Did You Fill a Bucket Today?

Beginning of the year calls for lessons that focus on respecting others and getting along.  A great book to teach this important concept is "Have You Filled  a Bucket Today?" by Carol McCloud.  This book is absolutely wonderful and is great for children ages preschool to fifth.  It explains how everyone has an invisible bucket.  You fill people's buckets when you are nice to them and do nice things.  However, you can dip into people's buckets if you are not kind.  I was reading this book to my kindergarteners and a child asked, "Is that real?  Do people really have invisible buckets?"  

Here is the anchor chart we made:

To promote good classroom behaviors, we have a classroom bucket!  When I see my students working together I tell them they are filling our bucket and I put a cotton ball in it.  When the bucket is completely full we will have a pajama party!

Name Activity

Beginning of kindergarten calls for getting to know you games and of course name spelling activities!  I created play-doh mats for each of my students that contained their name template.  Each child used play-doh to make their name.  I showed them how to roll the play-doh like a snake to make it easier to form. 

When finished, I had each of my students show their creations to the class and shared their name.  This turned out to be a fun get to know you activity as well as practice for learning how to spell our own names!