Name of the Day Freebie

I've been inspired by my fellow bloggers in the past few months to redo my calendar time routine. I have to confess... in the past it's my least favorite part of the day. I love to do my morning message with my students, but the whole calendar routine... not so much.

There is a kindergarten teacher across the hall from me who has the best morning meeting/calendar routine I have ever seen. It is truly incredible! She is one of my best friends and I've begged her to let my class just sit in on her morning routine every day. For some reason, she just doesn't really want 25 first graders joining her class every morning. So, I probably need to switch it up and make some improvements.

While I'm workin' on that, I thought I'd share part of my routine that I do like. It's the name of the day, which I only do until each child has had a chance to have their name chosen.

Name of the Day
(The children bring their clipboards and a pencil to our meeting area to do this activity.)
1.  Before the students arrive, I put one child's name on the whiteboard using magnetic letters.  The letters are all scrambled up.
2.  When it's time for name of the day, the students try to guess whose name it could be.
3.  When they figure it out, the name of the day student comes up to unscramble the letters.
4.  We cheer the letters as a group.
6.  On a large chart paper, I write the students name (plus their last name).
7.  At the same time, the students write the child's first/last name on the sheet below.
8.  We talk about the sounds of the name.
9.  We circle or highlight any vowels patterns or chunks that we find.
10.  We clap the syllables in both the first name and the last name.
11.  We write the number of syllables in the child's first/last name on the sheet below.
12.  We add them together to count how many syllables all together.
13.  We add the students name to our "Name Wall of Fame".

Here is the recording sheet we use for name of the day.  You can click on the image if you'd like to download a copy.