Pictures from Activity Day

We had a blast today spending time with our buddies outside in this beautiful weather! Thank you to  everyone who helped organize the event, our parent volunteers, and the RCC for the yummy treat!

Return All Books From School - Library and Guided Reading

Please check your house for any books from school.  Mrs. Chapados has collected all library and READING GROUP books!  Return any books you find as soon as possible!

Thank you!

               Mrs. Skeels

Picnic Reminder

                  Picnic Reminder

Tomorrow (Thursday) is the day for the kindergarten picnic at Central Park!!

Here are some things to remember:

 

*Send your child in comfortable

clothing and athletic shoes.

*Pack a lunch and drink for your

child (unless you already notified

the teacher that your child needs

a lunch). You may want to send an

extra bottle of water as well!

*Feel free to send a hat and

sunglasses if you wish!

Thanks for your help in making our outing a great success!!

Kindergarten Graduation

We had our kindergarten graduation on Friday and it was great!  Here are some pictures with all our graduation gear on.  Please email me if you would like a copy of the picture file emailed to your personal account!

For the remaining days of kindergarten, we have some fun activities planned!  We will be writing letters to both the upcoming kindergarten class and our first grade/multiage teachers for next year.  We will be showing the current 4K students around the classroom tomorrow, going on a class picnic on Thursday, and having a read-in day on Friday (see the note that will come home today).  Next week, there are other fun school-wide activities planned and we will be packing up all our belongings to prepare for summer vacation!

A Note From Mrs. Chapados

Library News: 

All library books are due Friday May 30th.  Any library book not returned by May 30th may be considered lost and a replacement fine sent home. 

Thank you for helping your child remember to return all library books. 

- Mrs. Chapados, Library Support Staff

A few more pictures

The Farm

Here are a few pictures from our farm field trip on Friday! Even thought the weather was a little chilly, we had a great time.  A special thank you to the parents who were able to join us - the extra help is greatly appreciated!!

May 5

Over the last few weeks, we have been reading several Eric Carle books and doing some activities with them.  Eric Carle uses an interesting technique for making his pictures.  He paints tissue paper and then cuts all his shapes and pictures from the painted tissue.  We tried this in the classroom and had a ton of fun making our own artwork!

We have been practicing addition and subtraction in many different ways.  A fun math game that we out into our math centers is a popcorn game.  Ask your child about this!  We have been reviewing many math concepts such as greater than/less than/equal to, breaking apart numbers, patterns, 3D shapes, and many others!

We have also been learning a lot about insects and plants.  We planted seeds and have been watching them grow for the last couple of weeks.  We also got our caterpillars and watched them grow from 5 mm to 35 mm and now they have changed into chrysalises.  We are excited to see what happens next!

Here are some pictures from the last few weeks of school!

Here are some of our creations from recyclables on Earth Day.

Artwork in the style of Eric Carle

Math fact flowers

We planted seed and they have started growing! Your child will be bringing them home this week to be planted in a larger pot or garden!

Or caterpillars turned into chrysalises. When we came back from the weekend today, 2 of our butterflies have hatched! We got to hold the butterflies and let them fly around the room.  We will post pictures of this soon!

Today we made pictures of our own bug jar! We will be writing facts we learned about specific bugs today too!

Important dates

Dear Families,

There are a few important dates coming up!  Your child will be bringing home more information about these special events tomorrow, so please watch for the notes!!!

*Book Fair at Community Elementary- 5/08 (Your child will visit the book fair with our class. You are welcome to send money that your child can spend at that time, but your child will also be writing a "wish list." You can purchase books after school or you can send in money on 5/09 with a list of the books that you would like your child to purchase.)

*Green Meadows Farm Field Trip- 5/16 8:30-2:30.  We are able to take all chaperones who are interested on this trip! Please make work arrangements and let me know if you would like to come with us! This is a great field trip!

*5K graduation - 5/30 at 1:00 in the EPAC. We hope to see you there!

Reminder: Mallard's Baseball

Just a reminder that your ticket request form must be returned by tomorrow (Friday) in order to get your Mallard's Baseball tickets for the June game.  ****This includes ordering the free ticket that your child earned through the reading promotion!!

Tuesday, April 1

Happy April Fool's Day! I have lots of kids trying to trick me today!  They keep trying to telling me that there is a spider or monkey on my head or their sister is in college.  One student really got me by saying he was going on a vacation to Florida!!

