December Newsletter

December 2014

Dear Kindergarten Families,

It was great to see you at conferences. If you have any additional questions about the report card or your student’s progress, please contact us.

We have three more weeks of school this year. We will be working on describing details in the Gingerbread Man stories we are reading in class. Answering questions about the characters, setting and the sequence of events helps to build comprehension skills.

We will continue learning and practicing our letters and sounds. We are also wording on reading words that end with at and an. Our new sight words for this month are and, go and is.

In math we will working on basic addition. We are working on combinations to 5. We are also working on the numbers from 11 to 19. Please continue counting practice with your student. The goal is to be able to count to 25 without missing any numbers by the end of January.

Here is a list of websites and apps that we use in class.

www.starfall.com

Alphafriends Song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_cX4j_9fUU

Pattern Shapes app

http://www.mathlearningcenter.org/web-apps/pattern-shapes/

ABC Order App

Line 'Em Up App

Ten Fill Frame App

Thankful

November is a busy month with a lot of coming and going. With all the commotion, I wanted to take a moment to be thankful. I am thankful we were all safe on the almost snow day. I am thankful for everyday I spend teaching and learning in Kindergarten. I am thankful to see how much the Kindergartners have grown and matured in such a short time. I am thankful for the wonderful staff at our school.
Today in celebration of Thanksgiving, we took time to make "Thankful Turkeys". They are proudly displayed outside our classroom. Please pause a minute during conferences to take a look.

October News Upate

Here is an update on what has been happening in Room 101 and around our school.

We have been working hard a learning our literacy jobs and being independent. This is a big transition for us. I am still adjusting the jobs and routines so that we can all be successful. I am very proud of the kindergartners for doing their best as learners.

We used our fingers as paint brushes to make rainbows. The students used primary colors and then had to mix them on their fingers to create orange, green and purple. It was a great discovery activity and not too messy.

We ended the month with our Family Literacy Night. It was great to see so many families sharing books and literacy activities together. We had many Kinder Families come read in the "Special Reading Corner." The Kindergartners were very proud of themselves as they read their books to their loved ones.

I am looking forward to seeing everyone again at conferences.

Starting a new month

We began a new month which means we are our "Eye Spy Eye" to predict what comes next on our calendar. This month as we add more days to the calendar we will comparing amounts of dots.

This is part of our Number Corner that we update daily.

We are also talking about the weather during Number Corner.

3 ways to read to yourself poster

We counted the bugs in math. Good thing they don't crawl across the table.

We are working on the letters T, F and P. We match pictures that start with the letters to the letter.
We use the iPads to practice writing our letters.
The students told me that it is important to learn letters to they can read.

Fun Run and a Fun Week

We were so busy and excited about the Fun Run that we did not get a chance to write as a class about our week. The students will have to trust me to give an account of our week.
We are finally settling into our routines. This week we began our extended day program, Spanish Literacy and reading groups, whew! Lots of new people and learning introduced into our Kindergarten world. I also excited to announce that Kindergarten will have the same beginning and ending time everyday. This is great news and will allow us to keep a consistent schedule which is important when you are 5 and 6 years old and when you teach 5 and 6 year old students.

I mentioned that we started reading groups. As a part of our reading program, everyday we have read-to-self time. The challenge to students is to build their stamina so they can stay focused on reading the pictures, the words and retelling the story to themselves. We are currently up to 6 minutes of read-to-self time.

The Fun Run gave our class the chance to get outside and enjoy the break between rain storms. The students had a blast running laps. Our Principal Mr. Welch joined in the fun, too. I did my best as a cheerleader and collector of water cups.

 It was another incredible week of Kindergarten. I am so proud of how the students are learning to be students and growing as members of our school community.

Shapes, iPads and Learning

We completed our second week of Kindergarten. Here are the highlights of the week according to the students.
We made patterns with the blocks.
We learned the letter f.
We used the iPads to practice writing our letters.
We listened to a story about little sharks in the listening center.
We read to ourselves with the books in our book boxes.

Listening Center

We used iPads to practice letter writing.

We used the iPads to tell about weekend plans.

We have 6th grade buddies that read to the Kinders before morning assembly.

We wrote this blog entry together. The students found the letters they know.

Our First Full Week

Kindergarten is an exciting place to be. We completed our first week. I asked the students to tell me what to include in our blog about our first full week.  Here is what they shared.

We had fun.
We put numbers on the calendar.
We went to the library and we listened to a story.
We went to music and we played instruments.
We wrote numbers.

In reading we are focusing on details in a story. Writing about our week gave us the chance to think about telling the details of our week.

We have read many stories this week. Here are the covers of two stories we read. The students loved to make the animal sounds from Mice Squeak, We Speak. We followed up Here Are My Hands by making hand prints. Thank you to the wonderful parent volunteers who helped with the hand prints!

As part of our study of shapes we made creations with the shape blocks. We also played shape in a bag where students have to guess the shape by feeling it. They have to complete the sentence, "I think it is a _______ because __________. This is challenging for the students because they have to use describing words but they really enjoy it.

1st Day!

Kindergarten is off and rolling in Room 101. We began our day in the cafeteria/gym for our whole school assembly. We waved good bye to our family members with a few tears. Everyone settled in quickly and was eager to learn about their new classroom. We learned some of our classroom routines and practiced them especially how to sit on the rug. Everyone made a self-portrait and wrote the number 1. Mr. Welch, our principal visited and took this picture of our class as we were predicting the next shape on the calendar. We met our first alpha friend Mimi Mouse. We read a story about how children get to school all over the world and we read and did motions to a funny version of The Wheels on the Bus. The highlight of the day was going back to the cafeteria for lunch! What big kids the kindergartners were today!

Welcome

It is an exciting time of year and no one is more excited than me. We will officially begin our Kindergarten school year on September 4th. Our ice cream social last week gave me a chance to meet some of my new students. I am so looking forward when we can all be together on Thursday.
We will share our news on this blog so you can see the all amazing things kindergartners can do!