Tiptoe Into Kindergarten

This book is about a little girl in pre-k that sneaks into her brother’s kindergarten classroom. She spends the day watching all the things that the big kids do. The kids have circle time, story time, write on the chalkboard, play with blocks, dice games, puzzles, rice, they paint, sing, dance, have snack and much more. The book ends with the little girl hoping she gets to go back soon.

This is a great book to read in the beginning of the school year. It’s a good way to introduce a typical day in kindergarten and help calm some of the nerves. As the students hear about the fun things that happen in kindergarten, we make predictions about who the main character is and weather this is her classroom. Although the author never tells us explicitly we can see in the pictures, the main character is smaller than the rest of the children and she refers to the other children as, “the big kids.”

At the end of the book, students work in partners to compare the activities in the book with the activities in our own classroom. They make mini presentations by telling us one way a particular activity is similar and one way it is different. In preparation for the presentations, I give each team a discussion card, this way everyone has something different to talk about. I also give some quick examples during the read-aloud to help them. For example, I might say something like, “Look they have rice in their sensory bin, we have sand in ours.” I also have a blank card to provide an additional challenge for students that need it.

I like to read this book the same week of reading the book Kindergarten Rocks! These two books work well to continue with the theme of comparing and contrasting. Which is also a math skill! We make a Venn Diagram and list all the similarities and differences as a class.

If you’d like additional activities that go along with this book, you can download the lesson plan with the printable discussion cards, here.

Happy Teaching!