We’re not just showing that we’re listening. We’re actively listening and remembering so that we can use that information when we think about our friend. When we talk to them again, we can ask them more about it.
– Zeba McGibbon from The Kindergarten Cafe Podcast ~ Ep. 65
Episode Summary
In this episode, I discuss the vital role of how morning meetings in kindergarten can foster a community and engagement. I introduce my Classroom Community Bundle, offering printable resources and activities to enhance these meetings. But the main focus is that I give you an outline of a week’s worth of activities for morning meetings. The goal is to equip kindergarten teachers with effective strategies that promote a nurturing classroom environment.
In this episode, I share:
- Introduction to Morning Meetings
- Monday: Greeting and Activities
- Tuesday: Voice Volume and Goals
- Wednesday: Snowball Greeting Fun
- Thursday: Partner Shares and Activities
- Friday: Weekend Chant and Movement
- Building a Classroom Community
Related Episodes:
Related Blog Posts:
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Zeba:
- Instagram – @kindergartencafe
- Facebook – @kindergartencafe
- Website – www.kindergartencafe.org
- Tik Tok – @kindergartencafe
Read the Transcript
[0:00] Hey teacher friends and happy new year! I know how crazy it can feel coming back to school after a long break So let me plan your morning meetings for you and take that off your plate If you want more activities like the ones i’m going to tell you today You can get them all and more and then some In my classroom community bundle with printable cards and directions for awesome and engaging greetings activities shares even closing meeting all kinds of great stuff so check that out if you’re looking to switch up your morning meeting and if you’re someone who’s thinking what is morning meeting what are you talking about how do i do morning meeting i have a blog post that lays out exactly how to do morning meeting in kindergarten what it should look like and i have a podcast on launching morning meeting at the start of the year or if you just want to start doing it, here’s how you could launch it. So I’ll put both those links below. And after you’ve done that, you can come back to this episode and have your whole first week of morning meetings planned out for you. All right, now let’s get into the week-long plans.
[1:08] Music. You’re listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast, where kindergarten teachers come to learn classroom-tested tips and tricks and teaching ideas they can use in their classroom right away. I’m Zeba, creator and founder of Kindergarten Cafe, and I help kindergarten teachers with everything they need from arrival to dismissal in order to save time, work smarter, not harder, and support students with engaging and purposeful lessons. I’m here to cheer you on through your successes and breakthroughs, and offer support and resources so you never have to feel stuck or alone. Ready to start saving time and reducing your stress? And purposeful lessons that students love? Let’s get started.
[2:03] Okay, let’s start on a Monday. Let’s do a greeting. On a Monday, I always do the greeting. What’s the news? That’s where the kids go around. They say good morning to the person next to them and they ask them what’s the news? The kids know that they can say no news or they can share one piece of news with the class. This doesn’t have to be something from the weekend. It could be just something they’re excited about or they’re thinking about, but that is what’s the news. Then they go around to the next person. And I also let them know that if they have a lot they want to share, that they can say, I’ll tell you more at snack time. And then make sure to remind kids like, oh, so-and-so wanted to share more at snack time. So they know they can rely on that. The share of the morning meeting would actually be the greeting. So they got to share during the greeting. So check that off the list. And the activity is perfect for when you’re coming back from break.
[2:55] Reviewing class promises. You can also do a find a friend activity that is featured in my back from winter break bundle. And so maybe I would do that the first day you come back from break, but then the next day I would do the review class promises freeze. So what I mean by that is you are going to tell the kids to walk around the room and then you’re going to tell them I’m thinking of a class promise. Our first class promise is take care of the classroom. Think about how you could show taking care of the classroom and freeze. And then you talk about the statues that you see that are taking care of the classroom. Oh, wow, so-and-so is picking up trash. Oh, so-and-so is pushing in chairs. They’re really taking care of the classroom. So that’s a great way to remind them of those class promises you made. They’ve definitely forgotten over the break, over the vacation. And if you’re not constantly talking about the class promises, then they are just, it’s just a poster hanging up on a wall. It doesn’t mean it’s not meaningful to them. So that’s one way to get kids to remember the examples and specifics of what those class promises mean.
