Welcome to Kindergarten!

We had a wonderful first couple of days in kindergarten! It is amazing to me how comfortable everyone already seems. New friendships are being formed and old friendships are helping to ease the transition into the exciting world of kindergarten! We are already beginning to establish classroom norms and expectations and we will really focus on developing a classroom routine over the next couple of weeks.

One way that we learned about our classroom and school environment was by reading several books about a popular character: Pete the Cat!

 We read Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, a catchy book about a cat who "rolls with the punches" and doesn't let the little stuff get to him. We also read Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes, a book in which Pete is a little nervous about starting at a new school. He quickly learns that there is nothing to be afraid of and visits all of the cool places in his school. Pete then visited our school and left notes in various places around the school. We went on a scavenger hunt to learn about places like the art room, the music room, the cafeteria, the gym, the library and more. Although we didn't find Pete the Cat, he did leave us a fun activity to complete in our classroom!

Mrs. Lasher reads to us.

Pete left the very first note in the back of this book!

Keeping our eyes peeled for Pete! He was quick!

Addy colors the special picture Pete left for us.

I hope your child enjoyed the first three days of school as much as I did! I am truly looking forward to getting to know each and every one of these awesome kiddos better this year! Hopefully, as we learn, play, and grow together, we can embrace Pete's positive attitude and know that, no matter what comes our way, "it's all good!"

The Grouchy Kindergartners

As a part of our ladybug unit, we read the classic Eric Carle book The Grouchy Ladybug. We then practiced our grouchiest faces and posed for the camera (I'm sure you've never, ever seen a grouchy face from these happy little children!) We also wrote about "what bugs us" or what makes us grouchy. Enjoy the pictures!

Kindergarten Stars!

We've had several friends reach the 100 Star mark recently in our classroom. This is quite an accomplishment and something these children should truly be proud of! In honor of all of their hard work, they received a special t-shirt. All of them wore them with pride! Congratulations and thank you to Charlie, Alex, and Kate! Many other friends are not far behind...I have a feeling I will be giving out many more t-shirts in the coming weeks!

Rocking Out in Kindergarten!

Today we began a science unit investigating rocks and their various properties. We started by reading a wonderful book called Everybody Needs a Rock.

 

 

We then went out to do some rock hunting of our own! In our very own H.C.S. backyard, we found some amazing rocks and everyone had a great time searching for "their" perfect rock.

 

Pat finds a striped rock.

Ben's collection.

Charlie's perfect rocks.

Rock Hunters At Work!

 

Big, small, smooth, bumpy...we found all kinds of rock!

We sorted the rocks by size. 

We brought our many rocks into our classroom to observe and explore with throughout the week. We love being scientists!



Sea Creature Picture Problems

We have been working very hard to practice solving simple addition and subtraction picture problems. Once we got really good at that, we decided it was time to write some of our own! Because we had learned all about the ocean, we wrote problems involving sea creatures. I've created an online picture book of our hard work. Please visit the link here to read our problems. Solve them if you can!

Catching Up!

Whew! How did February get away from me so quickly? Probably because we had SO many exciting things happening! I took lots of pictures, but never got around to posting them here, so I thought I would do that now. Below is a collection of some of the most interesting things we did this month, although we certainly did lots of other things, too!

Dental Health Month
Darcie Thorburn, a dental hygienist, H.C.S. mom, and our school's "Tooth Tutor," visited our classroom early this month to discuss the importance of taking care of our teeth. She talked about proper brushing techniques, sugar levels in different drinks and snacks, and gave each child a toothbrush and some handouts. The students were very interested in all that she taught us and enjoyed practicing brushing with the giant model teeth and toothbrush!

Author's Celebration! 
We completed another writing unit, so we were thrilled to share our hard work with some first grade friends from Miss Lass' class. Everyone worked incredibly hard writing "Small Moment" pieces. During this unit, students learned the importance of "zooming in" on one moment in time and writing across pages about this moment. We also focused on adding details and feelings into our writing, and stretching words out to hear beginning and ending sounds in order to make our writing understandable for our readers.

The One Hundredth Day of School!
Even though it got bumped by a surprise snow day, we had so much fun celebrating the 100th day of school! This day is all about 100 and the many engaging things we can do to build number sense with this big number (to kindergartners, 100 is a VERY big number!)

Our fancy 100th Day doorway!

We had to be number detectives and find 100 hidden Hershey's Kisses and match them to a giant hundreds chart.

We were so excited to find all 100 kisses (and to eat them!)

We had to use our estimation skills and try to figure out which jar had 100 M&Ms....Can use guess which one it was?

We counted by 10s to make 100 gumballs with q-tips and paint.

We counted out 100 Fruit Loops on a hundreds grid and made colorful necklaces.

Still counting!

Some of us made patterns with the Fruit Loops!

We built some interesting structures using 100 plastic cups! This station was a big hit!

 We had so much fun touring all of the classrooms in the Primary Wing to look at everyone's 100th Day Projects. Everyone did an amazing job! Here is a slideshow of the projects from our class:

100th Day Projects

It is always hard for me to believe how quickly this day arrives in kindergarten....although most kindergartners think this means it's the last day of school! I, for one, am thankful we still have many more days together to look forward to!

Valentine's Day
We had a wonderful day of celebrating our friendships! Literacy and math activities focused on all things valentine: hearts, candy, pink, and red! We enjoyed exchanging valentine cards with each other and had a yummy cupcake treat in the afternoon. We also had a special visit with our third grade big buddies and decorated bookmarks for each other.

Graphing candy hearts.

Making valentine patterns.

More candy heart graphing!

Some of the other exciting happenings from the month of February included: learning about oceans and ocean animals; starting guided reading groups to practice the many reading strategies we've mastered; listening to a presentation to learn about the new sorting station and composting program we will have in the H.C.S. cafeteria, and attending a fun assembly on the last day before vacation (Mrs. Johnson even got to help juggle flaming torches...some of us enjoyed it, others were less than thrilled!)

Trust me, I did NOT volunteer for this!

All in all, it was a busy and fun-filled month! I hope you all had a restful and enjoyable break with your kindergartner and I know the children will be ready to greet March with their regular enthusiasm and excitement for learning!