What does your daily schedule look like in Kindergarten? Everyone’s schedule looks different and sometimes depending on your school or district, you may have a set schedule that you MUST stick to. At my last school, I was free to create my own schedule, so I have some tips and ideas on how to create your own schedule on this blog post here. Today, I am going to share what my Kindergarten daily schedule looked like.
For this Kindergarten daily schedule, I just added in sample times but you can see about how much time I spent on each part of the day. It’s easy to adjust the times and find what works for your students. If you have to create your own schedule, make sure to check out this post to learn how to create your own daily schedule.
8:00- 8:15am Arrival and Morning Routine
In the morning, this time can be chaotic! You may have students coming in staggered or needing to eat breakfast in the morning. Having a solid and structured morning routine really sets your students up to have a productive day (and will be easier for you to manage the 100 things you need to get done in the morning. You can read more about my morning routine in detail here: Kindergarten Morning Routine.
8:15-8:30am Morning Meeting and Calendar Time
Yes, I am old school with wanting to do a Morning Meeting/Circle Time/Calendar Time every morning. It really does set the tone for the day and gives my students a chance to talk before we get our day started. My students all sit in a circle on the carpet and we use a similar routine to the Morning Meeting template found in this book here: The Morning Meeting Book. We greet the friends and either side of us, then I ask them a question of the day. Usually it’s something that will get a one sentence answer, like “What is your favorite ice cream flavor?” or even a yes/no or this or that kind of question.
After our greeting, I like to share any announcements for the day and go over our daily schedule, letting them know what special we go to today (it helps eliminate the questions of “What time is lunch?” or “What special do we have today.” It helps to have some kind of visual on the board to go through each part of the day.
For Calendar time, we use our Calendar time binders and I have a calendar helper who ends up taking over instead of me. You can read more about my Calendar time here: Making Calendar Time Interactive.
8:30-8:45: Phonemic Awareness Daily Warm-Up/Phonics Lesson
Next, we start our most important part of our day- Phonemic Awareness Warm-Up. I’ve found that doing this first thing in the morning has the most success with my students. They are attentive and ready to learn. This is a quick 5 minute phonemic awareness lesson that I keep on my clipboard. It typically takes about 5 minutes. You can read more about how I incorporate this phonemic awareness routine here.
Immediately following our phonemic awareness daily warm-up, we will do a quick phonics lesson. Depending on the day, it may be an anchor chart, a picture sort, write and wipe activity, or even write the room! I created the SFK Phonics Curriculum with these daily mini phonics lessons that you can find in my TPT store included in the Yearlong Phonics Curriculum. The phonics lesson will take about 10 minutes.
Read more about the SFK Phonics Curriculum here.
8:45-9:50 ELA Centers
Since Kindergarten students are typically most attentive in the morning, this is when I start centers. Some years I’ve had to adjust this due to specials schedule, but I really aim to keep this in the morning. An hour is the perfect time frame to complete center rotations, but I’ve also split this up and it’s worked well too.
You can read all about how I organize and set up my ELA centers here: How to Run Kindergarten Centers Successfully.
9:50-10:10 Recess
Recess times will vary, but typically we’ve had an early recess time and lasting anywhere from 15-20 minutes. I make sure to give my students a few minutes coming in from recess to cool down and have a water break.
10:10-10:20 Snack
We always had snack during recess time, but some schools may have it before or after. I usually pop on some calm music and let the kids chat with each other.
10:20- 10:45 Read Aloud and Comprehension Lesson
Reading aloud to your students is so important to do and should be done daily! I use this time to read a story and then work on whatever reading comprehension skill for that week. Typically with reading curriculums, you will have a reading lesson daily, so I used this time to do the read aloud and then the lesson that went along with it.
10:45- 11:30 Writing and Sight Words
This time was designated for our writing block. We did have a writing center daily during ELA centers and I also used my small group time one day a week to focus on more specific writing skills.
During this writing time, my students were at their desks and I was modeling a writing activity. Then, we would do a whole group writing activity, and finally an independent writing activity.
