College Begins With Kindergarten!

This week our school is participating in Discover U, an event in and around the Seattle area to help promote college readiness among all grades. Last year was the first time our district participated so I had the chance to be involved with my third graders during student teaching and they loved it! Planning this year was a little tougher trying to get college to relate to my kinders, especially so early in the year. 

I have been all over the internet (by that I clearly mean all over pinterest) looking for some great ideas. Here are a few of my favorites I have been incorporating this week.  

To open up the topic of college, I started with this clip from Monster's University:

I am a huge sucker for children's movies so I could not resist this video. Not to mention it is a perfect way to introduce what college is all about (College is about scaring people.... right??)

I also brought in items from my own college experience and talked to the kids about going to school to become a teacher. They loved getting to play with my graduation gown and cap and my random University of Idaho gear I brought in during choice time. 

Of course my kiddos already know how to do a few Vandal chants so this week we have gotten to practice them loud and proud! This is their favorite call and response:

Mrs. Root - "Idaho, Idaho"

Kinders - "Go, Go, Go!"

Tuesday each of kinders also got their own graduation cap to wear around for the day. I found these awesome 6 packs of red and blue grad caps at Dollar Tree and couldn't pass them up. (Side note: I was astonished by the circumference of some of my kinders heads! The pre-cut slits on these were too small for a couple of my kiddos but lucky tape fixed that.)

After some discussion about what careers and professions they might want to go into when they grown up, we completed out graduation self portraits. (You can view similar ideas on pinterest here and here.) I put these together on a bulletin board outside our classroom and it has been a huge hit!

Some of the ideas they have are just too funny!