Happy Monday! As I am sitting here at jury duty (hence why I am absent today, tomorrow and possibly Wednesday if I get on a case), I thought it would be a great time to catch you up on what's been happening in Kindergarten. It is hard to believe we are almost 2/3 of way through the school year. Where did the time go! Even though the snow is still flying outside, I am quite excited by all the learning that is happening inside!
Readers Workshop:
*Since the Florentine Opera came to our school we read two different versions of the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff and wrote about the setting, characters and what happened in the beginning, middle and end of the story.
*We continued and now finished our non-fiction unit. We are now able to identify the table of contents, the glossary, index and we can tell you "fun facts" when we read a non-fiction book.
*We started to learn about the Daily 4 which will be a new way that our Readers' Workshop will sound and look like. The first part of the Daily 4 is to read to self which we have been doing for a long time but now we are trying to get better at it. This includes reviewing that to be a strong reader you must practice everyday, to find a good spot to sit and to have good stamina so that you can read the whole 15 minutes that we need to do in kindergarten this time of the year (by the end of kindergarten we need to read for 20 minutes).
*We were introduced to the second part of Daily 4 which is to read with someone. We have also been doing this for quite awhile but we are also trying to get much better at this by sitting Elbow, Elbow, Knee to Knee, reviewing the different ways to read a book with someone and making sure that both children can see the book.
*We have started to do more word work in our morning message and in our word work lesssons. This has included reviewing about syllables in words, learning to look at the beginning, middle and ending sounds of words, identifying the long vowels sounds in words, and sorting our super words in several different ways.
Writer's Workshop:
*For our 100 day party we wrote what we would want a 100 of and we would not want a 100 of and drew a picture of our 100 year old self. This pages have been placed in a book that will be rotating to all the children to take home and read with you.
*We wrote prompt about what a fun thing we have done with a family member or a friend and how we felt about it.
*We have practicing putting more details in our pictures because soon we will need more details in our writing.
*We have been continuing to learn to write neatly which includes writing our letters on the line, using spaces and putting ending marks.
*We have been been practicing writing the first letter in a sentence with an uppercase letter and the rest with lower case letters.
Math:
*With our 100 day party, we practiced writing the numbers 1-100, counting to 100 by ones and tens, made a 100 activity chart that had 10 items and 10 of each item which equals 100, made 100 day badges that allowed us to color the numbers by tens.
*For Valentines day, we solved Valentines story problems and graphed, estimated and measured using candy hearts.
*We sorted dominos and played a domino game called domino path that allowed us to count and add the dots on a domino.
Science/Social Studies:
*Made Butterfly Valentines for our families and wrote them a message inside.
*Decorated Valentines bags to put our Valentines in.
*We read books about healthy me including books about the importance of heatlhy eating, keeping clean and exercising. We have started to make our own book to help us write fun facts about each of these areas of being healthy.
Important dates:
Thanks to all of you who came to conferences!!! It is always great to meet with each of you to discuss how your child is doing! We had 100% attendance!Yeah!
Thanks to those who donated food and non-pershiable items for our 100 day food drive. Our class was one that donated over 100 items. We had a total of 124 items. WAY TO GO!!!
Feb. 24 and 25 No school for students!
March 2 Read across America day (AKA Dr. Seuss birthday)
March 8 end of the trimester
***Please continue to have your child wear their boots and snowpants to school and bring an extra pair of socks. It gets really wet outside so all of this will help them stay dry when they are done with recess.****
***We use hand santizer so if anyone is willing to donate a bottle of hand sanitizer I would greatly appreciate it. In addition, if you would be willing to donate some extra glue sticks that will be used by a class member that would also be much appreciated. Thank you for all you do!!!
*Books in a bag will start coming this week so please read, read, read with your child!!!!
Enjoyt the shoveling and spring will be here soon (I think)!!!!
Lori Marshman
Monday, February 21, 2011
Valentines Day
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Environmental Education Field Trip
Oh "Deer"! What great looking kids!
Touching a live turtle!
Making our bead necklaces. What did you learn?
What we are learning: Feb. 6th
Happy Super Bowl Sunday!!! I hope you are enjoying a great day with family & Friends! It sure has been a snowy week and continues to be as I look outside.
Thanks for continuing to send all of the snow gear that is required for this weather. The children will be allowed to play in the smaller snow banks on the playground but not on the one's on the Pendelton side of our school. Thanks for your understanding in this matter.
*A little reminder to make sure you ask or tell your child what they will be having for lunch the Next day. Several of the children are saying they are either having hot or cold lunch the next day and this information is incorrect. This makes it difficult for our 5th graders who eat last. They might not get the food they asked for. Thanks for your understanding and help with this!
*Our Valentine's day party is on Feb. 14th. A note went home regarding the party and my room parents will be contacting parents about helping out with our party.
What we are learning:
Reading:
*We have been focusing on learning more about nonfiction books. We read many different books about Polar animals and Martin Luther King, Jr..
*We looked at all our non-fiction books that are in our classroom and sorted books between fiction and non-fiction.
*We reviewed why we read non-fiction books. We realized that nonfiction and fiction books look and sound different.
* We also learned that you don't have to start reading non-fiction books from the beginning.
*We reviewed the strategy to check for understanding by reading the book Knuffle Bunny by MoWillems.
*We were introduced to the concept to expand our vocabulary by looking for fun and interesting words. We did this by reading the book Kitten's Full Moon.
*We learned about the reading strategy to cross check which is to make sure the words and the pictures make sense together.
