Ease children's back-to-school jitters with this primary grade instructional activity based on the book The Kissing Hand by Ruth E. Harper. Starting off with a singing of the song "I Wish I Had a Little Red Box", children go on to discuss and create a picture graph of their feelings on the first day of school. Young learners then read about Chester's first day of school before creating a Kisses, Hugs, and Handshakes art project  complementing the story.

Concepts

emotions, feelings, pictograph, graphs

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Additional Tags

the kissing hand, picture graph, pictograph, back to school, feelings, emotions, social studies

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Instructional Ideas

• Pick and choose which of the learning activities to perform based on your class schedule
• Consider breaking up the lesson over the first week of school
• Perform some of the activities mentioned in the lesson as teacher led learning centers during language arts rotations

Classroom Considerations

• Seek the help of a classroom aide, parent volunteer, or upper elementary student to reduce the amount of prep time needed prior to the lesson

• This resource is only available on an unencrypted HTTP website.It should be fine for general use, but don’t use it to share any personally identifiable information

Pros

• Lesson includes a clear step-by-step procedure
• Children are engaged in learning about their feelings through a series of hands-on activities
• Numerous suggestions are included for assessing students throughout the lesson
• Includes a list of extension activities

Cons

• None

Common Core

RL.K.1 RL.K.3 RL.K.7 RL.K.10 RL.1.1 RL.1.3 RL.1.7 RL.2.3 RL.2.7 L.K.5.a L.K.5.c L.1.5.a L.1.5.c L.2.5.a K.MD.B.3 1.MD.C.4 2.MD.D.10