Continuing on...

We have been continuing on in all of our learning areas - reading, writing, letter work, math, etc. Students have been working hard! A couple of highlights include our morning password (which leads to reading small books), letter names, sounds, and handwriting practice (which leads to more independence during Writers' Workshop), and our beginning discussion about 3-D shapes. Today I gave the students four shapes (cube, cone, cylinder, sphere) to pass around the circle during our math time. Students made observations of these shapes and Ms. Ringer, our special educator, recorded their observations. They were spectacular. I will post a picture of what they said tomorrow night (I forgot to take a picture before I left school). We haven't yet told the students the names of these shapes, but will tomorrow. Over the next week, we will discuss these observations to see if they fit as attributes and/or descriptions of the shapes we are learning. Please send in 3-D objects tomorrow for a shape sort if you can... Password words so far - am, see, can, we, my... Letters we have re-visited so far - s, m, r, t, b, n

Odds and Ends

I hope your weekend was awesome. Mine was great, but too short! Here are a few updates. I will send home a paper copy on Monday... Picture retakes - will be Tuesday, November 5th. Please be sure to return the original pictures if you would like retakes. 3-Dimensional Shapes - we will begin a quick study of 3-D shapes on Wednesday. Students can bring in items to represent these shapes - cube, cone, sphere, cylinder. We will keep these items at school for about a week or so. Please be sure to label these items with your child's name so they can be returned when we are finished with them. Also, please be sure that none of the items are breakable or valuable. Halloween - We will not be having a party, but will have a special snack and watch "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" in the afternoon. Kindergarten students will not be wearing costumes... It's hard to believe that November begins on Friday. Have a happy week.

Triangle Trees and Circle Spiders

We are continuing our discussion of shapes. Wednesday we talked about triangles and made triangle trees and today we talked about circles and made spiders with a circular body. Students observed that triangles need to have three sides and three angles and circles have no angles, no sides, and must be round. We will be keeping the spiders at school for a while. We love that no two projects are the same :)

Spookley The Square Pumpkin

Our calendar markers this month are 2-dimensional shapes in a pattern - triangle, square, circle, rectangle. Today we began our shapes unit by looking at and discussing what makes a square a square. Students had great thinking during our discussion around this concept and we decided that a square must have the following or it is not a square: four sides, four corners or angles, and the sides must all be the same (have the same length). We decided that squares can be any size or color, but they must have the attributes we identified. We watched a short video clip on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo2BAoqxbdM) and made square pumpkins. They were too cute to keep at school. Enjoy!

Password

Beginning last week we started something new to aid in teaching sight words. Hanging outside our door is a “password” with a sight word written inside. Once students read the word, they have to go to their seats and write it on a white board. We look at the words, say the word, spell it, and say it again. Last week’s word was am, this week’s are see and can. Beginning this week, students will be bringing home small books with the sight words in them. Please read them together often.

Busy Thursday

We had a very busy Thursday. It almost seemed like we packed two days into one. We met with our 5th grade buddies in their classroom for the first time, had Guidance class with Ms. Patty, and spent some time in Mrs. Lombard's class watching The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Other Stories on the smart board. We also learned two new songs with her class, Driving In My Car and I Think You're Wonderful (which has sign language parts). Ms. Patty led a discussion on ways to handle anger where students brainstormed ways and contributed to a class poster. There is also a short video you can copy and paste into your browser - http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dyflxTtYMmc&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdyflxTtYMmc

Pictures

Here are some pictures I've been meaning to post for a while now - our apple taste test chart and graph, Rainbow Bear, and our completed alphabet cards.

And then there were 26!

We did it! Yesterday I introduced letter Zz during our letter work time. We are so excited to have finished our quick start to the alphabet. Many children are recognizing letters, sounds, and how to use what they know about the alphabet in their writing. We will continue to work with letters and sounds throughout the school year with a focus on letter names, letter sounds, how to write each letter, and how to use them in our reading and writing.

Playing board games

This week I introduced a board game during our math time - HiHo! Cherry-O- my favorite. While this is a game for four people, we are having students work in pairs. Playing board games serve many purposes for Kindergarteners including: turn taking, following set rules, learning to win and lose graciously, fine motor practice (the fruit pieces are tiny), practicing math skills (matching numeral to object), and most important - having fun! We will continue with playing this board game for the next few weeks and then introduce another one.

