Welcome to the wonderful world of kindergarten! Please use this online journal as a way to follow our kindergarten class as we learn, grow, and have fun together!
We have added several new math work stations lately. In this video, two kindergarten friends explain how to play our newest game, "Scrambled Numbers 1-10," a game to practice number sequencing.
Scrambled Numbers 1-10
"Butterfly Race" helps us practice subitizing, or quickly recognizing, groups of dots in tens-frames.
"Grab Bag More and Less" helps us practice counting and comparing groups of objects.
"Fives Up" helps us practice making five in a variety of ways.
More "Fives Up"
"Spill Ten Beans" helps us practice counting, number formation, and composing and decomposing ten.
"Bicycle Race" helps us practice doubling numbers.
Well, the kids in Room 8 are simply amazing, and they managed to earn themselves ANOTHER whole class celebration! They came up with the idea of having a "fancy" day. We wore our best and fanciest outfits, used our most proper manners, and ate lunch at tables covered with table cloths and (pretend) candles. It was a very memorable day and we all had a blast! I predict we will probably see another fancy day sometime in our future! Please enjoy these photos of our fancy happenings!
Look at those fancy kindergartners!
Lunch by candlelight.
More lunch!
They decided to have an impromptu singing performance!
They thought they looked fancy, just like Mr. O'Hara!
We had so much fun celebrating our hard work and Be A STAR behavior today! Students wore their pajamas and brought stuffed friends to share. We also read our favorite books, built forts, and are lunch in the classroom. Enjoy the pictures from our day!
Wow! I was blown away by the amazing turkeys who came back to school all dressed up and ready to be saved from being Thanksgiving dinner. We shared the projects today and the kids had a great time seeing all of the creative ideas! Thank you for your help with this fun project!
A swimming turkey.
A puppy turkey.
A skiing turkey.
A Mrs. Johnson turkey!
A cheerleading turkey.
A skiing turkey.
The Easter Bunny turkey. Eat carrots!
A pizza man turkey.
A police turkey.
A ballerina turkey.
A snowboarding turkey.
A princess turkey.
A skiing turkey.
A chef turkey.
A police turkey.
We also brainstormed things that we are thankful for and made books. The books came home in your child's folder today, so please enjoy reading them this week!
I am so thankful to have such a wonderful group of kindergartners to spend my days with! Thank you for sharing them with me! Happy Thanksgiving!
Echo the Owl helps us practice our letters and sounds!
You may have heard your child mention a part of our day called Fundations. Fundations is our word study time, or phonics instruction. Phonics is the relationship between letters and sounds and is the basis to learning to read and spell. We do Fundations each day for twenty minutes in our classroom. During this time, students engage in a number of systematic activities designed to practice and understand what sounds the letters in our alphabet make. The video below shows students as we complete the warm up portion of the lesson, in which we practice all of the letters and sounds taught up to that point.
The vowel extension chart, which highlights the sounds the vowels make.
A student leads the class using the vowel extension chart.
During Fundations, we practice matching letters to the sounds they make. The photo below shows our magnetic letter board. We use these during an activity called "Echo Find Letters." To do this activity, I say a letter sound and students must locate the letter that makes that sound. We also will use this board to practice putting the letters in alphabetical order later in the year.
The video below shows an activity called "Echo Letter Formation." During this time, we practice correctly writing the letters. We use special dry erase boards that have the Fundations lines (sky line, plane line, grass line and worm line) on them. Students practice "Skywriting" letters and tracing the letters in their Student Notebooks early in the week and later in the week use the boards and markers to write the letters.
Additional activities that we do in Fundations include "Word Play" during which we become more aware of words and how words form sentences. We discuss capitalizing sentences and ending punctuation. We also have "Storytime," which is a time for listening and reading comprehension,
Fundations is a time for students to practice important skills, which they then apply throughout their day to their reading and writing. Ask your child about some of the letters we've learned so far!
As a part of our math unit on shapes and patterns, students had the opportunity to make quilt squares. We used a pumpkin tracer for one square and orange and pumpkin-themed paper to make the other. After we made our quilt squares, we built a class quilt, which is now proudly hung in the hallway outside of our classroom. After making our quilt, we discussed what we noticed about it. Several students noticed the diagonal nature of the pattern. One student observed that our squares formed a rectangle and we counted that we used 35 squares to make our quilt. One observant student noticed that the diagonals get longer (i.e., there is one patchwork quilt, then 3 going diagonally, then 5) and then they get shorter again. Amazing! While the class loved our quilt, several students wished it was made of fabric and we could really use it to keep warm. Unfortunately, sewing is not something I am very good at, so the paper quilt will have to suffice! If you are at school, please feel free to stop by and take a look at our beautiful creation!
