Emergency sub plans for kindergarten need three things that plans for older grades can skip:
- A script. Your students cannot read the directions, so every direction and every question has to be written for the substitute to read aloud, word for word.
- Short blocks. Each work session should fit 25 to 30 minutes, with the minutes written in.
- The routines on paper. Bathroom, snack, lining up and dismissal carry most of a kindergarten day, and a stranger does not know any of them.
Why an upper-grade plan fails in kindergarten
In 4th grade, “Students complete pages 3 and 4” can get a class started, because the students read the directions themselves. (I wrote about the 4th grade version separately.) In kindergarten, the same line leaves a room of five-year-olds holding a page they cannot read and one adult answering “what do I do?” from every table.
So in kindergarten the unit of the plan is the sentence the substitute says out loud, not the page. If you have not written that sentence, the sub has to invent it, and her words will not match yours.
Write the script, not the task
For every page you leave, write down:
- The opening line. One sentence the sub reads before anyone picks up a pencil, such as “Count carefully. Write the number on the line.”
- How to read each question. Number first, then the question: “Number one. Count the stars. How many?”
- When to move on. Tell her to wait until most pencils stop, not all of them. If she waits for the slowest child, the fastest ones start talking.
- What to say when a child is stuck. Give her the exact words: “Try the next one and come back to it.” Then, if the child is still stuck: “Circle it and leave it blank. Your teacher will look at it.” A circled blank tells you more the next day than a guess does.
- Anything a child has to copy. If a page uses >, <, or =, ask the sub to draw them big on the board before the page starts and leave them up. Many kindergartners know which number is bigger and only need to see the symbol.
Say what is allowed, too. If fingers are fine for adding, write “Fingers are allowed.”
Keep each block to 25 to 30 minutes, with the minutes written in
Plan on about half an hour of seatwork at a time with a stranger. Write the block minute by minute so the sub knows what “on track” looks like. This is the math block from my kindergarten sub plans:
- 0 to 5: warm-up page, read aloud
- 5 to 14: first main page, one question at a time
- 14 to 23: second main page, same routine
- 23 to 28: early finisher page for anyone done; everyone else finishes
- 28 to 30: collect pages, then the sub fills in a short report
Early finishers need something that does not pull the sub away from the group. “Draw on the back” works. So does a short page she can read quietly to one child.
Plan the breaks, too. Kindergartners need to move after half an hour. Name the transition you use (a song, stretching, a lap around the rug) so the sub has something to do between blocks besides handing out the next page.
Reading: the sub reads the story, twice
A kindergarten reading block with a sub cannot be independent reading. The whole block is a read-aloud, and it works best in this order:
- The sub reads a short story all the way through without stopping.
- She reads it a second time and stops at two or three words to explain them.
- She reads each question and every answer choice aloud, and the children circle.
- The children trace and write a few words from the story.
- They draw a picture about the story and label it with a word.
The second reading gives the sub a set place to explain vocabulary, so she is not stopping for every hand that goes up during the first one.
Make sure the answer key tells the sub where each answer is in the story. When two children disagree, she can read that part again instead of ruling on it.
Write down the routines, starting with the bathroom
In kindergarten this page matters as much as the work pages. On one sheet, in plain words, cover:
- Bathroom. How your class goes (a pass, one at a time, a buddy, the classroom bathroom) and which children need a reminder because they will not ask. Say where spare clothes are kept, and who the sub should call if a child has an accident: usually the nurse or the office, following your school’s policy.
- Snack and water. When and where. For any child with an allergy, point the sub to the child’s health plan and to the nurse, and ask her to follow school policy. Do not leave medication with the sub; the nurse or office handles it.
- Lining up. The order, who leads, and where the line stops in the hall.
- The quiet signal. Your clap pattern or chime. The class already knows it, so the sub does not have to invent one.
- Calm-down spot. Where it is, how children use it, and who the sub calls if a child needs more help than that.
- Drills. Where the fire drill route and lockdown procedure are posted.
- Dismissal. Every child’s way home: bus number, car pickup, after care. Put it on its own sheet and tell the office where it is. Any change to a child’s way home, and any question about who may pick a child up, goes through the office, not the sub.
The free sub folder checklist covers the rest of the folder, from the seating chart and roster to health notes and the teacher next door.
