In need of Mugs!!

Hello Everyone,

I hope everyone is staying warm with this new extremely frigid weather.  Thank you for sending your students in with lots of layers!  Although the kindergarten classes stayed inside on Monday, it’s great to have the layers just in case we decide to go out to get some fresh air.  

This is what life looks like when you are trying to take a picture of 35 reindeer:)

Missing Reindeer...

Your students may tell you that I finally moved into my new house!  Sometimes during literacy this comes up as a non-fiction event for me to write about and they have been asking me for updates.

This week we will be focusing on uppercase letters and tapping out words in Fundations.  The uppercase letters this week will be A, B, C, D, E, F, G, & H.  Students should now be displaying a growing confidence in all of their lowercase letter formation and in the beginning stages of their uppercase.  The student packets coming home today will provide excellent practice over the winter break.  Try asking your student questions such as, “What says /a/ (like a in the beginning of “apple”)?” or “What says /g/?”   

In Bridges we are moving into Unit 4.  We will be extending our rote counting to 40 and counting objects will be extended to 20 (counting on, one-to-one correspondence, counting to answer, “How many?”).  Our hands on activities will continue to focus on representational addition with sums to 10 and subtraction with minuends to 10.

During theme this week we will be collaborating with the other kindergarten classrooms and watching the Polar Express and focusing on christmas and the chinese new year.  We recently read the Polar Express book and after each viewing we will be comparing and contrasting the book and movie.      

On Friday morning we will celebrate our winter break with a class breakfast.  I will bring in hot chocolate and strawberries.  If anyone else would like to bring in anything, please feel free to let me know what you would like to send in.  The breakfast will go from 9-9:30am.  In the afternoon we will have an assembly in the gym from 12:20-1:00pm..

Our community service project will be making dog and cat treats for a local animal shelter.  Animals in need appreciate love and kindness too:)

Many parents have asked me about the Brain Break video we have been watching in class.  It’s called “What I Am” and is part of a Sesame Street production.  You can google it on YouTube, the students love it and are starting to sing a long and understand what the song is saying.  We usually dance around to wake up our brains for our next learning adventure.   

I will be sending you more information before I leave about Lexia.  Some parents have been asking about it but some students are still not able to login.  If Lexia is new to you I will send you more information about this literacy program available to access at home.  

Students have been eagerly practicing their sight words in class and I have noticed a lot of students coming in to tell me they have been practicing at home.  Thank you for all of your hard work!  There has been a slight change in the sight word list for kindergarten and I was unaware of it.  If you would like to continue practicing at home here are some words you can add to your list:)  These will be the ones they will be expected to know leaving kindergarten.  

no

is

can

me

you

and

he

at

a

so

on

in

up

am

we

like

see

I

go

it

do

an

the

my

to

We will be making a craft tomorrow that will be coming home on Friday but WE NEED EACH CHILD TO BRING IN A MUG.  The mug will come back home on Friday and will not be glued or painted.  I just can’t tell you what they will be doing with it.  If you have an extra mug, please do not hesitate to send it in:)  

Thank you again and I am sorry you are receiving this so late!

-Jenn

Chilly Week Ahead...

Hello Everyone,

Hopefully everyone was able to enjoy the sunny but chilly weekend!  I read a quote over the weekend, "There's no such thing as bad weather, just inadequate equipment and poor planning."  I read this after my poor planning and apparel for an extremely cold morning run...  With that in mind, please make sure your student is coming to school with the right “equipment” for the elements.  Students go out to recess each day for around 20 minutes and they can get very muddy and wet in that time.  When students forget their sneakers they end up wearing their wet boots for the remainder of the day after recess, when they forget their boots they end up wearing wet sneakers for the remainder of the day...And I’m sure you can imagine what a classroom of wet boots and shoes looks like after 18 kindergartners walk all over it:)  I welcome you to send a pair of sneakers to leave overnight in his/her cubby. 

This week in kindergarten we will be continuing our exploration of holidays around the world.  Last week students had so much fun making bread and beginning to learn about Hanukkah.  We will explore other holidays such as Ramadan, Dawali, Kwanza, Christmas, and more!

Thank you very much for all of your suggestions for our community service project.  We are still trying to finalize our options weighing time, resources, and need.  Our class will talk about it and decide this week.

