Friday, December 20, 2013

Good morning, families!  I hope that everyone is staying safe in these icy conditions.  I am bummed that we are missing our fun activities that we had planned for today, but we will do them on the Monday that students return to school (including opening all our candy canes from the stockings!).  

I have a couple of videos to share with you.  The first one is my first attempt at making an imovie.  This is from the day that Santa visited kindergarten!

The second video is of the holiday sing yesterday.  A special thanks to Kevin Schmitz who recorded and posted it!

I hope you all have a very safe and happy holiday with your friends  and families.  If I don't see you over break, I will see you all next year in 2014!!!

Santa visit:

http://youtu.be/VN7UMJyylvY

Holiday Sing Playlist (all grades): 

***Kindergarten is video #7!***

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKhozAC08gJtk_vDLkB0tDG613p2ZTSMz

Polar Express Day

Here are a few pictures from all the great activities today, Polar Express Day!!!  Thanks to Miss K for taking the pictures and thank you to the families that donated materials to make this day possible!

Kwanzaa

This month, we will be learning about several different holidays that different people celebrate around the world.  Yesterday and today we discussed Kwanzaa.  Ask your child to sing you the Kwanzaa song and to tell you a little about this African-American holiday!

In these pictures, our class is making beads with salt dough.

Today, we strung the beads and made necklaces!

Math Centers

These are a few pictures from today's math centers!

Jake and Bailey are playing a dice-rolling game.  They roll 2 dice, add the numbers, and remove the marker with the answer.  Once all the markers are removed, they win!

These kids are practicing writing numbers with shaving cream.

This was a fun game that we learned to play on the Smartboard.  You spin the spinner and then move that number of spaces on the game board.  The computer is your opponent.  Whoever lands exactly on the end is the winner!  This was a fun and exciting game for our class!

This is Logan choosing a game on the iPad.  There are several math games to choose from.  A favorite today was a game where the children had to get their character to a certain place on the map using a path of arrows that they designed.  It was really fun!

December 3

Last week and the week before, we talked a lot about families, being thankful, and the first Thanksgiving.  I hope you had a chance to take a look at the Thanksgiving book your child brought home!  On Wednesday at play time, we talked about what it would be like to be Pilgrims with no electricity and few toys.  The class spent play time pretending to be pilgrims.  We played in the dark with wooden toys.  They made a "fire" to cook their food, and they pretended to go hunting for food to bring back for everyone to share.  our class continues to enjoy playing "pilgrims" this week too!

Here are a few pictures from our Thanksgiving unit:

Here are some Pilgrims playing in the dark with wooden blocks and small stones.

This was a little project that Kaitlyn made for me during our Pilgrim play time.  She didn't think they had glue, so she did not glue the pieces together!!!  How cool!

This is our Thankful Turkey...filled with feathers of all the things that our class is thankful for - friends, family, toys, food, and more!

               This is a chart we made about all the different things that families do together.

This is a poster we made about what a family is made of!

November 18

These are some pictures from the last week in kindergarten.  One day, we made an obstacle course to review positional words (over, under, around, etc) and cardinal numbers (first, second, etc).  Then, we tried to draw a map of the obstacle course.  It was a fun activity!

In math and social studies, we have been talking about phone numbers and addresses.  We recorded everyone's phone number and address in a class directory and then practiced calling the phone numbers on a calculator app on the ipads.  We also found a really fun (and free) app to practice dialing phone numbers and even calling 911! It is called DialPro if you are interested in getting it at home!

During writing time, we have been working on an "All About Me" book.  this was a page about things that we like to do.  We have also written about what we look like and who is in our family.  You will see this book coming home for Thanksgiving.

Here is another math activity.  We spent some time reviewing shapes and found shapes to cut from magazines.  

In social studies this week, we are learning about the meaning of the word THANKFUL.  Today. each member of the class made a turkey feather and wrote about what they are thankful for.  We will be making a turkey to display for Thanksgiving.  We have also been learning about the first Thanksgiving and about turkeys.  We will be comparing what we have learned about turkeys with what we know about owls.  It will be fun to compare and contrast these two birds!

We have a busy but fun week ahead of us!  

Thanks for reading our blog!

November 5

Last week on Friday, we headed out to the front of the school the check on our tree, Army Tank Taylor Swift.  We took a look at the type of bark that our tree has and compared it to other trees around the school.  We made rubbings of the different types of bark (smooth or rough).  In the classroom, we also learned how to make rubbings from leaves!

October 31

We have been working on making text to self and text to text connections in Reader's Workshop.  Ask your child about connections!

Our sight words now include I, see, a, the, we, and like.  Each week, we practice making, reading, and using our sight words.  You can help at home by having your child practice reading and spelling our words (and others if they are ready) and by finding our sight words in books or on labels.

In phonics we continue to practice letter formation, rhyming, counting syllables, and listening skills.

We have been practicing writing simple sentences.  We are talking about leaving spaces between words and putting a period at the end of a sentence.  Our class has been excited about finding other types of punctuation during shared reading time.

In math, we continue to practice skills such as number recognition, counting, patterns, sorting, and graphing.  Ask your child about math centers and our math journal.

In science, we have been learning about owls, pumpkins, spiders, and bats.  This week, the class visited Mrs. Shogren's room for some fun science activities!  

Here are a few pictures from the last week:

This was a labeling activity that we did during writing time.  We learned what labeling is and practiced on Logan.  Then, we tried labeling a picture in our journal!

Halloween Costumes!!

In Social Studies, we have been learning about community helpers and businesses.  We have also been talking about maps.  This is a map that we made of Edgerton.  Later in the week, we added our houses and then worked together in groups to make local businesses.  

Some of our business groups working together-  We made Piggly Wiggly, the Dollar General, the police station, the bank, and Culver's.

October 16

Here are a few pictures from the last week!

Making art from leaves

Working together to make patterns

The tree we "adopted"

Learning about community helpers

Our fire station field trip

October 4

Today was our pep rally and mini-homecoming parade.  What a fun morning!  Let's hope that the Tiders have a great game tonight!

Next week we will be reviewing our sight words I and SEE and adding a new word: A.  We will have many opportunities to practice these words throughout the year and your help at home is greatly appreciated.  We will also be starting a social studies unit on community helpers.  Our two field trips are scheduled for next week...one to the fire station and one to some local businesses.  

Here are a few pictures of this week's activities.

A word work activity with our new sight words

Our apple trees that we made in Mrs. Precourt's room

Learning to play Chutes and Ladders

Ordering numbers during a math center

Using the balance to learn about apples

Sorting practice

More sorting practice - this was a new favorite center!

A picture of the whole class

Some examples of our journal entries