Indoor recess, conferences, day off

Today we had indoor recess. Indoor recess is kind of a bummer for Kindergarten. We wait all day to go outside and then... it rains. Well actually, it rained all day, but we were hoping the weather would improve before our 2:00 recess time. It didn't. Today the students played with playdoh during the indoor recess time. It is a treat as we haven't brought it out to use very many times yet. While it was fun, we are all thankful tomorrow will be sunny... Parent/Teacher Conferences are this week. Please contact me if you need your appointment time. It was super-awesome to meet with some families today and I look forward to seeing each of you... As a reminder, we are not in school this Friday, October 18.

Fire Safety & Prevention

Members from the Milton Fire Department came to school today for a fire safety and prevention assembly. Students were attentive as they learned about how to get out of their home in case of fire, what to do if their clothes catch on fire, and what kitchen tools and appliances they should not touch without grown-up help. A highlight was Sparky the Fire Dog and watching the firefighters race to get dressed in their gear. The students counted to 30 until there was a winner. The fire chief challenged students to get into their winter gear that quickly this winter. I will be sure to remember this challenge once the cold winter is upon us! Students were given a goody bag with a color book, stickers, and other items. I read the color book to the students and we talked about 911 and its importance. Have a great weekend!

Pumpkins, progress reports, and conferences

Our trip to the pumpkin patch on Wednesday was perfect! The weather was gorgeous and students enjoyed the tractor ride, picking out pumpkins, having a special snack, and of course, playing on the playground. Thank you to all the chaperones who joined us. It is always nice to see you... Progress reports are being sent home today. We can discuss them next week at parent/teacher conferences. Please note that I highlighted working on letters and sounds for everyone as it is an on-going skill we are learning... Parent/Teacher Conferences will be held next week. Your appointment time is on the bottom of the progress report.

Readers' Workshop

We started our Readers' Workshop this week. There are four components to each workshop session - mini-lesson (I teach), modeling of a skill (students and I share this), independent practice (by students), and share (by students). Students are so ready for this! Our lessons so far have been about how to choose books and "read" them by looking at each page. Students practiced both yesterday and today, reading independently for five minutes. They were quiet and focused! Five students were able to share today something about one of the books they "read". Students are sharing book baskets at this time as they get to know the classroom library. In the next few weeks students will be getting their own browsing boxes filled with books they want to have as well as some little readers that have some familiar words and predictable text. I will also be sharing with them that Kindergarteners read in 3 ways - by the pictures, by the words, and from memory. I will be conferencing (meeting) with individual students to start some beginners reading instruction in the next few weeks during the independent reading portion. More to come on this when we get started.

The Morning Message

Almost every day I write a morning message that we read during our morning meeting. I change the format of this message after every student has the chance to be the leader of the day with that particular message. We have just started our 2nd round of leaders this week. The morning message serves many purposes: we come together as a group to read something about our day, students are echo reading each sentence, we are touching every word to model beginning reading skills, there are predictable words that will appear in at least 17 messages before changing, we can focus on one skill in the response portion of the message, and one student gets to bring the message home to read with his/her family. The words we are seeing this time around include: my, the, is, we, had, I, see, love (I forgot to write it on this message). While we are not formally introducing these words yet, students are starting to learn them in the context of daily exposure. The focus of this message was on writing, then reading names. I am continuing to work with students on writing their names in the correct format. There has been much improvement. Happy Weekend!

Pictures

Rainbow Bear

In Art, students have a chance to earn up to 5 points per class for following the art rules (posted on the red bear). Once they reach 20 points they earn a Rainbow Bear. Yesterday, our class earned more than enough points to get the Rainbow Bear. They actually earned 9 points yesterday for being extra awesome. Ms. Cobler, the art teacher, will be bringing us our Rainbow Bear. We are very proud! I will post pictures from home as I'm having technical difficulties figuring out how to do it on my school computer :)

Rock Stars

Your children are rock stars! I was out of school this morning so there was a substitute teacher. When I met with her while the children were at lunch, she told me how much she enjoyed the morning and how wonderful the students are. I was very proud of them and told them they should be proud of themselves as well. It's not always easy doing something new, but they made it look that way. Not bad for being only the 25th day of school :)

Applesauce and Open House

We had a great time on Monday making applesauce. The students worked diligently to cut the apples and waited patiently for their turns. I think all students who attended open house tried the applesauce and many like it! My goal is to try and cook monthly with students. I may call upon parents/guardians for help with this! I think our next cooking adventure with be pumpkin seeds after our trip to the pumpkin patch... Thank you to all the families that were able to attend Open House. It was very nice to see all of you again. Your children were so excited to have you in the classroom and to show you things have been working on.