Kindergarten teachers should have their classrooms set up by the first day of school. It is important that the students be able to walk into a welcoming environment on what may be a very stressful day for them. The Virtual Vine and KinderThemes are excellent resources with suggestions for bulletin board displays, student name tags and tips for first day routines to make the children feel more at ease.
Kindergarten teachers are not able to examine students' academic records from the previous year. They have no way of knowing students' academic abilities until they administer beginning of year assessments. KinderKorner is a site for teachers that includes a page of suggestions for informal assessments that are conducted in the first weeks of school, like alphabet knowledge, number recognition and counting.
Most young children love poems and songs. They are not only a great learning tool for teachers; they help kindergarten students get to know each other and see that school can be fun. KinderThemes devotes part of their site to songs and poems that are easy to learn and remember. There are welcome and clean-up songs as well as poems that teach students how to write numbers with rhymes.
Kindergarten teachers need a lot of activities to keep their students engaged all year, but especially during the first few weeks. Coloring sheets are a good choice for desk work in the morning. Most students can color independently, and having something to do each morning helps settle the class while others are arriving, unpacking and going to the restroom. Education.com has many free pictures available for downloading and printing.
KinderThemes has a reading activity for "The Kissing Hand" by Audrey Penn, a popular "first day of school" book. The teacher reads the book then asks the children to share their feelings about coming to school. There is also a craft activity that will help the children remember the book.