Wild About Worms!

We had a great start to our week with our monthly Nearby Nature lesson with Jackson and Christine.  This month we learned about life in the dirt!  There is so much happening below our feet in the dirt and all of those plant roots, earthworms, moles, and millipedes play an important part in our ecosystem. Our focus was on worms and how they act as decomposers, breaking down plant materials and returning them as nutrients to the soil.  The children had the chance to observe worms up close, watch them move, and even hold them!  Then we went outside and examined dirt from two different locations and noticed how they were different and the same.  Be sure to ask your child all about worms!  Thanks to Jackson and Christine for sharing this learning with us!

During Writer's Workshop, we continue to work on our stories and they keep getting better because the children are adding so many details to their pictures.  We focused on other ways to draw people this week and how to draw people in action or motion in a story.  This helps the story come to life and helps the reader to better understand a story.  Can your child draw a person in action?  Running? Kicking?  Dancing?

In Fundations, we learned two more letters this week: C and O.  We continued our Fundations traditions of practicing the sounds, practicing the letter formation, and brainstorming words that begin with that letter's sound.  Can your child tell you a word that starts with the sound /c/ or /o/?  We are really focusing on listening to the first sounds in words and recognizing them.  This is helping to build on onset sound fluency.  Feel free to practice this at home with your child.  You could point to something in your house and ask them to name it and then say the first sound in the word.  This will eventually be put into use when we start developing our reading powers and reading strategies!

In math, we learned about how mathematicians count efficiently by using tally marks.  We practiced building numbers in the tally mark form with popsicle sticks and practiced counting tally marks.  We also learned a new game called Which Bug Will Win.  This is a spinner probability game to see which bug, ladybug or spider, is spun more often.  Ask your child which bug won when we played as a class?

Lastly, we began our first Social Studies theme this week!  For the next month, we will be learning about our community and identifying the many communities to which we all belong.  We were introduced to the concept of community by reading On the Town: a story about a boy who explores his town with his mom.  We learned that a community is a group of people who live, work, or play together.  We brainstormed a list of people, places, and things in our community of Shelburne and then each child made a pocket flap book with a picture of themselves and four places in our community.  Which places did your child draw?




We learned our second sight word this week during Reader's Workshop!  Our new word is "we".  We found this word a lot as we were reading our latest Let's Find Out magazine about sharing with friends.  After reading the magazine together and practicing the shared phrase "We share the..", the children read through their magazine and circled all their sight words: we and the.  Then they practiced reading with a partner and re-reading it again!  We learned this week that readers can learn more from a book if they re-read it. So this week we practiced reading and reading again to find new parts of the picture of find new words we recognize.  We encourage re-reading here in Kindergarten so feel free to have your child "re-read" books again at home, by going through the pictures and telling what is happening more than once.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Pumpkin Palooza!

It may have been a short week, but we were all about pumpkins this week in Kindergarten!  Enjoy reading about our pumpkin palooza!

During Reader's Workshop, we read our latest Let's Find Out magazine about picking pumpkins. We learned that pumpkins can come in many different sizes, colors, and textures.  We all had fun reading the repeating line:  "Pick a perfect pumpkin."  While reading our magazine, we learned that the more ribs (lines) a pumpkin has, the more seeds it has.  If you have a pumpkin at home, have your child check out the number of ribs and make a prediction if he or she thinks it will have a lot of seeds or not!  We also have been talking about "old favorite" stories during Reader's Workshop.  These are stories the children have heard a lot and can recite or can tell my looking at the pictures.  We read a Halloween "old favorite" this week: Five Little Pumpkins.  We practiced choral reading our little early reader books and we even learned our first sight word.  Sight words are words commonly found in text and are words that cannot be sounded out. Our first word was "the".  We found this word quite a bit in Five Little Pumpkins!  Each child found and circled the word "the" in his or her early reader book and then practiced reading it with a partner.  Everyone did a great job!  See if you child can find the word "the" when you are reading together at home! Just when we thought we were done with pumpkins, we also painted and collaged our own Five Little Pumpkins scenes!




