Yesterday was Day 8 and I feel like I’m in a little bit of a rhythm. I took Sunday completely off from school work and only panicked a little. Mostly, I loved trying to sleep in, making waffles, going for a run in a new spot while Zack mountain biked on a dirt single track trail for the first time since his knee surgery on January 7th.

This blog post is to show what my zoom morning meetings look like and what a daily Must Do May Do doc is for this ‘section’ of Distance Kindergarten. We have spring break next week and maybe things will change up a little afterward.

I’m grateful to Erin Waters on teacherspayteachers for these cheerful graphics for morning message. My computer opens them in keynote, I save them as powerpoint, then open them in google slides. Then I edit them for each day.

I unmute everyone and we read the morning message together because that’s what we would do in the classroom. We’re not very in sync but that’s alright!

One of the favorite parts of morning meeting in the classroom is talking! Kids love when they are the speaker and we are all practicing active listening to them. So I try to have some structured sharing time throughout the week when I unmute them one at a time and it’s their time to shine!

Yesterday I tried this guessing game for the 2nd time and it went really well. I added animation to these slides so the clues appeared one at a time and the answer didn’t appear until I’d seen all of their whiteboards (where they’d written them at home).

The first couple of days, I read books that I’d specially picked out for the class. But I found it too difficult to be able to watch their reactions, show them the illustrations via the tiny green light of the camera on my computer, and feel like we were interacting. So I’m super grateful to youtube and getepic and the authors who are reading their books online for teachers and families to use.

I close out morning meeting with a little goodbye then kids leave the zoom meeting at their own time. Some stay on to chat, which is super fun! This week I offered a couple hours of 1:1 times in case right after morning meeting wasn’t ideal for families. I want to make sure the kids have time to tell me what they’re up to, ask questions, show me their legos and stuffed animals etc.

I am exceedingly lucky because our Head of School foresaw the consequences of the corona virus and set up training time before we closed and gave us prep time before our families came to school to pick up supplies, including school issued tech and the packets that we put together. Last night I was in a zoom chat then a twitter chat where overburdening students with packets was a hot topic. I asked for feedback from my families last week and am really pleased to be able to offer my kids some structure and routine during this weird time.

Each day they have Must Dos and May Dos, which is a familiar structure with from class. Most Must Do tasks are things we have done together in class and we are still reviewing skills. After Spring Break, I will start in with new learning.

I got these math tasks from the Rio School District, who shared them at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PjtShbKJh5lesjUkTrMr51oH4MNux9PurnnUHATeWYo/preview Thank

A family requested more non-digital learning options so I shared some phonics activities from Sweet For Kindergarten. I appreciate so many educators sharing their resources for home learning.