Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that you all have a wonderful and relaxing time with family and friends next week!  Please note there is no school the entire week.  School resumes on Monday, December 2nd.  Wow...it's hard to believe we will already be in December!

This week in our Scholastic News we learned about the First Thanksgiving and learned about the Wampanoag people and the Pilgrims and what life was like for the children. We compared how their lives were the same and different.  We also read books called Bear Gives Thanks,  I Am Thankful and Thanksgiving is for Giving Thinks and talked about what it means to be grateful and thankful.  Then then the children shared what they are thankful for and we added them to our fun turkeys from last week.  Be sure to check your child's folder for their thankful turkey!

We finished our community unit this week by completing a mural together that represents our Shelburne Community.  We brainstormed the people, places, and the things in our environment that we might see in Shelburne and then the children made those out of paper and added them to our mural.  Our mural looks fantastic!  We are certainly familiar with our community!

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 "l" and "j" 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 were also introduced to a new sight word in our Scholastic News magazine: do.  You will see in your child's Friday Folder a list of the Kindergarten sight words and the ones we have learned so far.  I have also added some activities, if your child wants to practice reading and writing our sight words.

In math, we began talking about addition and writing equations.  We began by talking about the + symbol and the = symbol and what those mean in the math world.  We learned that the = can mean equal, but also "the same as".  We then used this knowledge to solve some addition story problems about bicycles while practicing writing equations.  Way to go mathematicians!  We also learned a new Work Place called Grab Bag More or Less.  In this game we focused on the concepts of greater than and less than and figuring out how many more cubes were in one person's train than the other.

Lastly, we had our Nearby Nature lesson this week!  We are still focusing on habitats, but this month we explored the habitats in snags and fallen logs.  We began with a puppet show and then sent a log through a "time-machine" to see what happens over time with a log on the forest floor.  We also had the opportunity to dig through and investigate some fallen logs to look for any life.  We certainly found some little creatures crawling around!  Be sure to ask your child about the log he or she investigated?  Did the group find anything in their log?  Thanks Christine and Jackson for another great lesson...the children had a lot of fun!!

Have a wonderful weekend!

BRRR!

What a chilly and snowy week!  Thank you for sending your child with all their winter gear...they stayed warm outside in the snow!  Please note, your child also needs to have a pair of shoes here to wear in the classroom.  Some children are only arriving with their snow boots.  Unfortunately, this gets our carpet snowy and wet after recess.  You are more than welcome to send a pair of shoes in and have your child leave them here for the remainder of the winter season.

In math, we have been learning about and working with different shapes.  So we used some of our math vocabulary and shape knowledge to make some festive turkeys for our entryway.  We cut circles, triangles, and rhombuses to make our turkeys.  They are pretty cute!  We also learned two new Work Places this week: Grab Bag Doubles and Butterfly Race.  In Grab Bag Doubles, we learned about how to double a number and even and odd numbers and in Butterfly Race, we continued to practice identifying numbers and counting dots on a ten-frame.

In Reader's Workshop, we finished our first "We Are Readers" unit.  During this unit the children learned how to partner read and to read "old favorites" by looking at the pictures, remembering how the story goes, and reading and pointing to words they recognized  We celebrated all our accomplishments by reading our stories to Miss Deb's fourth graders.  Our Kindergarten readers did a wonderful job!  Also during Reader's Workshop, we read our latest Let's Find Out Magazine about Veterans.  In our magazine we learned about veterans and why we honor and celebrate them. We also had a new sight word in our magazine: you.  Another word to add to our list!


During Writer's workshop, we learned two more letters: E and R. Next week, we will begin using all of our letter-sound knowledge to start adding labels and words to our pictures in our stories.  I can't wait to see our Kindergarteners start writing on their own!  However, before we can start adding words, we talked about planning how the story goes before we write and then evaluating our work with a rubric.  We talked about wanting to always do our best work and writers often revise their work to make it better. We looked at a Kindergarten rubric for writing and then examined our own work.  Are we drawing people with bodies or still stick figures? Are we carefully coloring and using multiple colors?  Or are we just scribbling and using two colors for the whole page. As children looked at their work and their rubric, they determined if they were doing "four-star" drawing for their stories.  If not, they took the time to go back and revise their stories.  They all did a wonderful job of revising their work!

During theme, we continued to learn more about communities by discussing communities helpers.  We read a book called Career Day and talked about all the important people in our community who help us or our families and neighbors.  The children all created a Community Helper Flip Book.  This book is in their book boxes to practice reading it!  It had another new sight word..."am".

Speaking of sight words, next week I will be sending home a list of Kindergarten sight words and some activities you could do at home with your child to help them practice reading, writing, and spelling these words.  These are optional and just something to do if you want to extend your child's learning at home.  Have a wonderful weekend!