During Fundations we will be starting Unit 2 which moves our focus from beginning phoneme awareness to more advanced phoneme awareness.  In this unit we will learn how to blend and read three-sound short vowel words.  These are often called CVC words.  You may see students independently “tapping” our words with their fingers.  Encourage it!!!  They should be starting with their pointer finger and “tapping” it on his/her thumb, then moving on to the middle finger to the thumb and so on until all of the sounds are “tapped.”   Each sounds gets its’ own finger tap.  

We will continue building on our previous knowledge for Bridges Math by building a number line to model the number sequence from 0-10.  We will continue to practice counting forward and backward between 0-50, starting with any number in the range.  Count up and down when timing something in the oven or microwave.  You can also play hopping games where you start and stop counting.

During Number Corner (calendar) are learning to use positional and directional language to assist us.  Our new vocabulary words consist of "behind, in front of, to the left, to the right, inside, outside, under and above."  Try using this vocabulary when giving directions to your student.  They can be directions such as, "Please put your jacket in front of my jacket." or "Can we read the book that is to the left of the Legos?"  Have fun being creative!  During our

In Writer's and Reader's Workshop will be focusing on Leo Lionni.  If this author is new to you, he is famous for the books Swimmy, Fredrick, Inch By Inch, Fish is Fish and many more!  We will be comparing his books for similarities and differences. We will take our observations and create a class matrix and Venn diagram.  Students will be encouraged to work in groups to explore the plot, setting, and characters. When you are reading at home, see if you can identify these text features together:)

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to our school food drive!  We built a structure out of the cans/boxes we have so far.  As we continue to receive more food items, we will continue building!

Thank you for being such an amazing community!

We are back from Thanksgiving!!!

Hi Everyone-

I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful and full of great food and wonderful moments with your family.  

This week, we started off with a field trip to the Flynn Theater to see a play series titled, “The Teacher From the Black Lagoon & Other Storybooks.”  This performance was a musical revue based on favorite books for young readers. The musical was made up of vignettes created by talented writers and performed by a cast of five actors. It featured seven picture books, The Ant and the Grasshopper, Dogzilla, Teacher From the Black Lagoon, I Want My Hat Back, Grumpy Bird, Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, & Love, Splat. Some of the musicals were funny, some were poignant, but all were told in a delightfully entertaining in an accessible way while emphasizing the joy and adventure of reading!  Ask your student which play was their favorite?  Or, which book would they like to read now that you have seen the play?

For the three weeks leading to our Holiday break, we will be studying "Holiday Traditions Around the World".  We will be looking specifically at Hanukkah, Christmas (in many countries), and Kwanzaa.  We will read stories, sing songs, play games, create works of art, and watch video clips supporting these special celebrations.  If you have any special project or information you would like to share with us around these Holidays, please let contact me to set up a time to join us!

As we kick off our holiday studies of celebrations from around the world, I would like our class to participate in a community service project.  I have a few ideas in mind but welcome any suggestions you may have. I would love any suggestions you have!! The project will take place during the last week before winter break.  Community service projects help students understand what it means to be part of a community.  Through these types of projects, they are able to experience two communities.  

The first one is the community they were introduced to the project from, usually the community in which students work and learn, our classroom, as they undertake the community service learning project. They are working with each other and as they work on the project, students build relationships, and become more of a cohesive unit gaining a sense of group identity.  

There is also the community that the students serve. As students begin to help their school, neighborhood, town or the natural world, they develop a relationship with that community and a feeling of membership in it. Students also begin to understand they are a member of many different communities.   

Focusing on other learning in our classroom, our Fundations learning will focus on our two remaining keyword letter sounds ‘qu’ and ‘z.’  I can’t believe we have learned all of our lower case letters and their sounds already!  The keyword for ‘qu’ as you may have guessed is queen and the keyword for ‘z’ is zebra.  A continuous review of all letters and sounds is very important for student growth and literacy development.  Try playing the game “I Spy” with letter sounds, such as, “I Spy something that starts with an ‘a’.”  Your student will then need to think of the letter sound and which objects start with that sound.

