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!   Here is a quick recap if you did not see the note in your child's Friday Folder:

February 3rd: Book Fair Preview Day
Just to look and see what is for sale...not a purchase day!

February 5th: 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 10th: 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 chocolate free.

February 13th: Field Trip to the Flynn Theatre to see Rainbow Fish

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

February 19th 3:15-3:45pm:  Kindergarten Sea Creature Open House in our classroom OR
February 20th 7:30-8:00am: Kindergarten Sea Creature Open House in our classroom  (Just come to one Open House time that fits your schedule!)
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We had a wonderful week in Kindergarten with lots of learning about sea creatures! We had seven  shares this week and learned about the snail fish, seahorses, dolphins, angel fish, puffer fish, angler fish, and jelly fish.  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.

In Reader's Workshop and Writer's Workshop, we have been reading about Polar Bears and collecting information as we read.  Each child has a sea creature research journal to use to take "notes" about some sea creatures.  We started with Polar Bears and each child finished the following sentence starters:
Polar Bears can..
Polar Bears have...
Polar Bears live...
Polar Bears eat...
Polar Bears need...
Polar Bears look...
Next week, we are going to study stingrays and whales.  As we study these animals, we are working on writing predictable sentences to share facts about each of these creatures which will then help us write a report (or informational writing) later on in February.  What can your child teach you about polar bears?

We also 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.  We worked on adding labels to our photograph of a polar bear in our research journals!

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!

There is lots of information in the Friday Folder this week!  Let me know if you have any questions. Have a great weekend!

Kindness!

This week in our Scholastic Let's Find Out magazine we learned about Martin Luther King, Jr.  We watched a short video and learned about how he worked very hard to get unfair laws changed and to bring more kindness and peace to the world.  We then read several books about kindness. After reading The Kindness Book, the children each brainstormed what kindness means to them and created heart sun catchers for our classroom window!  Stop by our windows to check them out!

We have been immersed in nonfiction books! We began the week by looking through the books in our library determining which books are fiction and which are nonfiction.  We figured out that non-fiction books are about real things and are used to teach us facts and often have photographs.  Fiction books are stories that are made up and often have drawn illustrations.   We talked about how nonfiction books are used to teach or inform us about a topic. Prior to reading, it's important to consider our background knowledge about the topic and that helps us realize when we have new learning while reading.  We read a book about Polar Bears and stopped every few pages so classmates could share their new learning.  Did you know polar bears can swim up to 90 miles at one time?? We also read a non-fiction book called Wish for a Fish which taught us all about the different zones in the ocean and what creatures live in those zones.  As we read, we listened for important information and asked questions, and thought of "wonderings" about the zones.


During Fundations, we continued practicing our uppercase letter formation with the letters E, F, G, and H. This week we used a new tool to help us practice building words: a magnetic board and letter tiles.  We used the Fundations boards to find letters when I gave a sound and then I tapped out three sounds and the children built the word.  They did a great job listening for the sounds and identifying what letters are needed to make a word. Way to go!

Lastly in math, we have moved into a Geometry unit.  This week, we explored shapes by using pattern blocks.  We made observations about circles, spheres, squares, triangles, trapezoids, hexagons, and the rhombus.  The children were able to notice a variety of attributes of these shapes: sides, corners, and even parallel lines!  I was impressed!  You could ask your child to find some of these shapes in your home!  We also spent some time sorting pattern blocks by shape and then the children learned how to make bar graphs to show how many of each shape they had!

Please make sure to check your child's Friday Folder this weekend.  In his or her folder is a progress report for the first trimester of Kindergarten.  We have finished our narrative writing unit so there are also some writing pieces for your child to share with you too!  Have a wonderful weekend!

Sea Creatures!

A little snow fun at recess this week!








This week we began started our first science unit about sea creatures!  We began by brainstorming what we know about sea creatures and their habitat.  I found out that our class already knows a lot about some interesting sea creatures!  We then read Sea Life and Commotion in the Ocean to start familiarizing ourselves with more sea creatures.  We also read about an ocean and sea creature expert, Jacques Cousteau, and his love of the underwater world in a book called  Manfish.  We all got a new early reader for our book boxes about sea creatures and we learned two new sight words: can and of.  On Thursday, each child chose a sea creature to learn more about and become an "expert"!  In your child's Friday Folder is a note to you about an at-home project to complete with your child about his or her sea creature.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

During Reader's Workshop, we read a new Scholastic Let's Find Out Magazine.  This week's magazine helped us understand the difference between fiction and nonfiction text by comparing the story of The Mitten by Jan Brett to how animals really stay warm in winter.  In the book, all the animals squeeze into a mitten to say warm.  Our magazine shared information about how those same animals actually stay warm in winter...heavier fur, digging underground, or more feathers.  We also explored the difference between fiction and nonfiction by reading a National Geographic easy reader about sharks and comparing that to a fiction story called Misunderstood Shark.  We found that many nonfiction books have photographs and labels and that many fiction stories have animals that can talk and have drawn illustrations.  Be sure to ask your child if he or she can tell you the difference between fiction and nonfiction!

