Easing Kindergarten Transition

My son is 5 and is starting full time Kindergarten as well.
I'm from Germany and we have a nice tradition, that is making the transition a little bit easier.
It is called a school cone, and is filled with nice things,whatever you want to put in there,school supplies,candy,books,stuffed animals,you name it.
As a matter of fact, I made one myself today.
You can go on that web site,Kindercone.com and just see, how they look like,they have website with instructions, just google school cone .........
I didn't use any instructions, and thought I was going insane, building it.But it came out great,I used a beach,surfing theme.
Good luck

My mom knitted little pouches about the size of a deck of cards for each kid and sewed their first initial in yarn on each, so they wouldn't mix them up. Then, before we left the house each morning, I fill each "kissing pouch" with a bunch of kisses that apparently last the whole day, so they can go have a moment in their cubby with their kissing pouch whenever things get tough at school. I also made a tiny picture book with photos from home for each and sometimes they carry that in their backpacks, too. My daughter still carries her favorite baby doll to school. The doll now lives in her cubby during the school day, but she used to carry her around all day and thankfully, the teachers saw no harm in that, so that was nice. Have a fun year! Oh one more, I laminated photos and used a luggage tag to loop onto their lunch boxes: 1) to easily identify whose lunchbox it is, but 2) to see a little happy photo from home during lunchtime, which can get hectic at school. I also used to put a little note in their lunches each day: you can make these up ahead of time on Sundays. I don't do it as consistently anymore. But, they each really like having secret notes from home!

The "Kissing Hand" is a wonderful book for easing this transition. It's worth a shot...and you will enjoy this book with her. Best of luck!

I just sent my 5 year old off to kindergarten, too. Our teacher had a wonderful idea. Go out and buy small, heart shaped stickers. Kiss the back of your daughter's hand in the morning and put a sticker over where you kissed. Tell her that if she gets sad during the day and needs to feel a little bit of "mom's love" all she had to do is put the back of her hand to her cheek and you can "give" her kisses all day long! It worked GREAT for us :-) Good luck!!

When my kids started all day preschool they had each other so it was easy for them. But a couple other kids had things to help. One girl had a locket with a picture of her parents. Another had a bracelet with some kind of locket type thing as part of the bracelet with her pet's picture. A little boy would wear his mom's scarf as a belt. He would take it off at naptime to sleep with. I cannot remember but I think it had a little of dad's cologne on it.

When my son started kindergarten he was really nervous too. I bought him a small John Deere tractor for him to keep in his pocket. I told him that when he was scared or nervous he should put his hand in his pocket and think of me. I also gave him some wallet sized photos of our family so he could look at them as needed. Quite honestly, I don't think he ever needed to use any of these items, but the idea made him feel a little better. The first morning is really tough! My son was the kid that was crying and screaming and the teacher had to pull him off me. It was awful. But we picked him up after school and asked him how he like it and he said, "I love it! I'm going back tomorrow!"
Good luck!