Avid Readers!

It has been amazing to see the growth in our Kindergarten Readers!  We learned this week that we have become avid readers. Avid readers enjoy reading, have a stack of books ready to read, pay close attention when they read, read everywhere, and they can identify the feelings of the characters in the books.  This week we worked on identifying the feelings characters have in books and making connections to those characters and feelings.  We had fun re-reading Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems and many of us could identify with Trixie when she lost her special bunny!  As you are reading with your child at home, see if he or she can make connections with any of the characters and their feelings.

During Fundations, we continue our work with digraphs. We have been practicing building words with digraphs during our reading groups and this week we looked for digraphs in the room.  We called this activity "Read the Room".  The children had a sheet with the digraphs listed at the top and their job was to find words in our room with each of those digraphs.  This is an activity your child could do at home with books are with written print in your home.  When reading your next book with your child, have him or her point out the digraphs!

Our poetry writing is just blossoming this week!  We have reading many Kindergarten poems and have been enjoying poems by Shel Silverstein.  As we investigate poems, we are noticing that poets often repeat lines or words in a poem and have an ending line.  The children have been working hard to use those ideas in their poems as well.  Ask your child about his or her poems this week!

In math, we have been working on place value. We are looking at numbers as tens and ones.  We built numbers using popsicle sticks in bundles of tens and ones and then practiced writing those numbers.  We also explored a hundreds chart and looked for the patterns on that chart.  After working with place value, we began practicing subtraction through a new game called Bug Catcher. We talked about that minus sign means to subtract or take away.  In this game, we used manipulatives to show subtraction and then wrote a subtraction equation....impressive!

We began our last science unit this week: Forces and Motion.  Our focus is going to be on the forces of push and pull; however, we began by brainstorming all the different ways we and other things can move.  Our list was quite long and included, walking, running, rolling, wiggling, pushing, pulling, jumping, skipping, and prancing...just to name a few!  We then had fun testing out those types of movement in a game of Simon Says.  We also read a book called Motion: Push and Pull, Fast and Slow.  In this book we learned some new vocabulary such as, gravity, inertia, and friction.   We also spent some time moving objects in our room and observed if the force needed to move the object was a push or a pull.  Then we took images of children moving things and sorted them into a push, pull, or both category.  Can your child name something that he or she can both push and pull?

Lastly, we have been working hard on a small Mother's Day gift.  Be on the look out in your child's backpack!  Have a wonderful weekend!