During Bridges we will start the week off by continuing and expanding our study of numbers to 10.  Some of our activities will include matching numerals and quantities, counting forward and backward, reading numerals, comparing quantities and numbers to determine more and less.  Emphasis is on ordering numbers, using ten frames, number cards, craft sticks and unifix cubes.  You can continue this learning at home by playing games by matching number cards, similar to the classic Memory game, putting number cards in order around the house, or something as simple as flash and show the numbers to each other.  

We will turn our attention to Laura Numeroff for our newest author study.  Students were so creative with Mo Willems, I can’t wait to see what they come up with for our new adventure!  If you are unfamiliar with Laura Numeroff, she is the author who has become famous for her If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, If You Give a Moose a Muffin, If You Give a Pig a Pancake, etc. books.

Our Reader’s Workshop focus will continue building on our prior knowledge and learning from the past 60 days we have been in school.  We will move our focus to tracking our reading by using our pointer finger to match the words we are reading on the page.  As we are continuing our growth as readers, we will also be learning more about developing our skills as writers during Writer’s Workshop.

We will continue to look back at our writing pieces of the past and begin to add more detail to our pictures and stories.  When students are telling you a story at home, try to encourage them to expand their stories by asking them specific questions or provide them prompts to detail their thinking.  

Winter is here!  Yippee!  How about that snow and slush?  Please remember hats, mittens, coats, snow pants, and extra shoes for inside time.  LABEL all items please...those black mittens look all the same to me.  If you and your family are in need of some of these items, please let me know and I will try use some local resources to help out!

I think that is all for now!  If I think of anything else I will keep you posted!  Thank you for being such an involved community of parents!

-Jenn  

Phew...what a fun filled, energized week!!! Have a happy Thanksgiving!!

We had a lot happening in our kindergarten classroom today!  The Cat and The Hat came to visit us, we made buttons, and we created a "pilgrim" hat.  See our adventures below!!

The Cat & The Hat and her button maker.

Students showing off their new pins!

Hello Cat & The Hat!!

We started the day as kindergarteners and ended it as Pilgrims!!(We know the Pilgrims did not have buckles)

Native Americans and "Garbage"

Good Morning,

This week we have a lot of learning taking place in our kindergarten classroom and we will be finishing some units before our Thanksgiving break.

In literacy, we will be concentrating on learning the letter-keyword sounds of “y” and “x”.  The keyword for “y” is yellow and the keyword for “x” is fox.  We have been incorporating movement, verbal cues, and visual pictures into our sound review with hopes this will target a variety of our bodily/kinesthetic, linguistic/verbal, and visual/spatial learners.  Sometimes we change the movements that represent these letter sounds, ask your student which body movement we represented each letter with.

While continuing on our literacy adventure, we will continue to tell stories across our fingers in Writer’s Workshop and learn that readers can read books by reading picture clues about the story in Reader’s Workshop.  

Telling stories across our fingers is a great way to organize stories.  Instead of telling the story, “My dog went outside.” (1 finger story) We are learning to make those stories a 3 finger story.  The story could change to, “ My dog went outside and played fetch with my brother until my brother fell into a mud puddle.”  (3 finger story)  We are learning to tell these 3 finger stories verbally first, then we will try to take our words and break them up into multiple page stories.     

 

Reading picture clues can help students be more confident, independent readers.  I will be using these prompts and reading interventions to scaffold student literacy skills.

1.  Look at the pictures.	Meaning is the ultimate goal in reading.  Readers predict about words based on clues provided from the pictures.
2.  Does it make senses?	Readers use pictures to determine if what they read makes sense.
3.  Get your mouth ready.	Picture clues alone do not provide enough detailed information.  Readers initially concentrate on beginning letter(s) of unknown words.
4.  Does it look right?	By looking through a word from left to right, readers check their predictions about the word.  They confirm or reject predictions based on the sound-letter relationships.
5.  Reread.	Children can reread to use knowledge of oral language and to check meaning.
6.  Does it sound right?	Readers use their knowledge of both spoken and literary language to check if what they read can also be spoken.
7.  Look for chunks.	Using onsets and rimes, readers make analogies to decode unfamiliar words.

In Math, we will learn a new game I learned from one of my kindergarten friends from another school.  The game is called, “Garbage” or “Trash” (I didn’t make up the name).  The rules are below:

1.  Pull all of the face cards from the deck, take them out of the game.  Deal 10 cards to each person, with 2 rows of 5, like a 10-frame. Set the deck in the middle.

