Sea Creatures!

Thank you for coming to our open house!  The children were so proud to share all of their hard work!  Here are a few pictures from this morning!

 We had another wonderful Nearby Nature lesson with Jess and Jane!  We learned about animals in winter and the types of tracks they leave.  We had the chance to go outside and search for some tracks and we found quite a few!

Lastly, we had a special assembly this week about choosing healthy nutritious foods to fuel our bodies.  Our guest, Toby Fit, juggled, did magic tricks, and danced while teaching us about "go foods".  Can your child name a "go food"?

Have a wonderful vacation!  See you back at school on Monday, March 4th!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Wow!  Let's hope our weather gets a little more spring-like soon and that it's the end of our snow days!  We had a wonderful day on Thursday celebrating friendship and kindness!  The children had so much fun delivering their Valentines and opening their bags.  I was so impressed by all the "thank yous" I heard as the children were opening their Valentines...very sweet!  We continued our Valentine's Day fun with a craft, valentine book, and a heart graphing activity. Each child created a beautiful window hanging for home, filled with lots of colorful hearts!  They also each got a box of candy hearts and had to sort their hearts by color and then graph the results.  Which color was found most in your child's box of candy hearts?  Lastly, each child read an emergent reader book called Animal Hugs and practiced reading and finding the new sight word "do".

During Reader's Workshop, we began Guided Reading Groups. This is my chance to work in small groups with your child on building reading strategies, learning sight words, and building reading fluency.  When your child is not in a reading group, he or she is rotating between independent reading from book boxes, a sight word game, or using Starfall.com on the ipads (this is a letter/sound recognition app).  Be sure to ask your child about Reader's Workshop this week!

We are working very hard on our sea creature reports and we cannot wait to share them with you at our Sea Creature Open House!  Last week, we finished our penguin reports and have now moved on to writing a nonfiction piece of writing about our sea creatures.  Each day the children are writing and illustrating another page for their reports, teaching about the sea creature.  This week they added pages about where the sea creature lives and what type of sea creature they have.  Everyone is working very hard to use best guess spelling and to have spaces between their words!

In Math, we continue to work with shapes and their attributes.  This week we learned a new game called Hungry Caterpillars. In this game, the children have to fill up all three sections of the caterpillar with pattern blocks.  During the game, we are practicing naming shapes: triangle, rhombus, and trapezoid.  We also played a fun game working with shape attributes.  I hid a shape card in my pocket and the children had to ask questions about its attributes in order to narrow down which shape I had.  They did a great job asking about the number of sides, the size, and the number of corners to figure it out!

Lastly, I will be holding Parent Conferences in March.  Please sign up for a time using the link below or if you have trouble with the link, let me know and I can help!
Parent Conferences
Have a wonderful weekend!

100th Day of School!

Wow! We have made it to the 100th day of school!  What a milestone for our Kindergartners!  So much learning and growing has happened in these 100 days.  I can't wait to see what the rest of the school year brings!

We had a fun day celebrating the number 100! We began by making 100th day crowns.  The children colored in 100 stars on their crowns!!  We had a delicious Hiyaku (Japanese for 100) trail mix snack!  The children enjoyed finding their favorite treats in there: marshmallows, jellybeans, chocolate chips, goldfish crackers, raisins, and pretzels.  We also had a visit from Zero the Hero!  Zero the Hero was here to talk about the importance of the number zero when making bigger numbers like 100.  Ask your child to tell you about our new friend Zero the Hero!  We finished our day by reading a few 100th day stories and playing a game called Race to $1.00.  This game involved counting pennies and making trades for dimes and then making a final trade for $1.00.  Ask your child how many pennies you need to make $1.00!

During theme, we continued to learn about many new sea creatures.  This week we learned about the Hatchet Fish, Jelly fish, Gulper Eel, Puffer Fish, and Viper Fish.  These were some very interesting creatures!  We continued our class study of penguins and added more to our penguin reports.  This week we learned about the nonfiction features maps, diagram, close up, and table of contents.  We then used these features in our books as we wrote about what penguins look like, where they live, and what they eat.  We also added a fun fact about penguins.  What was your child's fun fact?

Next week during Reader's Workshop, we will begin Guided Reading Groups.  During this time, I will be working with the children in small groups on reading strategies and reading fluency.  While I am meeting with groups, the other children will be participating in reading stations.  The three stations we will be doing are Starfall.com on the ipads, sight word games, and independent reading from book boxes.  This week we practiced the stations so that the children will be independent when I am working with groups.  We are looking forward to trying out Reading Groups and Reading Stations next week!

In math, we learned several new shape Work Places:  Pattern Block Designs, Geoboard Shapes, and Shapes and Spinners Graphing. Each of these new activities encouraged us to look at the attributes of shapes and gave us a chance to practice drawing shapes. Some of the shapes, like a hexagon and rhombus, were tricky to draw!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Happy February!

It's hard to believe we are already in the month of February and have almost reached the 100th day of school!  February is filled with many exciting events!  I hope that you were able to read through the note I sent home last week.  Here is a quick recap if you did not see the note:

February 4th: Book Fair Preview Day
Just to look and see what is for sale...not a purchase day!

February 7th: Book Fair Purchase Day
Your child does not need to purchase books that day. The book fair is open a couple of evenings and you and your child can purchase then.

February 8th: 100th Day of School
We will be celebrating with a special Hiyaku (100th Day trail mix) snack. Your child can bring in 100 small food items to add to our trail mix: pretzels, goldfish, raisins, etc.  Please make sure everything is nut free.

February 14th: Valentine's Day
If your child is making Valentine's, please make sure there is one for each child.

February 22nd:  Kindergarten Sea Creature Open House 8:00-8:30am in our classroom

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We had a wonderful week in Kindergarten with lots of learning about sea creatures! We had four more shares this week and learned about the sting ray, angler fish, octopus, and shark.  Can your child tell you any interesting facts about these creatures or tell you which zone the creatures live in?  The children also had a chance to draw and paint some sea creatures for our hallway mural. They did a great job!  Be sure to ask your child about his or her contribution to our mural.

During Reader's Workshop, we have been reading nonfiction texts and learning how to be better readers of nonfiction books. As we read nonfiction, we may learn some facts or information that we did not know.  We call this new learning.  As I read a book about insects, the children jotted down words and drew pictures of any new information they learned about insects.  We also learned that readers of nonfiction ask questions to learn more.  So as we read a book about spiders, we stopped and thought of questions or wonderings we might have about spiders.  We will continue to use these two comprehension strategies as we read nonfiction books independently.

At Writer's Workshop, the children have been working on their teaching books. This week we learned that nonfiction books have special features that help a reader learn more.  We call these nonfiction text features.  The first feature we explored was labels.  We found that many books had labels, explaining about parts of the subject of our book.  The children were then encouraged to add labels to their writing.

Each child also began their own informational book about penguins.  We have been reading many penguin books, listening for new learning, and are going to use that learning to create a book to teach about penguins.  This week we worked on the first page..."Penguins are...".  We look forward to sharing all of sea creature knowledge with you at the end of the month!

In math, we continued with our geometry unit.  This week we have been sorting shapes. We are recognizing their attributes and using those attributes to sort.  We were sorting by color, shape, and size.  We even began to look at the sides and the corners and sorted by curved sides and straight sides and the number of corners a shape has.  Look for shapes at home with your child and ask him or her to tell you the shapes' attributes!

Please contact me if you have any questions about upcoming February events. Have a great weekend!