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!