This is also the time we would practice sight words. Sometimes we would do our daily sight word routine before the lesson (if we were writing sentences using sight words for example). Other times we would do it after the writing lesson. If our writing lesson was short, we would spend some time doing a quick sight word activity.
Usually we would finish our writing lesson about 5 minutes early so we could get ready to go to lunch.
11:30- 12:00 Lunch
12:00-12:20 Math Lesson
Just like our phonics lesson, we would do a mini math lesson. I used this Kindergarten Math curriculum from Proud to be Primary and found the mini lessons to be about 15 minutes long. No matter what math curriculum you use, you want to aim to keep math lessons short and sweet. You will focus more on individual math skills when students are in your math small group and practicing during math centers.
12:20-1:20 Math Centers
Honestly, I do not need a full hour for math centers, but if you have the hour then take it! My math centers are set up the same as my ELA center rotation. I use this additional small group time to work with my students on whatever math concept we are working on.
1:20-1:30 Brain Break
Halfway through the afternoon, I try to have a brain break scheduled, so my students can get their wiggles out.
1:30- 2:00 Specials
Make sure to leave about 5 minutes before and after the special open to account for walking time.
2:00-2:40 Science, Social Studies, or Social Emotional Skills
Since science and social studies are typically weaved into the reading curriculum, I do not teach both every single day. Same goes for Social Emotional skills. We will talk about it during morning meeting and pretty much at some point every day. I rotated what we worked on each day. Monday and Tuesday was Science, Wednesday and Thursday was Social Studies, and then Fridays we had a social emotional skill lesson. I used this Social Emotional curriculum from Haley O’Connor and focused on one character trait per month. If we didn’t have school on Monday or Friday, I would just adjust accordingly, skipping one day of science or social studies. I believe that social emotional learning is so important for students, so I really tried to never skip this one.
This rotation always worked well for me. Another option you could do is one week of Science lessons, one week of Social Studies lessons, and then social emotional lesson on one specific day every week.
2:40-2:50 Clean Up
You’ve reached the end of the day! It’s important to figure out your afternoon routine, just like you would for a morning routine. Make sure you take at least 5 minutes to clean up the classroom. My best trick was to play a countdown timer song and have students clean up the entire classroom. I made sure that everything was put away, desks were wiped off, chairs were stacked (with teacher’s help). I did this so that I wasn’t spending my after contract hours cleaning up. You will have to help them with cleaning up and help them see what needs to be cleaned. However, by the second month of school they should be able to do it on their own.
TIP: Once they’ve got the cleaning the classroom part done, this is a great time for you to prep for the next day. I would change the date, fix the daily schedule, clear off my desk, check my email one last time (for any last minute dismissal changes) and grab tomorrow’s daily bin. This can usually be done in the 5 minutes it takes them to clean up.
After they clean up, they pack up- however that looks for your classroom. I had a take home folder that they packed with their papers, put in their backpack, grabbed their lunchbox and then sit in a designated spot. Clearly your packing up situation will depend on your classroom and what procedures you set.
2:50-2:55 Afternoon Routine
This typically left us with about 5 minutes to end our day. My students would all be sitting down in the same place as we hold our morning meeting. They all have their backpacks on and lunchboxes in their lap. We would do an afternoon meeting. This is when I would ask a few students to share something they learned that day. (or the whole class if time allowed). Some days, I would just let my students chat with their friends around them. Other times, I would read a story aloud or read a chapter from a chapter book. No matter what, I made sure we had these 5 minutes of calm to reflect on our day or just relax.
3:00 Dismissal
That’s it for the day! Drop your students off at their designated dismissal place and you’re Kindergarten day is over.
Depending on your school and times, your schedule may look very different than mine! But this is just a sample schedule. I hope this sample Kindergarten daily schedule gave you some ideas and time frames to work with. If you are creating your own schedule, make sure to check out this post here to learn some tips on how to set your schedule up.
[…] Now you need to decide where subjects will go. My personal preference is to do the entire ELA block in the morning and then Math and Science and Social Studies in the afternoon. Check out a sample daily Kindergarten schedule here! […]