We enjoyed reading The Mitten so much that each child got an easy reader pattern book of the story for their book box.  We also acted out the story several times in the classroom as we practiced retelling the story.  There are some picture cards in your child's Friday Folder of the characters in the story if you and your child want to practice retelling this fun story at home!

In math, our focus has been on money this week!  We learned the names and worth of two coins: penny and nickel. We spent a bit of time making observations about the coins and then used them to play three games:  Which Coin Will Win?, Money March, and Beat You to 15 cents.  In these games, the children practiced recognizing coins, adding up coins, and trading pennies in for nickels.  See if your child can identify coins at home and tell you how much they are worth! A few friends even learned a new math game called Skip-Bo (the game in the pictures)!  A fun game to play with your family!

During Fundations, we are beginning to build small words and are tapping out the sounds of those words and then blending them together.  We also are working on identifying the final sounds in words.  Both of these skills are helping us in our "best guess" spelling! We have also begun a quick review of uppercase letter formation.  This week we practiced uppercase A, B, C, and D.

Lastly, during our Read Aloud time after lunch I have begun reading from chapter books this month.  One child's family introduced us to a series of books and read one of them this week. The series is called Zoey and Sassafras.  The book we read was called Dragons and Marshmallows.  The children LOVED this book and it has some great science vocabulary incorporated parts of the scientific method: hypothesis, observations, and conclusions.  Just thoughts I would share this with you if you are looking for some new read alouds at home.  It might be a good reading weekend (or skiing!) seeing that we are getting more snow!  Happy Weekend!

Nearby Nature!

 On Tuesday, we had our monthly Nearby Nature lesson with Christine and Jackson.  This month we were learning about how animals stay warm in winter and how they use different pieces of the ecosystem to help them survive the cold.  Through our puppet show and a memory match game, we learned that many animals stay active in the winter and have to conserve body heat by seeking out shelter or putting on extra fur, feathers, or fat.  Be sure to ask your child if he or she can tell you about some of these animals and how they stay warm!

During Reader's Workshop, we continued to strengthen are reading powers!  We talked about how readers re-read books to become more fluent in their reading.  We looked for patterns in the words of our emergent reader books and practiced reading those smoothly.  We also began to notice punctuation in our books and noticed how that helps us read the book.  We found exclamation points and question marks and changed the tone of our voices to match the punctuation.  We also got a new book for our book boxes from the Scholastic Let's Find Out magazine.  This book was about building snowmen and had a new sight word in it: be.  The children did a nice of job of following the pattern in the book, which helped them to read more smoothly and less like robots!

In math this week, we turned our attention to measurement and comparing numbers (greater than and less than).  We spent much of our math time using popsicle sticks and unifix cubes to measure the length of items in the classroom. Then we compared those numbers and talked about which were greater and which were less.  We also learned about the  <, >, and = signs that mathematicians use to compare numbers! Ask your child to tell you about the "shark mouth"!  Next week, we will work with coins: nickels, dimes, and pennies.





During Writer's Workshop, we continued to write our personal narratives with a beginning, middle, and end.  The children are continuing to tell their stories with detailed illustrations, but also adding more sentences.  I am so impressed with their work!  Our big focus for the week was putting spaces between our words.  This helps the reader better understand our stories!




We finished learning all of our lowercase letters and sounds this week in Fundations with Z and Q.  Now we are moving on to spelling and tapping out C-V-C words, such as map, cat, sit, etc.  For each letter in a word we tap a finger on our thumb and then "zip" the sounds together to say the word.  See if your child can tap out a word for you!  This knowledge will help with their reading and also their "best guess" spelling in Writer's Workshop.

Lastly, we welcomed a new student this week to our class!  The children were very excited to meet her and show her around our room and school!

Have a great weekend!

Happy New Year!

Welcome back!  It was great to see the children these past two days!  They were sure happy to see each other too!  We eased back into school by reviewing the classroom and school expectations and re-establishing routines: participating in morning meeting, writing in our writer's notebooks, and reading from our book boxes.

We welcomed in the new year in Kindergarten by reading Squirrel's New Year Resolution.  We talked about what the word resolution means and then the children brainstormed a resolution for themselves for the year.  Our resolutions focused on getting better at something for ourselves or helping others.  We have Kindergartners who want to become better readers, to become better at football and soccer, to help their siblings, and to help their friends to be happy!  Be sure to ask your child about his or her resolution.  We also did a self-portrait project to go along with our resolutions.  The children made themselves...wearing new year's party hats! They are hanging in the hallway and look adorable!

Have a wonderful weekend!