Lovely Ladybugs!

Wow! What a whirlwind the last month has been (and I predict the next month will be just as wild!) We have had a vacation, started our final weeks of kindergarten, and done lots of great work, too! You have probably heard from your kindergartner that there will be some changes in the upcoming weeks. Due to the renovation of the Primary Wing, we will be relocating to the library for the month of June. The children have begun to see me packing boxes and organizing materials, as the classroom must be empty by May 28th to prepare for our move. They have had lots of great questions, but seem to be looking forward to our new adventure and I believe that we will be able to make the transition to our new space relatively smoothly. The kindergarten team is planning many fun activities and field trips so that we will not be spending too much time in the library, but we will also attempt to keep some sort of routine to our days, so that we can minimize anxiety and behavior problems. I will keep you posted about important dates and exciting happenings as we decide on them!

Since we returned from April vacation, our classroom has transformed into "Ladybug Land." We ordered ladybug larvae from a company in California called Insect Lore, and the larvae arrived on May 10th. We have begun our in-depth exploration of the life cycle of a ladybug and are enjoying observing the larvae. Yesterday, we found that our first larva has started the pupa stage of the life cycle! Within the next week or so, we will watch for signs that a ladybug will be emerging from the pupa. The children have been very engaged in this new unit and have shared their prior knowledge about these lovable insects and have asked many wonderful questions about them, as well. We have done and will continue to do many projects and will eventually release the ladybugs when they have all emerged from their pupas.

I have included here a slideshow of the ladybug number stories that the children wrote and illustrated during math. Each child created an addition or a subtraction story and then painted a gorgeous watercolor picture to accompany their problem. Feel free to stop by our classroom bulletin board to check out their work in person!

Digital slideshow personalized with Smilebox

I have spent the last several weeks completing spring assessments with all students. I am truly amazed at how much learning and growth has taken place over the last nine months! Teachers are still working on placements for first grade. Families will be notified of your child's new teacher in early June.

Please mark your calendar for the following important dates:
Friday, June 4th: Shelburne Farms Field Trip
Monday, June 7th: Mt. Philo Hike (***Chaperones still needed!***)
Friday, June 11th: Move-Up Day
Wednesday, June 16: Last Day of School (1/2Day 11:30 Dismissal)

As always, please contact me by email (mjohnson@cssu.org) or phone (482-6205) if you have any questions or ideas.

Tasting Party

We will be having a Tasting Party next Friday, April 23rd, to celebrate the end of our Five Senses unit. My hope is that the children will be able to try a variety of foods: some sweet, some sour, some salty, and some bitter. We will do "blind" taste tests and try to determine what food we are tasting. Please visit the sign-up sheet if you are able to send something in for the party next week.

Sign-Up Sheet: Tasting Party

If the link does not work for some reason, please feel free to email me or send a note in your child's homework folder letting me know what you can send in. Thank you in advance for your support of this fun culminating activity!

Important News and Events

H.C.S. has moved to a new email system. We will now by using Gmail for all of our email correspondence and all staff members now have a new email address. My new email is mjohnson@cssu.org. Please be sure to use this new address to contact me from now on. Thank you!

Next week is Spirit Week here at H.C.S. Each day will have a different theme and you can feel free to help your child dress according to the theme each day. The schedule is as follows:

Monday: Tropical Day (Hawaiian shirts, capris, shorts, sunglasses (no bathing suits, please)

Tuesday: Mismatch Day

Wednesday: Twin Day (Children can plan with a friend to dress in similar outfits to look like twins!)

Thursday: P.J. Day (Children may wear their pajamas to school)

Friday: Charlie Fortin Day (Charlie Fortin is our beloved head custodian, who is retiring on Friday, April 23rd. Children are encouraged to dress like Charlie! Denim pants, suspenders, and work boots is Charlie's normal attire for a day here at H.C.S.)

Please have fun with Spirit Week and feel free to be as creative as you and your child would like!

Spring Fever!

While it has been a rainy week, the kids can certainly sense that "spring is in the air" and are looking forward to some sunshine and warmer temperatures! Before we know it, our favorite kindergartners will be big old first graders! Yikes! We continue to be busy here in Room 5, with lots of special happenings and exciting activities! On Monday, we were fortunate enough to have a guest teacher during Writer's Workshop. Leah Mermelstein, an author and expert on teaching writing to young children, visited H.C.S., and our classroom was selected for her to do a teaching demonstration in! The children were thrilled to learn that "famous" Ms. Leah would be coming to see all of the fabulous writing that they have done. While Leah was in our classroom, she taught a lesson on how to begin our small moments stories, as a way to show other teachers in our building different strategies to use during Writer's Workshop. The wonderful writers in Room 5 knocked everyone's socks off with the amazing work they can do! All of the adults who gathered to observe the lesson were impressed with how engaged and focused the children were on their work. Leah conferenced with several students about their writing and the children were thrilled to share their work with her! Check out the article in the next Hinesburg Record about our time with Leah!


We have had several guest teachers this week, as I was unfortunately out sick for a couple of days. Changes to the routine can always be challenging, but it sounds like most children handled their time with the substitutes well. I am enjoying getting back into the swing of things. A big thank you to Mrs. Pelkey and Mrs. Twarog for working so hard and helping the children while I was gone!

I am beginning to assess students' progress in all academic areas for third quarter report cards. I continue to be pleased with the remarkable growth and learning I am seeing and I can't wait to share this information with you at parent-teacher conferences on April 15th and 16th! Please return the paper that I sent home in your child's homework folder today to let me know if the conference time that I scheduled for you is a convenient one. If it is not, please let me know a time that may work better for you. At our conference, I plan to share your child's report card and also to discuss the placement process for first grade. I truly value parent input during this process and would like to make the transition from kindergarten to first grade as stress-free as possible!

Today was very exciting, as we wrapped up our ocean unit. The children have been incredibly engaged in learning about all things sea-related and they don't seem to want the unit to end! We have spent time reading many great fiction and non-fiction books about the ocean, each child completed a research project on a sea creature of their choosing, we have made a classroom under the water mural with many ocean-dwelling animals, and we had a great time at our beach party today! Check out the picture of our class mural here!


Over the next several weeks, we will be spending time learning about our five senses and how they help us to navigate the world around us. This is always another favorite unit with lots of fun activities to complete!

Enjoy the wonderful weather with your kindergartners!

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!