[4:01] So Tuesday greeting would be a voice volume greeting. Again, we’re coming back from break. We want to remind kids about our expectations. So this is a great way to remind kids about what the different voice volume expectations mean. So you’re going around and having kids greeting each other good morning and shaking their hand, and you are calling out different voice volumes. So in my class, zero is nonverbal, so they can give a wave or a thumbs up. The number one voice volume greeting is a whisper. So they’d whisper to their partner. Number two would be just like a quiet partner talk. Number three is loud and proud. So I usually choose some of the quieter kids that I always have a hard time hearing on the rug to do that one. And then the kids that are always so, so noisy, talking so much, I usually choose to do voice volume one or zero. So I do it purposefully, but it’s a great way to remind them for when you’re saying, hey, remember, we’re at our seats, we’re doing voice volume one, they know what that means. So this is a great way to practice that. For a share, since it was New Year’s, you can have them turn and talk about their New Year’s resolution or goal. And that would work really well if you’re going to then write about a New Year’s resolution or goal. I do have a whole New Year’s pack that you can use to help with that.
[5:16] And if you want something more, I have New Year’s around the world. So you could learn about New Year’s traditions from around the world. So if you’re going to do that, then having them share ahead of time to talk about a New Year’s resolution would be a great opportunity to have them practice ahead of time. Activity for the day could be acted out. And so that would be kids are acting without talking. They’re just using their body to act out something they did over the vacation and then having kids guess what they did over the vacation, having them raise their hand to see if they can guess. And this works especially well if you did do the find a friend activity from Monday, from my back from winter break activity pack, then they hopefully have some context for what kids did over the vacation because they just talked to them about it. So hopefully they can remember who did what. It’s a good reminder for we need to listen to our friends when they say, you know, on Monday they said, what’s the news? Then we got to ask them what they did over the vacation with the find a friend. It’s a good reminder of like, we’re not just showing that listening. We’re actively listening and remembering so that we can use that information when we think about our friend, when we talk to them again, can ask them more about it. We’ll remember what they did for the acted out activity.
[6:28] Okay, Wednesday, greeting. Really fun one for wintertime, snowball greeting. I love doing it anytime it snows, but you don’t have to be in a snowy area to do it. So the kids write their name on a post-it note. You only have to do this one time and then you can save them. So they write their name on a post-it note. You crinkle it up, crumple it up into a little tiny little ball, and then you drop them all in the middle of the circle like snowballs. and you go around the circle. One kid picks up a snowball, opens it up, reads the name of the person who’s on it, goes over to that kid, shakes their hand, says good morning. You should collect all the snowballs so that they don’t go back in the circle. And that way each kid only gets greeted once.
[7:07] Once the kid’s been greeted, that person that just got greeted, they get to pick a new snowball. And hopefully if it all works out, it goes all the way around so everyone gets a turn. But sometimes the chain ends. You get the person who first started and then there’s kids left. So you just pick someone who hasn’t had a turn yet to start a new snowball chain. But the kids absolutely love it. And like I said, you collect the snowball so that way each time they’re not writing their name on a post-it note, you can use the same ones. But it’s really good practice to get them to be able to read their friends’ names. That’s a good skill to have. The share for the day could be going around the circle and saying one thing that you want to get better at. Now this is a little step up from the share the day before where they’re just turning and talking to their partner about their new year’s resolution whereas this is telling the whole class what is something they want to get better at and remember kids should always be able to say pass if they don’t want to say so for activity today a really fun and easy one that gets kids moving they were just sitting for a while the snowball greeting can take a little while going around the circle can take a little while for our share so we want to get them up and moving apple banana strawberry really fun the kids tell them to spread out around the room if you call it apple they hop forward if you call out banana, they hop backward. If you call out strawberry, they hop up and spin around. Do like a spin. So they love that one, obviously. So I go like apple, apple, they have to jump forward two times. But apple, banana, jump forward once, jump backward once.
