Kindergartner, Kindergartner, What Do You See?

During our Eric Carle Author Study, we became familiar with his stories and his techniques. We made our own painted papers and used these papers to create collages of animals. The result was a stunning class book, Kindergartner, Kindergartner, What Do You See? Each child was very excited to be an author and illustrator and I am excited to be able to share their hard work with you here. Please enjoy the video version of our class book. Listen closely: you will hear your child's voice reading his or her page! Thank you to Mrs. Hoeppner for helping us make this video!

Welcome Back!

It is so nice to be back into the swing of our routine here in Room 5! It sounds like everyone had a restful and enjoyable break, but they all see very happy to be back at school! We are forging ahead with our curriculum and a new theme and the children are very excited about all of the new information they are learning. We are doing an author study of the fabulous Eric Carle, exploring his technique and style in preparation for our field trip to the Flynn Theater on Monday. Click here for a link to Eric Carle's official website, filled with great information. Today we spent some time making paper that we will use to make our very own collages for a class book. We got messy and enjoyed trying different painting techniques!
I hope to post parts of this class book to the blog once it is complete! Keep your eyes peeled!

In literacy, we are continuing our work with reading simple words and using these words correctly in our writing. We are also practicing more high frequency words and using different elements of a sentence correctly when writing (i.e., capital letters, spaces, punctuation). We are focusing on the problem solving process during math. We spend time using "math thinking" to solve word problems and show our thinking on paper for people to understand how we solved the problem. The children are working to remember to make a diagram, include a key, and circle their answer. The goal is that someone looking at their paper will be able to understand their thinking and the strategies used to solve the problem. I am amazed at how well they all are doing with this process and they seem to love doing it! They ask me regularly if we will get to do problem solving that day!

100th Day of School and More!

On Monday, we were so excited to celebrate our 100th Day of Kindergarten! We had a fun-filled day of activities, challenges, and a one hundredth day museum around the primary wing. Each child brought in a very creative collection of one hundred objects. Please enjoy the slide show of the projects here!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

We also did some estimating and played some counting games. Here is a picture of our estimation activity. Students had to decide which of the three jars had 100 M&Ms in it. Which one do you think? Ask your kindergartner whether jar A, B, or C was the correct guess!

On Wednesday, we attended the annual Hinesburg Reading Celebration kickoff. We participated in the school-wide silent reading and heard a fabulous story, read aloud by Mr. and Mrs. Lasher! You should have received a Reading Minutes Tally Sheet in your child's homework folder. This is to keep track of the amount of time that your child spends reading or being read to at home. We will also keep track of our time spent reading here at school. If you return this tally sheet to school by next Friday, February 19th, your child will be entered into a drawing for some great prizes and they will also help the school earn "reading minutes." I will be sending home a "bonus" tally sheet to keep track of the time spent reading over vacation. Watch for this yellow sheet next week and happy reading!

On Friday, we had a fabulous pizza and ice cream party with the other kindergarten classrooms to celebrate Valentine's day and our friendships. We opened our special valentine cards from each other and did some fun activities to celebrate this holiday. I asked each child, "what is a friend?" Here are some of their responses:

"A friend is someone who you play with."

"A friend is somebody who knows you and likes to play with you."

"A friend is a person who's lonely and then another person wants to be his partner."

"A friend is a person who likes you and helps you and you play with them."

"A friend is someone who helps you."

"A friend is someone who likes to play with you and they like you."

"A friend is somebody that you play with."

"A friend is someone who is nice to you."

"A friend is somebody who you like."

"A friend is a great person that I love and I love to play with and I love him no matter what."

"A friend is somebody that you really like."

"A friend is someone that helps you."

"A friend is a person that you love and you always want to be with."

"A friend is someone who you like to play with a lot."

We are lucky to have such a great group of friends here in Room 5!

I hope you have a great weekend!

Japan Study and More!

Wow! It is hard to believe that January will come to a close this weekend! We have been working hard all month long and have learned so many new things. We spent much of this month involved in a country study of Japan. We have learned about the culture, the people, and the land, and have been comparing Japan to our own country. We have completed many projects, including Japanese carp flags (celebrating Boys' Day-see photo at right) and we decorated paper fans (in honor of Girls' Day). We have also learned a number of songs, including the Japan Song and the Japanese Number Song. Please enjoy as you listen to our class sing both of these songs here!

Japan Song:


Japanese Number Song:


We will continue to learn about Japanese food and customs next week.

In literacy, we have been taking our knowledge of letters and sounds to learn how to "finger tap" simple words. Students use their fingers to "tap" out the sounds of a simple word and read it (for example, if they see the word mat in front of them, they say and tap /m/ /a/ /t/ and blend the sounds together to say "mat.") The children are very excited because they know that this is an important step in learning how to read. I am encouraging students to notice words around them and to try to read them using this strategy. It is also a great way for them to sound out and write words! We are also practicing sight words (also known as high frequency words): words that can not be sounded out because of their irregular sounds and must therefore by memorized or instantly recognized. Some words we have worked on this week include: the, I, a, me, and it. We will continue to add more words each week, and I encourage students to use these in their daily writing, as well.