2.  Have the person who's going first draw a card from the deck (or from the top most card on the discard pile). Say the card is a 9. The player would put the 9 in the ninth spot face up and pick up the card that was there before. Say this card is a 5--the player will put it in the fifth spot. However, if the card-in-hand is another 9, then the card-in-hand is placed in the discard pile, and play passes to the next person.

3.  If the card-in-hand cannot be placed because the spot has already been filled, the card-in-hand goes to the discard pile and ends your turn.  The object of the game is to get all of your cards in order from 1-10, in ten-frame order.

4.  The person who flips over all their cards first wins. If they like, they can yell "Trash!" or "Garbage!" to announce their victory.

Let me know if you like playing it at home.  There are other rules you can play with the face cards but I feel like this is a great introduction to the game and it supports all of our 10-frame work we have been working so hard at!

We will finish our exploration of the Plains Native Americans, Southwest Native Americans and the Pilgrims this week.  Students have been working very hard over the past couple of weeks making masks, totem poles, sculpting, making boxes, and completing a KWL chart for all of the regions of Native Americans we studied.  Students have been very motivated to learn about the variety of traditions, legends, and characteristics of the different tribes.  We will close this unit on Friday by learning about the Pilgrims and the holiday we now know as Thanksgiving.         

We will be meeting with our 3rd grade buddies again on Wednesday.  Last time we met, we created portraits of our partners, next time you are in our classroom look around the room to see them!

Our upcoming field trip will be to the Flynn Theater.  We will be seeing, “The Teacher From the Black Lagoon.”  I need one more parent volunteer for this trip.  We are limited to the amount of seats provided for our class and adults.  As the date approaches, I will fill you in with further details.

Thank you very much for everything you do!

-Jenn     

 

--

Good Morning Parents,

Thank you for your continued support in our classroom.  You have been doing everything from providing a helping hand inside the classroom to supporting student educational needs by taking the time out of your busy schedule to read a book, play a game or simply asking them about their day.  Students greatly benefit from parents like you who play an active  role in their learning career.  Thank you for that.

This week, we will kick-off our Writer’s Workshop by continuing to learn about the art of storytelling and its components, paired with planning our own stories page by page.  Parents are naturals at scaffolding(supporting) children to re-create events.  For instance, a child and her dad return from the park, and the mother says, “What did you do at the park?”  The child says, “I swinged,” and the mother replies, “Did you?! Did Daddy push you on the swings? The child nods and says, “Daddy pushed me high.  I touched the tree.”  The mother nods and retells the story.  “Wow.  Daddy pushed you on the swing!  You went so high that you touched the leaves on the tree.”  This re-creation of the story is essential to learning how a sentence in standard English should sound and supports a child’s ability to write stories in a clear and cohesive way.

In Reader’s Workshop we will continue to build good habits and read Emergent storybooks.  Two of the “Good Reader Habits” we will focus on this week will be activating schema (“I have a connection” or “That reminds me of…”) and asking questions (I wonder…” or “How come…?”).  Mo Willems will still be our author study focus.   Ask your student which Mo Willems book has been his/her favorite and why.  We have read Knuffle Bunny Too, Pidgeon Wants to Stay Up Late, Pidgeon Finds a Hotdog, We Are in a Book, Leonardo the Terrible Monster, Don’t Let Pidgeon Drive the Bus, The Duckling Gets a Cookie!?, and Time to say “Please”!.  It’s been a great adventure!

In Fundations, we will learn the letter and keyword sounds for letters “v” and “w” this week.   You can create games with letter sounds and letter recognition with cut pieces of paper.  With the “cards” you can write the letters of the alphabet.  Once the cards are labeled, give your student some of the cards.  You can flash these cards quickly at each other quickly to see if the opponent can identify the sound and letter.  With each correct answer the player gets a point.  This is a game that is simple to create and as a parent you can help scaffold your child’s letter and sound fluency.   

We are still exploring the different regions and history of Native Americans for our Social Studies Unit; this unit will continue until Thanksgiving Break.  We will start out our week by continuing to learn about the Native Americans of the Northwest and Coastal region and finish out the week learning about the Plains Natives.  Ask your student what they learned about last week while discovering the Natives of the Eastern Woodlands.  Questions such as, “How did the Natives travel ?” (Foot or canoes) or “What were their homes called?” (Wigwams or Longhouses)  We will create class totem poles for the Northwest Coastal Natives along with learning new myths and legends that have been passed down through the generations.

