictures are available for purchase with the Brown Bear Shape book pictured below. 

See our pictures of last year's tour in September Monthly Activities.

Brown Bear Shape Book

This is a great little book to teach shapes and colors with the story of Brown Bear.  There is a PDF black line copy of each story page shown here.  There is an additional pattern page for each of the characters with all the different basic shapes.  All together, there are 18 masters and a cover included to make the 8 1/2 x 11 inch size book.

This is a sample page showing the Brown Bear circle pattern page.  There is a new page for each character with dotted lines to show the shape.

This is a sample page showing the Brown Bear circle pattern page.  There is a new page of cut out patterns for each of the different characters.  This page can be copied on brown construction paper for the children to cut out and glue to Brown Bear's body.  Or, you could have the children color the shape with crayon and then glue to the character's body.

This book can be copied and bound (stapled) before coloring.  I send it to our reprographics department and have it stapled together on the left side.  This avoids having to collate all of the pages of each child's book after it is completed.

Included in the Brown Bear package:

1.  Brown Bear Shape book with 19 black line masters to copy and use.

2.  Brown Bear Tour -- 11 colored pictures of all of the characters with children and teacher pictured above.  

If you are interested in purchasing the Brown Bear Shape book, it is available for $14.99.  I will send a link to access the Brown Bear Shape book after payment is made.  You may use Paypal or pay by check or money order.  If you would like to pay by check, please let me know by email.

First Day Headbands

Another fun idea that was given to us by Danielle Dunlap.  This was for the "First Day of Kindergarten" handbands.  These were made using the following pattern and a rubber band was attached where you see the X.  This makes it possible to use a regular 12x18 piece of paper and have it fit all sizes of heads!     The eyes were made with glitter paint.  The kids all looked so cute wearing them on the first day of school!

Another project that is fun to do on the first day of school goes along with the story of "The Kissing Hand."  We purchase individual puzzles that are available from Oriental Trading Company for each child.  Each child's handprint is stamped on the puzzle using an ink pad.  We have found that the ink dries quicker than paint.  We send the puzzle home with each child in a zip lock baggie with the poem.  This project with the poem in PDF form is available in the Kissing Hand activity package. 

Another fun idea for the first day is "Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?"  This is a great little book that we read, and then we use the following game to learn the names of the students in the class.  This is also a big help to the teacher in learning the students' names at the beginning of the year!  We play this game each day for the first few weeks of school to reinforce the names of everyone in the class.  This book is available through amazon.com. 

The Kissing Hand Puzzle project                     

Another fun activity that we do each year is a little puzzle.  I purchase the little individual (blank puzzles) that are available from Oriental Trading Company.  With a parent helper, each child stamps their hand on the puzzle.  You can use paint or an ink stamp pad.  I usually use the large pads from Lakeshore since the ink dries faster and it is big enough for their hand to fit on the pad.  It's also fun to add a small heart sticker somewhere on the handprint to go along with "The Kissing Hand" story.  After the ink is dry, we take the puzzle apart and put it in a little, plastic bag with this poem stapled to the outside of the bag:

This is something that they can take home the first day!