8 Ideas to Establish a Calm Morning Routine in Your Classroom
I love the start of the school day as students arrive in the classroom. There’s something about it that makes me so excited for the start of each day. It hasn’t always been this way, though. In the past my classroom morning routine felt chaotic and loud with students wandering around the room, shouting my name to help them with their morning work, or just an overall loud vibe in the room. Once I transformed my morning routine into a soft start, the mornings in my classroom became so much more calm and enjoyable.
If you’re looking to tame the morning chaos in your classroom, a soft start morning routine may be something for you to try. Here are eight ideas to establish a calm morning routine in your classroom:
Turn the lights off: Turn off those bright fluorescent overhead lights in your classroom. You can either have the lights completely off, or turn on lamps around your classroom. I prefer to have all of the overhead lights off and lamps turned on around the room.
Play calming music: As soon as students enter the classroom I have my zen playlist going from my classroom speakers. Some of my favorite calming music is from Putumayo like their Dreamland and French Playland.
Use a diffuser: Every morning I turn on an oil diffuser in my classroom. I rotate between diffussing lavender or Calming the Child.
Greet students at the door: This is my favorite calming morning routine! I stand at my classroom door every single morning and greet students by their name. I ask students to line up outside the classroom door and get ready to enter by taking their daily folder out of their backpack. I then invite students to enter the classroom one by one. This stops the mad rush of students running into the classroom and getting into each other’s way.
Teach expectations: During the first couple of weeks of school I spend time explicitly teaching the expectations of our morning routine. I even have students practice the morning routine at the end of each school day so they are ready to start the next day. I have a large morning routine poster that I use to teach the routine that I hang near my classroom door to remind students of the expectations.
Put out morning tubs: I love, love, love morning tubs! I will never go back to traditional morning work. If you’d like to learn more about how I use morning tubs in my classroom you can check out my post here. You can also get my morning tubs expectations and organization product for free by signing up for my email newsletter.
Assign morning jobs: There are some key jobs that I make sure to assign students during our morning routine to help things run smoothly. I prefer to change student’s jobs only a few times throughout the year so that students get really good at their job and most importantly they remember to actually do their job. Some of my must-have morning jobs are attendance helper, lunch basket carriers, and morning tub cleaners.
Start with a circle: After I jingle the tambourine and turn on the clean up song, students clean up their morning tubs and know to meet me at the rug. We immediately go over our schedule for the day and then right into our community circle. We have community circle every day to build relationships and continue the calm start to our day.
If you’re looking to transform the mornings in your classroom from chaos to calm, I hope you give some of these calming ideas a try!
-Ashley @ Little Learning Ladybugs
