One thing I didn’t think to spend any quality time on at the beginning of last school year was building back pack skills. As the school year went by, it seemed that I was constantly having to help my students stay organized and inevitably, papers were always being left in cubbies or dropped on the floor on the way out the door. So this year, I spent time during our first week of preschool helping my students build a few basic back pack skills…
If you think about back packs, they come with pockets of all sizes and shapes. They have zippers everywhere and then there are straps to put over your shoulders so you can carry all things in an upright position. But the big question is, do your students know how to zip up those zippers? Do your students know how to organize their things and in all of those different sized pockets?
After watching my students on the first day of preschool, I could easily see that they understood how to wear their back packs but how to organize and put their things firmly inside their back packs needed a little help. So throughout our second day of school, we worked on our back pack skills…
Part of the skill building process included knowing where their take home mailbox was so they could easily see what to take home at the end of each day…
And part of the skill building process was figuring out where to put big things versus smaller things and then learning how to zip up zippers where needed…
This is definitely not a ‘one and done’ kind of lesson. Back pack skills take time but by taking the time to walk each child through the process has given us a great start. I can already tell the difference by week two of school!
Links to Grow On
Classroom Management on the First Day of School
Preparing for the First Day of Preschool