Over the last few weeks, we have been talking about Fix-up Monitoring and Summarizing in Reader's Workshop.  Our class enjoys discussing the characters, setting, problem, and solutions of stories and also including these things when they write their own stories! We have been writing like Mo Willems, since we just finished our author study on this great writer and illustrator.  You may have seen books about Pigeon, Gerald, Piggy, and Knuffle Bunny coming home.  I am so impressed with the ideas and writing that is taking place in here.  We have been working hard on remembering writing conventions (like leaving spaces, capital letter and the beginning, punctuation at the end, and even using only lowercase letters within the sentences). 

In phonics, we continue to practice letters, letter sounds, and sounding out words.  We review rhyming, breaking apart words, and saying words slowly each day.  

In your child's reading group, we continue to meet several times each week to read a new story and to talk and write about it.  Thank you for your help at home rereading the stories, reading new books, and completing the monthly homework packets.  I am so proud of the growth that each child is showing this year.  I appreciate you taking the time to practice skills at home, because it is so beneficial in the classroom too. 

In science, we just finished our unit on bodies and germs.  This was a favorite for many of our classmates.  They were very interested in finding out what different parts of the body do and why they are important.  Ask your child about our potato experiment, too.  It was very gross, but also very interesting!!  During the month of April, we will be learning about the earth and waste management.  With the weather getting nicer, we will also talk about plants and will be growing some in here, too!

Please send 1-5 recyclable items to school with your child by Friday.  Items may include paper, plastic, metal, and glass.  We will do some sorting activities, talk about waste management, reuse many of the items, and recycle the rest.  Thank you for your help in making this a fun experience!

In math, we continue to practice skills that we have learned this year in large and small group activities, with paper and pencil tasks, and within learning centers.  We have several math games that the children like playing together.  We have been talking about "math mountains," (which are like fact families), the symbols < > = and their meanings, strategies for solving addition problems, and problem solving.

These are some things that are coming up soon:

4/2 Turn in your child's Read-A-Thon money!  ***Thank you for participating in this fundraiser!

4/4 Bring recyclables for a recycling sort and other Earth Day activities!!!

4/5 Kid's Fair- Community Elementary Gym, 9:30-11:30

4/11 Early Release for students

4/14-4/21- Spring Break

Here are a few pictures from our time at school:

Spring writing

Spring pictures

Trioxide and Knuffle Bunny stories

Science Notebook

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Check out the iMovie we made about our leprechaun traps!!

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VifdBFp5pnw

March 11

This month we started with an author study on Dr. Seuss.  Our class enjoyed learning about the fantasy genre.  We did several fun activities including inventing our own animal, measuring our foot, and discussing rhyming and opposites.  In math we have been doing many story problems, practicing addition and subtraction, and reviewing concepts like symmetry, 3D shapes, measurement, and graphing.  In science, we finished our exciting unit on dinosaurs and have moved on to discuss healthy habits and the body.

This week, we began one of my favorite author studies: Mo Willems.  If you haven't read any of his pigeon, Piggy and Gerald, or Knuffle Bunny books, you should check them out! He writes very funny stories that are easy for many kindergartners to read.  During this author study, we will be comparing and contrasting fantasy with realistic fiction.  

I hope that the weather will continue to improve as we get closer to spring.  In the meantime, please be sure to send boots and snow pants while it is still chilly.  Or playground can get pretty windy and it was very cold out there today!

Another reminder is to continue to collect pledges for our reading promotion, which begins on Monday.  Let's work together to raise some money for new playground equipment!!!

Over the next couple of days, we will be reading some books about St. Patrick's Day.  We will be discussing ways to catch a tricky little leprechaun and will be designing a plan for how to do this.  If your child is interested in making a trap at home and bringing it in for sharing, you are welcome to do that!  I can't wait to see what these imaginations will come up with!

Here are some pictures from the last weeks in kindergarten:

Our finished dinosaur mural

Some facts about dinosaurs

A fun weight comparison activity: we cut pictures from magazines, compared the weights, and explained the weight differences. Benno's says, "The ball is lighter because it is little.  The board game is bigger because it looks big. Is that cool?"

We wrote biographies about friends in the classroom during our biography unit and around President's Day.

We wrote about what we would do if we were the president.

These are some of the animals we invented during the Dr. Seuss unit.

We wrote our own addition and subtraction problems and illustrated them!

We wrote our own pigeon stories! 

We began talking a bout healthy habits. We learned  about the importance of hand washing.  

We checked on our tree, Army Tank Taylor Swift. We noticed that the leaves are gone.  We made predictions about what might happen in the spring.  Some people thought the tree would grow, grow leaves, and grow berries.  We will see as the weather gets warmer!!