A Walk Through Shelburne!

We had two great walking field trips this week!  On Monday, we visited the Shelburne Supermarket and the People's United Bank.  At the bank, we learned about the importance of a bank in the community; what it means to save money;  the different kinds of coins, and even got to see the vault where the money is kept!  We then had a tour at the supermarket and saw the different sections: produce, dairy, meat, etc.  We even got to go in the cooler and see how the grocers fill the shelves in the dairy case!  It was chilly in the cooler!  On Wednesday, we walked to The Flying Pig and the Shelburne Craft School.  At the Craft School, we had a tour and go to see where they hold all their art classes.  We even saw some clay students at work, firing their clay vases!  At the Flying Pig, we heard a few stories from the owner, Elizabeth.  We loved looking for all the flying pigs in the bookstore! Back at school we finished our community unit by creating a map of Shelburne with some of our favorite locations.  Each child chose a place that is a part of our community and added it to our map.  It looks great!

This week in writing , we started something BIG!  We have been drawing all of our stories thus far and making our pictures with many details. This week we learned how to add words or labels to our stories to help the reader better understand what is happening.  We learned how to stretch a word out and listen for the sounds and write down the letters that make those sounds.  I was so impressed with these Kindergarten writers!  Everyone wrote labels for their illustrations in their stories!

During our literacy time, we learned the letters "s" and "e" this week.  We learned how to form the letters, make the sounds of the letters, and identify words that begin with those sounds.  Can your child tell you the sounds those letters make?  We also read a Scholastic News about Veteran's Day and learned a new sight word that we found in the newspaper: my.

Lastly in math, we have been exploring shapes in our calendar.  The pattern on our calendar has been flat shapes and three-dimensional shapes.  We have learned about spheres, cylinders, cones, and cubes.  We continued our work with shapes during a new Work Place: Pattern Block Puzzles.  The children had to fill in larger shapes with the pattern blocks and in a variety of ways.  Also in math, we been exploring the idea of pairs and counting by twos.  The children each colored in a pair of mittens for a growing pattern chart and we used that chart to help us find the numbers we say when counting by twos.  Can your child count from 2-10 by twos for you?

Have a wonderful weekend!