In math, we continue to add more work stations and practice more complex skills. Some of our new work stations include, "Beat You to 20," "Ten and More," "Bucket of Sea Creatures," and "Beat You to 20 Cents." We are working on recognizing and using coins, grouping, sorting, patterning, and the concept of more than and less than. In the coming weeks, I will be introducing the children to the problem solving process using story problems.

I hope you all were as pleased as I was with your children's progress on the quarter 2 report cards. The entire group continues to impress me daily with their knowledge and great thinking skills. Before we know it, they will all be big first graders!

Welcome Back!

Welcome back from what I hope was a relaxing and fun-filled break spent with family and friends! The children seemed well-rested and thrilled to get back into our routine. We have not wasted any time getting back into the swing of things and are forging ahead with new content in all areas! In literacy, we continue to practice letter formation of uppercase letters. This unit will wrap up next week and we will then begin focusing on blending sounds to read and write simple words. During math, we are spending time on subitizing. I told your children that this is a very fancy math word and to ask you if you know what it means! Subitizing is the ability to instantly recognize dot patterns (i.e., the dot patterns on dice). We will play a number of games this week to help your child practice this skill. As you play board games with dice at home, I am sure you will notice their improved ability to recognize the dot patterns, instead of counting the dots.

In preparation for our field trip to the Flynn Theatre next Monday, our theme for the next couple of weeks will be an author study of author and illustrator Tomie dePaola. We will read a number of his books (he has written and/or illustrated over 200!) and complete activities to help us understand his style and will work on reading comprehension skills, as well. On Monday, January 11th, we will travel to the Flynn to see Strega Nona performed on stage. We are very excited about our first field trip and have been enjoying this book as our story bit this week! We will also spend some time next week learning about winter, which finally decided to make an appearance here in Hinesburg!

Please enjoy the picture slideshow below of an activity we completed related to subitizing. We read the book Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews and created our own dot pictures based on what we read. Enjoy!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

What a Wonderful Winter Week!

It seems that, just as we knew it would, the snow has finally made its way to our area! The children are thrilled to be playing in it at recess every day. Thank you so much for remembering to send your child to school daily with the necessary items to fully enjoy his or her recess!

Again, we have had a busy week here in Room Five! We started the week off on Monday with a Hands on Nature lesson, presented by Mrs. Frazier and Mrs. Twarog. We learned about beavers and muskrats, and the adaptations these animals need to survive and thrive in the environment. The children enjoyed the puppet show, helping to dress me up like a beaver, viewing a slide show of beavers and muskrats in their natural habitat, building their own beaver lodges out of play dough, sticks, and rocks, and we even took a walk to the stream behind the school to see if we noticed any beaver activity! In just one hour-long lesson, we all learned a great deal of information about these interesting animals. Thank you Lee and Kitty!



















On Wednesday, we had a special guest visit us to teach us about Santa Lucia Day, a holiday celebrated on December 13th in Sweden. Eva's Mormor (grandmother), Mrs. Manning, grew up in Sweden, and she brought in many beautiful items and costumes to teach us about this holiday, a day when the oldest daughter of the family wears a crown and delivers special cookies and breads to her town. We also learned about how Christmas is celebrated in Sweden and we learned that reindeer are common in that country. People have farms with reindeer and gather milk from them, just like cow farms here in Vermont! We also learned some Swedish words and enjoyed a traditional Swedish cookie. Thank you to Mrs. Frazier and Mrs. Manning for sharing your knowledge with us!

I have been completing our December assessments this week with each student. I am very pleased with the great progress everyone is making! Each child is making strides in many areas...I ask the kids all the time if they are sneaking off to first grade and learning without me, because they are such smarty pants!!! I look forward to continued growth as we move into the second half of the school year and more challenging content!

H.C.S. is participating in a food drive to benefit the Hinesburg Food Shelf. From now until the holiday break, we are collecting non-perishable food items in our classroom to contribute to the school-wide drive. There is also a coin drive to benefit Maxx Broderick, an H.C.S. student who was paralyzed in a car accident earlier this year. If you would like to send your child to school with some coins to help with Maxx's many expenses, please do so. There is a daily collection that takes place. Thank you in advance for your generous support of both of these worthwhile causes!

Reminders:

• Tuesday, December 15th is a Half Day of School. Students will be dismissed at 11:30.
  
• Thursday, December 17th: 2nd H1N1 clinic. Children will receive the second dose of the H1N1 vaccine. If your child was absent for the first clinic, they will be able to get their first dose on this day. Please contact Nurse Shelley if this is the case, or if your child was vaccinated by your pediatrician. Please send the yellow vaccine records back to school if possible for this clinic. If you are unable to locate it, the clinic will provide you with another one. Please remember that children should wear layers of clothing, with a t-shirt underneath for a quick shot! Thank you!
• Thursday, December 17th 12:30-1:00: Kindergarten Holiday Concert. The kindergarten classes will perform a variety of holiday songs. Reception to follow in each classroom. We hope to see you there!
• If you are able to, please remember to sign up to send in a treat for our holiday party on December 23rd. Please visit the link labeled "Holiday Party" in the blog entry from Friday, December 4th. Thank you!
  

We're Famous!

Check out your famous writers in the latest issue of Hinesburg's town newspaper,The Hinesburg Record! Click here and go to page 10 to take a peek at our published writing!