And in Bridges Math we will focus on, “one more” and “one less.”  Students will be asked to look at a total number of objects and add one and subtract one.  This will be their first exposure to subtraction.  You can easily ask questions to further this learning outside of school.  Butterflies will be hiding in bushes and asking us, “How many” questions throughout this week.  I’m pretty sure the real butterflies of Vermont have found a much warmer climate by now such as the beaches of MexicoJ

Just a reminder:  

Our Butterfly Sharing will be this Thursday at 2:00.

Picture Re-take day will be on November 12

Thank you for all that you do!

Native Americans and Mo Willems!

Hello Everyone,

I’m sorry this is arriving a little later than usual. I prefer to get this out on Sunday night but life doesn’t always allow for this to happen

Now that Halloween has passed and pumpkins have started to resemble large orange raisins; we are moving on to a new theme, Native Americans. We will be focusing on four regions, Northeast, Northwest, Southwest, and the Plains.

This week, our focus will be on the tribes of the Northeast and Northwest. Each region will have a culminating project component, so if any parents would like to help out for face painting (Plains Native Americans), or making baking soda clay (Southwest Native Americans) please let me know! I would love some extra hands! We will be face painting on 11/15/13 (Next Friday), and making clay pots on 11/20 (Wednesday). Today, we discussed the different regions of North America and what we were going to be learning about each region/tribe. Our focus will be on homes, food, clothing, transportation, and artifacts. We will have numerous opportunities to be creative while exploring Native American history through multiple intelligences and developing skills through the disciplines. Ask your student what legend or story we read today in class. Why were there blue flowers growing after the rains came?

For literacy, we are starting an author’s study with Mo Willems as our focus. Today we read, “Don’t Let Pigeon Drive the Bus” we collaborated and discussed the question, “What could happen if Pigeon did drive the bus?” Students came up with a variety of creative answers. Some of the responses from students were “Pigeon could fall out of the bus, Pigeon could crash into someone,” and “Pigeon could peck at the seats.” Asking questions to “dig deeper” in a text encourages student comprehension and excitement of reading.

In our writing club, we are focusing on storytelling. This aims at preparing us to retell Native American myths and legends. As the weeks progress, we will take those legends and myths and tell our own. Our main focus on storytelling is to have three components; a beginning, middle, and an end. The next time your student tells you a story, ask him/her what the beginning, the middle and the end of their story was. With those prompts, I have found that students are much more thorough when compiling a story.

We are learning three letter sounds this week in Fundations. The letters this week are l, k, and h. I will be sending home a Fundations packet tomorrow, you can reference this packet if you have any questions about letter formation or keyword sounds. It is extremely helpful for your child’s learning that you continue to review their prior letters and sounds at home. If you are in conversation, don’t be afraid to ask them, “What letter sound do you hear at the beginning of the word…(insert word here)?” You may see that he/she confuse ‘k’ and ‘c’, but this is OK. Being able to recognize that words do not end in the letter ‘c’ will come later on in Fundations. If you feel as though your student is ready for this rule, feel free to make them aware of this, we have talked about it in school but it’s not something we are heavily focusing on this early.

Last week you may have heard that we went outside and made exploding ghosts. If your student has mentioned it and wants the recipe, it was a tablespoon of Cornstarch, 1oz of water and 1 Alka-Seltzer Tablet. I will send pictures as soon as the photographer (Mrs. Lasher) sends them to me:) The recipe called for film canisters but as you may imagine, film canisters are difficult to find now that digital cameras and Iphones rule the photography world. Instead of film canisters, we used togo ramekins...Unfortunately, they didn't seal as well as the film canisters would have and the pressure build up made our want-to-be exploding ghosts, become spitting/sprinkler ghosts! Hahaha! The students had so much fun even though their ghosts didn't blast off into the sky like we had planned.

I am waiting on another "photographer" for our costume pictures from last week. I was told by a few parents that the pictures were too small to see everyone's costume. As soon as I have those, I will send them along in an email too.

Thank you very much for being such wonderful parents!