The Kissing Hand

The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn is an adorable story about a little raccoon named Chester who is worried about starting school. It is the perfect story to read to your class at the beginning of Kindergarten.

I just love the craft activity we did of Chester. I found some little heart embellishments at a craft store that finished off Chester perfectly.

 We did text to self connections about how the children felt on their first day of school. 

We created an anchor chart of their emotions and then I gave the little ones a copy of the emotions and they chose which emotion or emotions they felt on their first day of school and they pasted them onto their worksheet. We talked about how you could feel more than one emotion. For example, while they might have been excited, they could feel scared.

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                                                We made inferences about Chester.

The children can’t write sentences on their own yet so I had the sentences on strips and they pasted them onto their worksheet and illustrated them.

For a bit of fun we talked about who might be Chester’s best friend. I had a set of woodland animals laminated and put them into a bag. Before we began, the children had a guess who they thought would be Chester’s best friend and we discussed that it could be any of the animals because it was just luck which animal would be selected from the bag. Of course there were squeals of delight when their chosen animal was selected.

I purchased a Chester soft toy from Book Depository that I give to those children to hold who need some extra TLC. 

Just the other day one of my little ones was upset and it was so sweet when another little one brought Chester over and said "Chester will make you feel better".

Oh how that warmed my heart! Children can be so adorable. 

If you would like to purchase my Kissing Hand activities they are available on TPT  HERE