*We learned to look at the beginning sound to figure out unknown words.
*We reviewed ten of our kindergarten high frequency words. We used magnet letters to create these words and we wrote the words on the dry erase board. We also read two poems that had many of these 10 super words and then found them on our SMART board and read them in our poetry binders.
*We have also started to do our morning message on the SMART board. You will notice that those messages are coming home so that you can read them with your child.
Writing:
*We read Owl Moon and listed the details that we heard in the story and reviewed that we need details in our story.
*We wrote a small moment about our princess and pirate day and then they practiced writing their own small moment.
*We learned how to write non-fiction by raeding aboug and writing facts about a polar bear, a walrus and a penguin.
*We did a picture walk through Knuffle Bunny and looked at what different things the author did with the words and the details in the pictures.
*We also noticed that the author of Knuffle Bunny used speech bubbles so some of us tried to use speech bubbles in our writing.
Math:
*We practiced writing our numbers by filling in the missing numbers on the snowflakes.
*We solved polar animal story problems on the smart board and individually.
*We practiced writing our numbers with a polar counting book.
*We continue to play buzz but now we count up to 100.
*We played teen & twenty bingo to help us learn those numbers.
*We learned a money song and our beginning to use to pennies and dimes during calendar time to count how many days we have been in school.
*We practiced estimating many different objects and see how close our smart guess is.
*We learned about numbers that are greater than by playing the card game war.
*We practiced measuring by using links to measure our long jumps and then we graphed our jumps on the SMART Board.
*We played football math by coloring different footballs and counting how many we had of each.
Science/Social Studies:
*We have been learning about Arctic & the Antartica and the animals that live in these two places. We have been making our own non-fiction book about these animals.
*We wrote about living and non-living book. These are shared at conferences.
Important Dates:
Feb. 8 Florentine Opera comes to our school
Feb. 9 100 day party (please bring in canned goods all week for our all school food drive)
Feb. 14 Valentine's day party
Feb. 24 No school for kids-budget inservice day
Feb. 25 No School for everyone-winter break
Thanks for continuing to send all of the snow gear that is required for this weather. The children will be allowed to play in the smaller snow banks on the playground but not on the one's on the Pendelton side of our school. Thanks for your understanding in this matter.
*A little reminder to make sure you ask or tell your child what they will be having for lunch the Next day. Several of the children are saying they are either having hot or cold lunch the next day and this information is incorrect. This makes it difficult for our 5th graders who eat last. They might not get the food they asked for. Thanks for your understanding and help with this!
*Our Valentine's day party is on Feb. 14th. A note went home regarding the party and my room parents will be contacting parents about helping out with our party.
What we are learning:
Reading:
*We have been focusing on learning more about nonfiction books. We read many different books about Polar animals and Martin Luther King, Jr..
*We looked at all our non-fiction books that are in our classroom and sorted books between fiction and non-fiction.
*We reviewed why we read non-fiction books. We realized that nonfiction and fiction books look and sound different.
* We also learned that you don't have to start reading non-fiction books from the beginning.
*We reviewed the strategy to check for understanding by reading the book Knuffle Bunny by MoWillems.
*We were introduced to the concept to expand our vocabulary by looking for fun and interesting words. We did this by reading the book Kitten's Full Moon.
*We learned about the reading strategy to cross check which is to make sure the words and the pictures make sense together.
*We learned to look at the beginning sound to figure out unknown words.
*We reviewed ten of our kindergarten high frequency words. We used magnet letters to create these words and we wrote the words on the dry erase board. We also read two poems that had many of these 10 super words and then found them on our SMART board and read them in our poetry binders.
*We have also started to do our morning message on the SMART board. You will notice that those messages are coming home so that you can read them with your child.
Writing:
*We read Owl Moon and listed the details that we heard in the story and reviewed that we need details in our story.
*We wrote a small moment about our princess and pirate day and then they practiced writing their own small moment.
*We learned how to write non-fiction by raeding aboug and writing facts about a polar bear, a walrus and a penguin.
*We did a picture walk through Knuffle Bunny and looked at what different things the author did with the words and the details in the pictures.
*We also noticed that the author of Knuffle Bunny used speech bubbles so some of us tried to use speech bubbles in our writing.
Math:
*We practiced writing our numbers by filling in the missing numbers on the snowflakes.
*We solved polar animal story problems on the smart board and individually.
*We practiced writing our numbers with a polar counting book.
*We continue to play buzz but now we count up to 100.
*We played teen & twenty bingo to help us learn those numbers.
*We learned a money song and our beginning to use to pennies and dimes during calendar time to count how many days we have been in school.
*We practiced estimating many different objects and see how close our smart guess is.
*We learned about numbers that are greater than by playing the card game war.
*We practiced measuring by using links to measure our long jumps and then we graphed our jumps on the SMART Board.
*We played football math by coloring different footballs and counting how many we had of each.
Science/Social Studies:
*We have been learning about Arctic & the Antartica and the animals that live in these two places. We have been making our own non-fiction book about these animals.
*We wrote about living and non-living book. These are shared at conferences.
Important Dates:
Feb. 8 Florentine Opera comes to our school
Feb. 9 100 day party (please bring in canned goods all week for our all school food drive)
Feb. 14 Valentine's day party
Feb. 24 No school for kids-budget inservice day
Feb. 25 No School for everyone-winter break
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Pirate & Princess day
What a fun day it was!!! Arrgh!!
We read pirate and princess books, talked like a pirate and had a wonderful snack! 
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