Beginning of the Year Greetings in Kindergarten

 Our morning meeting greeting is always a favorite with my kindergarten students! They love fun, creative ways to say “hello” to each other. While it’s enjoyable to get creative with the greetings, though, we all know that the beginning of Kindergarten is the most important time for establishing expectations. For that reason, it’s important to keep greetings fairly simple at the start of the year.

Teaching the Dialogue

The first thing to teach is why we greet each other and what to say. I always tell my littles that we greet each other because it’s polite to say “hello” to our friends when we see them. It also helps us start our day by all feeling welcome in our class community.

Then I teach them that we always include 3 things in our greeting:

• “Good Morning”
• Our friend’s name
• A smile

Oh, and of course, I teach them that we look at our friends while we’re talking tp them!

Types of Greetings for the Beginning of the Year (can be in person or virtual)

• Wave
• Air high five
• Chants
• Greet as your favorite color (Good morning, I’m pink!)

You’ll notice that all of those greetings are very simple. We repeat greetings throughout the week, and practice as needed (like when students don’t follow all the expectations). I usually plan to keep the same greeting until students have mastered it. Especially at the beginning of the year, it’s important to keep things consistent, so they can really practice the expectation of what to say. For that reason, it’s ok to have a “wave” as your greeting for several weeks, until students really have that routine down pat!

You can find over 60 ideas for virtual morning meeting components in a free Morning Meeting Ideas Guide by clicking the button below!

Need more Morning Meeting resources? Find over 223 slide options in my Editable Class Meeting / Morning Meeting Slides Resource.