[8:36] Apple, banana, strawberry, jump forward, jump backward, spin. So it can be really fun. And then you can even have the kids to come up and take turns calling out the directions. It’s great for direction following and it gets them up and moving. What could be better? Really good one to have in your back pocket.
[8:53] Thursday, for our greeting, I would do a nonverbal greeting, do a thumbs up or peace sign, keep things calm, send it around the circle. For the share, I would tell them to find a partner who, so like find a partner who has the same color shirt as you, or find a partner who has the same number of syllables as you. I mean, you can really mix it up. Or if you have like little cards, maybe let’s say you’re working on rhyming, you can have them find a partner that way by matching the cards. But I would just say like find a partner who has the same number of pets as you. Just totally random. And then tell them what your favorite thing to do in winter is. So when we do shares, it’s good to not have it be whole class the whole time because that can take a lot of time. And so finding a partner and then telling them a share, that’s a good way to get the share in and keep it engaging.
[9:52] For an activity, I would play what’s different. So have the kids pick one kid and have everyone sit in a circle. Pick one kid, have them stand in the circle, give a little twirl, and then go out in the hallway or go into the bathroom if you have one and change one thing about themselves. And I’d give some examples of like little things. So it’s not so obvious. They could turn their shirt around or inside out. They could take their hair out of their ponytail. They could move their watch to a different hand. They could take their sock off or roll up their sleeve. Just some example. So they pick one thing to change about their outfit. And they come back when they’re ready. They give a twirl in the middle of the circle. And then kids raise their hand to guess what’s different. And whoever guesses gets to go change for the next round. And I do like three or four. And I tell the kids, we’ll play it again. We’re not going to get everyone this time, and that’s okay.
[10:45] All right, we made it to Friday. Woo, if only it was that easy.
[10:50] Friday for the greeting, I love to do a little chant. It goes like, hello, Ziba, the weekend is near. What you gonna do when it really gets here? And the person then says one thing that they might do over the weekend. So I stress might because the kids are usually like, I don’t know what I’m doing this weekend. And so I’ll say like, what is something you might do or what is something you usually do on weekends? And so then they’ll say, like, read. She’s gonna read, gonna read, gonna read. And you keep going around the circle. Hello, Sophia, the weekend is near. What you gonna do when it really gets here? I’m gonna go to swim class. She’s gonna swim, gonna swim, gonna swim. Hello, Sully, the weekend is near. What you gonna do when it really gets here? I’m probably gonna, like, nap on the couch. gonna nap gonna nap gonna nap do you see how sally is my cat by the way you take what they say and you put it into a one word thing that you repeat so it’s really fun to do for the weekend and it has a little share involved because that’s the sharing is the greeting so that’s good and it’s a chant so it keeps it moving it’s fun for an activity on a friday do a go noodle a jack hartman danny go p.e with mr g something engaging something fun something getting the kids moving, and just keep it easy on yourself because it’s Friday and you made it to Friday.
[12:16] All right, so our quote of the day is a girl six-year-old answering the good morning, what’s the news? As I said on Monday, you should do what’s the news. So she said, it’s my birthday today and I’m here with you special people.
[12:30] So that’s what morning meeting can do for you, creating a really solid classroom community. And I hope that you enjoyed this planning. And like I said, if you want more activity ideas, greeting ideas, share ideas, check out my Classroom Community Bundle because it has it all laid out for you with clear directions and easy for you to just, I just pull up a stick and be like, okay, today we’re doing this. And so it’s super easy. And it’s good to change it up every once in a while. If you enjoyed this, if you want more week-long plans or something, let me know. Send me a message on Instagram with the code word morningmeeting. So I know you listened to today’s episode and enjoyed it. And if you enjoyed it, please give a review. It really, really helps the podcast. All right. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes for more information and resources, or just head straight to kindergartencafe.org for all the goodies. If you liked this episode, the best ways to show your support are to subscribe, leave a review, or send it to a friend. I’ll be back next week with even more kindergarten tips. See you then.