Morning Meeting

I LOVE our morning meetings! This seems to be the kids’ favorite way to start the day, too! Although this part of our day is quick, the kids get so much out of it…and they are totally responsible for doing everything on their own {with my guidance, of course ;)} Here’s just a little peek into our calendar/morning meeting area. I’d LOVE more suggestions of things I can add!!

Before starting our calendar time, I pull sticks to see who my calendar helpers will be. I usually choose 8 kids.

The calendar jobs are as follows:

*Change the “Yesterday/Today/Tomorrow…Last Month/This Month/Next Month” chart

*Add the date to the calendar

*Write the date {long form}

*Write the digital date {abbreviated}

*Add a tally to the tally chart

*Poppin’ Place Value…add cubes, group sets, change numbers

*Write the number word of the day

*Cross out a number on our 100’s chart

All of the kids will do this at the same time, except for my date writers. They take turns. After everything has been changed/added, we go over all the info together :)

I had to create these calendar helper cards because the others I had were too big for the board. These fit snug in those little $1 pocket charts I picked up at Target before the start of the school year! Click the link below to download yours!

click to download

Calendar Helper Cards

Two different kids are responsible for changing out the date{s} every morning. This is a great way to reinforce recognition of the days of the week words and month words, too! We also have lots of talks about commas, dashes, and proper nouns.

Okay…so forgive the messy appearance of the tally chart. I actually went back in and cleaned it up after this. I like for the kids to see how two sets of 5 makes a set of 10, so that’s why they’re {very sloppily} circled. The kids love to practice skip counting. Kim Sutton has some pretty cute songs that the kids love to sing, and of course, Dr. Jean is always a crowd favorite, too!

I forgot to mention that we also have a weather watcher who helps us keep track of the weather. We record our weather data into our weather graphs in our science journals. They love to forecast the weather for the next day, too! And just like our meteorologists, they’re usually far from being right! HA!

I also post our words of the week and our weekly chunks in this area too so that I can throw out some quick reinforcement activities during our whole group time. This has been an awesome tool to help them prepare for their “spell checks” on Fridays!!