Way to go Kindergarteners!

We finished our week with a K-4 assembly and talked about empathy and how to show kindness to our friends.  We also got to play a whole school game of Rock, Paper, Scissors...and our class won!  This our second time winning the golden assembly trophy!  We also were so excited to congratulate Lyvia.  She was chosen as the Principal of the Day for this month!  Lyvia was awarded Principal of the Day for kind behavior shown on the playground toward another student!





In our Community unit, we finished our houses this week!  After drawing the insides of our houses, we then used paint to add some details.  Their houses look great!  Then we started talking about maps and how people use map to find out how to get somewhere or to find a place in their community, or another community.  We read Me on the Map and made our very own maps.  These maps were of our bedrooms.  We decided our bedrooms are the smallest places in our community!  I loved seeing the details the children put into their maps of their rooms.  Next week, we are going to talk about community helpers and some of the places in Shelburne.

 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, using the story Duck on a Bike.  We counted all the wheels we would need to have a bicycle for each animal in that story.  The children each drew a bike with two wheels 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?

During our literacy time, we focused on the letters D and S.  We brainstormed MANY words that begin with those letters!  We just couldn't stop!  We also practiced handwriting and making those letter sounds.  At Reader's Workshop, we have continued to partner read "old favorites".  This week we learned how to say more on each page and use transition words, such as "then" , "next", and "also" when we are reading the story from page to page.  We also had a new Let's Find Out magazine.  This week's theme tied into our Community Unit as well: all about fire fighters.  As we read the magazine, we noticed the word "are" a lot and it became one of our new sight words.  So far we have learned I, we, the, are, see, and a.  See if your child can find any of these words as you read together each night!

Lastly in Writer's Workshop, we talked about adding more details to our stories as we are drawing people.  We read the book Roller Coaster  by Marla Frazee and really studied the detailed illustrations of the people. We noticed hairstyles, skin color, clothing, and even expressions.  The children are trying to use what they saw in their own writing.  Our illustrations are really becoming more detailed!

Thank you to those of you who sent in contributions for the Stone Soup taste test next week.  We are looking forward to it.  Also thank you for sending your children with their winter clothes this week!  I think we are stuck with those clothes for awhile....until Spring!  Have a great weekend!

What a Week!

Well that was certainly an unexpected way to end our week!  I just want to let you know how wonderfully your children dealt with our no power situation at school.  They were so flexible with our plan for the morning and just went with the flow!  We tried to keep our same routines and even managed to do math and Fundations!  Of course, we had had some practice working in the dark the day before during our Halloween Lights Out Reading Party!  On Thursday afternoon, the children grabbed their book boxes and a flashlight and found a cozy spot in the room to do some partner reading.  It was so fun to watch them all pointing to words, talking about pictures, and re-reading books!  As they read, they also munch on our trail mix snack.  Thank you to all the families who sent in the snacks for our trail mix....it was delicious!

At Reader's Workshop, we continue to read "Old Favorite" books.  Old Favorites are books we have heard over and over again and know how the story goes without even reading the words.  Examples of "Old Favorites" for us are Brown Bear, Brown Bear, Three Billy Goats Gruff, Bear Snores On,
Caps for Sale, and The Carrot Seed.  We have been reading and re-reading these books:  looking at the pictures, remembering how the story goes, and telling what happens on the pages.    If you have any of these books at home, ask your child to read it to you!

Also, this week the children got their own "Brown Owl, Brown Owl" book for their book boxes!  It is based on Brown Bear, Brown Bear, but with a Halloween twist!  This book had some of our new sight words (I, see, a) which made it easy to read!  We practiced pointing and touching each word as we read.  This is a great skill for your child to use when reading at home with you too!  In Fundations, we were introduced to the letters g and a.  We practiced handwriting and brainstormed words that have those letters as initial sounds. We are almost halfway through the alphabet!

In math, we learned about using tally marks as a way to count.  We practiced counting and making tally marks using popsicle sticks first and then played a game of Tally Mark Bingo to practice counting and recognizing tally marks. We also did some work with shapes and patterns and made a  paper Spider Quilt.  Each child was responsible for making two paper quilt blocks.  We attached them all together in a pattern and then made observations and noticings about the shapes and patterns in our quilt. Be sure to ask your child what he or she noticed!  We also had two new Work Places:  Beat You to Ten and Counting Spiders.  Ask your child how to play these games!

Lastly, in our community unit we read a book called Windows which tells the story of a young boy who goes out for a walk at night and looks at what is going on at the houses in his neighborhood community.  We talked about neighborhoods as a community and that family is also a community.  Each child then started a pop-up picture of his or her home! We will finish these house creations next week!

Have a great weekend!