Low-Risk Greetings

I wrote another post here about the importance of greetings throughout the year; but at the beginning of the year, our class greetings are especially valuable for teaching names, practicing listening skills, and reinforcing behavior expectations.

I begin the year with our most "low-risk" greetings -- ones that don't involve touching, or even knowing everyone's name.  We start with a couple of singing greetings that go around the circle.  These greetings allow me to lead and say all of the kiddos' names (we wear name tags on the first day or two to help me).  Slowly, the kiddos start to join in, say their own names, and sing the names of the friends they know.

After a week of singing greetings, we start with a basic hand shake greeting that travels around the circle.  The kiddos only need to know the name of the person on either side of them and I make sure to give them time to check with each other before we start.  I then teach a few greetings that target specific components of greetings: the "hand stack" greeting really promotes eye-contact and the "pattern greeting" encourages paying attention.

After the first few weeks, I finally introduced greetings that didn't just go around the circle.  By that point, the kiddos understood how to have a successful greeting; they know they need to use names and a strong speaker voice.  Then we practiced the "closed-eye" greeting, which requires listening, and the "ball roll" greeting, which involves the extra challenge of using a material.  We added the "baseball greeting" and the "snowball greeting" last week.

Now that almost all of our established greetings have been introduced (we may create new ones during the year), we have started selecting a different greeting each day, using these greeting cards.  The kiddos love the variety and I have quite a few cards to keep things interesting!