Thursday, September 6

We had a GREAT day today!  Everyone is settling in to the rules and routines of the classroom.  We practiced cutting and gluing today and made posters all about ourselves.  I will post some pictures of them next week! 

We also made our first "anchor chart" today.  These charts are created as a class and are used to help "anchor" information in students' minds.  The chart we created today was about sitting at circle time.  We had a great conversation discussing expectations for sitting in a large group, and now we have a visual reminder of those things that we can refer back to throughout the day!  We will be doing lots of anchor charts this year as a part of our Reader's Workshop.

I have entered everyone's e-mail address into our blog, so you should be getting an e-mail every time I write a post. If you don't, please let me know.  Also, tell grandparents and other family members about our blog so that they can take a peek at what your child is doing in kindergarten!

Tomorrow we will be going to music and library!

And now for some pictures from the day...

Work Time

Ella

Everyone is working hard on their posters!

The girls made floor of blocks!

Seth made a sun!

Kendal is playing with some Magnetix.

Thomas made color patterns with the unifix cubes - one for every football team he could think of!

Hailey playing with Legos and keeping an eye on the kitchen area

Natalia building a TALL tower

Connor made a sun, too!

Our First Day!

Today was the first day of the school year!  We had lots of fun and learned a LOT about how our classroom works.  Ask your child about the bubbles, Take a Break, and the September calendar.  I got to show off our classroom's Smartboard, which the class was very excited about.  Tomorrow we will be making a bus project and going to art for the first time!  I hope we have a fun day! 

April 25

This week marks the end of our Mo Willems unit.  We have had so much fun with these books!  Check them out at the library to find out what we have been reading!

At the end of this week, we will begin a new author study.  We will be reading many Eric Carle books and doing lots of fun activities with these books. 

In math, we are practicing subtraction and reviewing other concepts that we learned earlier in the year.  Practice simple addition and subtraction stories with your child at home.  Here's an example:  I picked 5 apples off the tree.  I ate 3.  How many are left?

Here are some pictures of our projects from the last week:

A picture of the world painted in the style of Frank Asch

A pigeon story

A Knuffle bunny and Trixie story

Pigeons!!!

A picture of Trixie done in Mo Willem's style

All of our Trixie stories

Picking up garbage on Earth Day



Our class!



April 18

We are halfway through our Mo Willems unit and it has been so much fun!!!  If you haven't checked out any of his books, stop by the library and take a look.  These books are such fun for kindergartners, because they have many sight words and they are funny.  Mo Willems uses lots of different fonts, sizes, and punctuation in his stories.  As we have written some of our own stories about his pigeon and other characters, we have been experimenting with these things as well.

We have finished learning all of the kindergarten sight words and have been practicing them every day in our guided reading groups.  Today, we got new word bags to use as a morning activity.  Some of the sight words in these bags are review, but I also included other common words like mom, dad, here, hat, and some.  In centers, we have been doing lots of writing.  This week, we wrote what we would do if we could stay up all night long like the pigeon.  We also had to fill in the missing letters of words, write about the characters in a CD story, and make a graph about ways to help the earth.  Later this week, we will be learning more about recycling and doing earth activities.

We have started our final math chapter on subtraction.  After we complete this center, we will be reviewing what we have learned this year and practicing lots of problem solving. 

Thursday, March 28

REMINDERS:
**Tomorrow is hat day!!!!!  Wear a cool, funny, cute, or crazy hat and send in a donation (up to $1) for the Edgerton Community Fund.
**I am missing several snack bags.  If your child brought home a bright green Piggly Wiggly bag, please return it to school with a healthy snack for 20 students!

This week:
We have been finishing up our Dr. Seuss unit.  We are also talking about bunnies, eggs, and chicks.  Your child brought home the Dr. Seuss journal that we have been working on this month.  Take a look through it and ask some questions about the Dr. Seuss books that we read.  In math, we have started chapter 11 which is all about addition.  We have been practicing simple addition all year, so this will be a review for us.  We are also reviewing topics such as symmetry, graphing, and patterns.  We made some fun art projects this week.  On Tuesday, we painted eggs and made them open up into either a bunny or a chick.  We made bunny bags to hold our projects from Friday.  We also printed eggs in computers.  We wrote clues for our classmates to guess whose picture and name were hidden beneath the eggs.  These turned out GREAT!!!  Some of our class' clues included "I am Irish" (Sam), "I have a lot of headbands" (Bella) and "I love horses" (Ellen).  We had a fun time reading this clues and guessing who was hiding.

We have a fun day planned for tomorrow.  In the morning, we will be joining the rest of the kindergarten classes to do fun spring projects in all the kindergarten rooms.  The projects will include a cotton ball sheep, a chick, a bunny, foil flowers, egg-dying, and some other fun things.  It is also hat day, so don't forget to wear your favorite hat.

April 2-6 is spring break.  Classes resume April 9!  Don't forget to write about your spring break in your journal and send it back to school.  We had such a fun time reading the journals from winter break.  I can't wait to hear about all the fun adventures when we get back!

After spring break, we will be starting our Mo Willems author study.  Mo is one of my VERY favorite authors.  I hope that our class enjoys his Pigeon, Piggy & Gerald, and Knuffle Bunny books as much as my kids and I do!  We have some fun projects planned to go with this unit!

Here are some pictures from some of our projects this week:

A chick in an egg

A bunny in an egg



Jelly bean patterns



Jelly bean measuring



March 23

This week we have been discussing healthy habits.  We talked about the importance of eating good foods, exercising, sleeping, brushing our teeth, and washing our hands.  You will see your child's health fact journal coming home tonight, so be sure to take a look at it and discuss it with your child!

In centers this week, we have been working on reading, making words, reviewing sight words, writing -an words, and writing sentences.  In math, we have finished chapter 10.  Chapter 11 will be on simple addition.  I have sent home a family involvement packet to work on at home!

Next week, we will be learning about eggs and doing some fun spring projects.  If you are able to donate cotton balls, google eyes, tape, staples, water bottles, jelly beans, or plastic grass please let me know as soon as possible! 

There are only 5 school days left until spring break.  I will be sending a spring break journal home next week.  Please have your child use "kid writing" to write about what you do on spring break.  Return these journals after break and we will read them in class!

March 13

We have been reading MANY Dr. Seuss books over the last two weeks.  We are having a great time with the silly characters and rhyming!  This week, we made a class book based on Dr. Seuss' One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.  Centers this week include rhyming practice, reading words, drawing, writing sentences, finding numbers on a hundreds chart, making -an words, and listening to a book on CD.  There is also a handwriting activity to go with the assigned centers. 

I have been pulling my small reading groups 3 times each week.  We are having such a great time as the stories become a little more complex and interesting.  We have read many realistic fiction books with lots of dialog.  I am so impressed with the readers in this room!  Your reading practice at home is important to our work in the classroom!

In math, we are finishing up our chapter on measurement and comparisons.  We continue to practice counting coins, telling time, graphing, and simple addition throughout the day.  We have also done some fun Dr. Seuss activities for math.  One exiting game that we will play later this week involves throwing coins onto a bullseye and adding the numbers!

Other fun events this week include a short concert by the middle school band and a trip to the high school for the FFA's petting zoo.  Playing outside has been wonderful as well with the warmer weather!  Let's hope it sticks around for a while.

Reminders:
Library books are due each Tuesday.
Check the snack calendar!
Be sure to have your child read the books in his/her reading bag each night.