We continued our pumpkin theme with an engineering task related to the Five Little Pumpkins. The children worked in partnerships to create a gate that five little (candy) pumpkins sit on.  They could only use straws and play doh and their five candy pumpkins.  These engineers worked very hard to create their gates and found out that engineers have to try many ideas before they find one that works.  There were lots of trials and errors, but they all persevered!  Be sure to ask your child about his or her gate.  Did your child and partner get the pumpkins to sit on the gate?  What worked well? What was hard?

 In Writer's Workshop, we continue to tell stories about our lives through illustrations.  This week we focused on adding clothing to the characters in our stories.  We talked about the importance of drawing clothing that makes sense and goes with the story.  Writer's Workshop continues to be a highlight of the week for many children.  What did your child write about this week?  Speaking of writing, we learned two new letters this week: I and U.  These letters were special because they were the first two vowels we have learned.  We talked about how vowels make two sounds, but we will focus mostly on the short sounds.  After practicing letter formation and brainstorming words that begin with these letter sounds, the children read and colored letter books.  Can your child tell you the sounds of I and U and can he or she show you the hand movements to go with the sound?

In math, we learned a new game called Count and Compare.  In this partner game, the children each turn over a ten-frame card filled with dots.  They have to decide which card has a greater number of dots and which have a lesser number of dots.  They put the cards on the game board and then spin a "greater than and less than spinner" to see who wins the cards.  Ask your child to tell you about this fun new game!  To continue with the pumpkin theme, we played a Roll and Color game on a pumpkin.  This was a partner game in which a child rolls a die and colors in that many dots on a pumpkin.  The winner is the partner who ends up coloring in the most dots on the pumpkin!



Lastly, we had our Second Step lesson with Ms. O.  This week's lesson was about identifying and naming two feelings: happy and sad.  We talked about how we can tell how people are feeling by looking at their facial expressions and body language.  We also acted out feelings and learned a new feelings song.  There is a paper in your child's Friday Folder that gives more information about this week's lesson.

Just a reminder that the Picture Re-take day is on Monday, October 21st.  Please let me know, if you have not already, if your child will be getting re-takes so I can make sure to get him or her on the re-take schedule.  Also, please not that there is no school this Friday, October 18th.  Have a great weekend!

First 30 days!

Each day, as a part of Number Corner, we determine how many days we have been in school by adding links on a chain and a sticker on a ten-frame.  Then we practice counting by 1s, 5s, and 10s. Today, we hit day 30!  It's hard to believe that much time has already passed. I have enjoyed meeting with many of you during our Parent Conference this week and look forward to meeting with the rest of you next week.  Please let me know if you need a reminder about your conference time!

This week in Reader's Workshop, we had some new experiences!  We have spent most of our time doing independent reading, looking at the words and pictures in the book.  This week we had the chance to try out partner reading!  Successful reading partnerships happen when two readers sit side by side, put the book in the middle, and take turns reading (see-saw reading).  I was so impressed with our reading partners!  They were taking turns and even sharing pages that were their favorites (Wow! pages).   Be sure to ask your child who their reading partner was this week!  Also, during Reader's Workshop we read another Let's Find Out Magazine. This week's magazine was about trees and how they change during the seasons.  We choral read (reading out loud together) the magazine and then the children practiced reading the magazine independently, searching for words they recognize. We have some very excited readers in our Kindergarten!

During Fundations, we continued our study of letters and sounds.  This week we learned about the letters N and M.  We worked on letter formation for each letter, practiced the sound, and brainstormed words that begin with those letter sounds.  How many words can your child share with you?  Also, we began reviewing rhyming words by recognizing rhymes and producing words that rhyme.  We have a great group of rhymers!