Leave review only, and pick pages for the time of year
The sub cannot teach anything new, so every page should practice something the class has already done: counting, numbers in order, one more, comparing, adding and taking away with small numbers, naming shapes. The reasons are the same in every grade, and what good sub plans actually contain goes through them.
One thing is different in kindergarten: in September, “review” covers very little. If you are out in the first weeks of school, leave the counting and number-order pages and hold back make-10 and the comparison symbols until later in the year. The circle-it-and-leave-it-blank rule covers anything a child has not seen yet.
Plan for no copier
If nothing can be printed, the sub still needs a plan. Leave one page of activities that need only voices and a whiteboard: counting the chairs and windows together, “show me 7 fingers,” a shape hunt around the room, rhyming words, “I spy something that starts with /b/.” Four of those at five minutes each fill twenty minutes.
A full kindergarten sub week: math, reading and a sub binder
A kindergarten day with a sub has two blocks of seatwork, math and reading, plus the routines sheet above. Kindergarten sub plans that cover only math still leave you writing the reading block yourself, and building the routines page from scratch.
The Kindergarten Sub Plans Bundle puts it all together for two weeks: Kindergarten Math Sub Plans and its Week 2 (36 pages each), Kindergarten Reading Sub Plans and its Week 2 (34 and 35 pages) and the Editable Sub Binder (41 pages). It is 182 pages for $24.95. Bought separately, the five come to $34.75. The binder holds the forms, from the daily schedule and class list to safety procedures and a While You Were Out report, as a fillable PDF and an editable PowerPoint.
If you already have a binder you like, the two packets are sold on their own at $6.95 each: Kindergarten Math Sub Plans (36 pages) and Kindergarten Reading Sub Plans (34 pages). Both are sub plans for kindergarten written the way this post describes: the read-aloud line is on the page, so the sub does not have to make it up. For an absence longer than five days, each has a Week 2 with the same routine and nothing repeated: Kindergarten Math Sub Plans Week 2 (36 pages, 156 new problems) and Kindergarten Reading Sub Plans Week 2 (35 pages, six new stories), $6.95 each. The next section goes through what is in the first week.
What I leave in my folder
Kindergarten Math Sub Plans is 36 pages: five days of review plus a spare day for a second day out, 151 problems, and a 30-minute block each day. Each day has four short pages in big type (a warm-up, two main pages and an early finisher) with five to ten items per page and a read-aloud line at the top. It includes a Read Aloud Guide with the exact words for each kind of page, the minute-by-minute block above, answer keys, a roster, a What Happened Today report for the sub to fill in, and an If You Cannot Print page.
Kindergarten Reading Sub Plans is 34 pages: five original read-aloud stories plus a spare day, with fiction and nonfiction alternating, in a 25-minute block. Each day starts with a page for the sub that has the story, how to run it, and the star words to explain. Three student pages follow: Listen and Circle (four questions, three answers each), Star Words and Word Work (trace and write three words, then rhymes, beginning sounds and capital letters), and Draw and Write. Every Listen and Circle answer in the key names the paragraph of the story that proves it, and it has its own If You Cannot Print page.
If you are building folders for a team or a whole building, the Math Sub Plans K-5 bundle has a full emergency week for every grade from Kindergarten to 5th. The other grades are on the math sub plans page and the reading sub plans page.
Whatever you use, test it before you need it. Hand the folder to a colleague who has never seen your room and ask her to read the first page aloud. Anything she stops to ask you is something the sub would have had to guess.
Frequently asked questions
What goes in kindergarten sub plans?
A read-aloud script for every page, work blocks of 25 to 30 minutes with the minutes written in, review-only pages, and answer keys. Add one sheet of routines (bathroom, snack, lining up, the quiet signal, drills and dismissal) and a page of voice-and-whiteboard activities for a day when nothing can be printed.
Are there kindergarten sub plans for math and reading together?
Yes. The Kindergarten Sub Plans Bundle has two weeks of math (36 pages each), two weeks of reading (34 and 35 pages) and the Editable Sub Binder (41 pages), 182 pages in all, for $24.95. The math and reading packets are also sold separately.
Where can I get emergency sub plans kindergarten free?
This store has no free kindergarten sub plans. The one free sub plans item here, the FREE Emergency Sub Binder Starter Kit, is 3rd to 5th grade math, so it does not fit a kindergarten room. What is free for any grade is the sub plans checklist, and the routines list in this post, which you can copy as it is.