In Writer's Workshop, our storytellers are doing a wonderful job in their Writer's Notebooks.  We continued to work on creating detailed illustrations to tell stories.  This week we had a drawing lesson during Writer's Workshop.  Drawing people are such important part of our stories so this week we learned how to draw people that have more shape than a stick person.  We looked at illustrations in picture books and realized that we can draw people like the ones we see in these books by sketching body shapes with ovals.  Then we can add clothes, color, and details on top of our oval-body sketches.  Can your child show you how to draw a person with ovals?


In math, we continued working with five frames and ten frames as a tool to count efficiently and  to see numbers in groups. I would flash a ten-frame card to the class and then they would have to build what they saw on the card with unifix cubes and explain how they knew there were a certain number of dots on a card.  During this activity, we worked on "turn and talks".  This a partner talk protocol we use in math to help children share their ideas and to practice listening to understand a partner's thinking.  In turn and talks, the children face each other, sitting knee to knee.  One partner shares their math thinking first while the other listens and then the second partner shares.  As a we move along in the year, the turn and talks will also include opportunities for the children to also talk about how their ideas are the same and different.  Everyone did a great job with our first "turn and talks"!

Please check your child's Friday Folder tonight!  Our class picture and the school picture order form are in there.  You will also see a small note about this week's Second Step lesson with Miss O.  This week we talked about being assertive and asking for help if you do not understand. Also, please note there is no school on Friday, October 18th.

Just a few pictures from an extra recess this week!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Shelburne Farms!

 We had a wonderful visit to Shelburne Farms on Monday! We were lucky to squeeze this trip in before the rainy weather settled in for the week.  We went to Shelburne Farms as a introduction to our upcoming Community Unit because it is a part of our community, but also it allowed us to work together as a community to make a vegetable soup!  As a class, we were in charge of chopping the carrots and the celeriac for the soup.  Everyone did such a great job, carefully chopping the vegetables.  We also had a visit to the farmyard, explored the forest, made butter to enjoy with some bread, took a tractor ride, and lastly, tried our soup!  Enjoy some pictures from the day!

We had a very exciting first this week....Writer's Workshop! Each child was given a Talking, Drawing, Writing Notebook.During .  These are notebooks we will be using to tell, illustrate, and write our stories throughout the year.  We are beginning by creating detailed illustrations to tell our stories.  As I confer with children, I ask questions about their drawings and stories, encouraging them to add more detail (hair, clothes, weather, etc) so that their readers really understand what is happening in the story.  We have loots of stories to tell and pictures to illustrate...I can't wait to see more from these writers!



In math, we continue to work on numeral formation (8 and 9); however, this week we also worked with patterns.  We created patterns using ourselves and patterns with animal noises.  It was like an animal chorus!  We read the book Mrs. Wishy Washy and then used those animals to help us create some patterns.  Then we used unifix cubes to copy and extend patterns.  We even learned that some patterns are named by letters, such as ABABAB or ABCABC.  Can your child demonstrate a pattern for you at home?




We also began Reader's Workshop this week!  We added another Let's Find out Magazine to our book boxes after reading it aloud together.  This week's magazine was about counting apples.  The children are very excited about their books and now we are working on identifying ourselves as readers!  We learned this week that we are readers who can look at words, think about the words, read the words, and learn from them.  We took a walk through our hallway looking for words.  We looked at the words and what they were labeling and used a best guess to read them. We saw that we could actually read more words than we thought we could!  Way to go Kindergarten readers! Can your child read you any labels and signs around your house or around town?  We also became acquainted with non-fiction books, or learn about the world books, and found we could learn so much from the books just by looking at the pictures!

We finished the week by learning a new letter in Fundations...the letter F.  We practiced forming the lowercase letter f, brainstormed words that begin with the /f/ sound, and added a new book to our book boxes...a lot of Friday fun!






As you can see, it was a busy week in Kindergarten!  Thank you to everyone who was able to attend our Open House.  I hope that it gave you a small glimpse into what goes on in our classroom each day.  I look forward to meeting with many of you soon for our Parent Conferences.  Enjoy the weekend!