The last two weeks of school are headed our way....lots of information for you to read!

Wow...it was hot this week!  Hope everyone found some ways to stay cool!  Thank you for helping your child to still attend our online sessions even though it was so hot and sticky!  This was our last week for our small group math and literacy sessions on Google Hangouts.  Next week, I will be doing Home Visits instead of the small group work and the following week (the last week of school!), we will be doing four large group activities to help wrap up the year.

There will still be a checklist posted for the upcoming week with activities for your child to complete so please check that out!  There is still some poetry to write, Scholastic News to read, math to do, and a special writing activity: writing to your child's first grade teacher.  Although we don't know the teacher placements yet, I will be passing these letters along to their first grade teachers when I find out.
Here are some highlights for next week:
June 1st:  Home Visits
June 2nd: Home Visits
June 3rd: Home Visits
June 5th: Story Time and Snack Time

The last week of school there will not be a checklist posted; however, I will be sending an email with some activities for your child to work on and there is note with the activities in the package I will be dropping off during our Home Visits.

Here are a few highlights for the last week of school (you will be receiving Google Hangout invites for these events):
June 9th:  Kindergarten Star Show (see below for information about the Star Show!)
June 10th: Story and Snack time
June 11th: Kindergarten Star Show
June 12th:  Story and Snack time....for the last day of school!

Kindergarten Star Show!!
During the last week of school, we will be having a virtual talent show...called the Star Show! I will be splitting the class into two groups: one will have a Google Hangout Talent Show on Tuesday, June 9th at 10:00am and the other group will have its Google Hangout Talent Show on Thursday, June 11th at 10:00am. You will receive a Google Hangout invite in your email!

Check with your child...does he or she have a talent or something to share with the class? This is optional, but it is definitely more fun if everyone shares something! Here are some ideas of star show “talents” from my past classes:
Tell a joke
Read a poem
Sing a song
Show a picture or a project that the child created
Demonstrate some karate moves
Dribble a basketball
Show a Lego project that the child created
Read a few pages from a book
Demonstrate yoga positions
Hula hoop
Do a dance
Do a magic trick or science experiment

The only requirements are that the talent show act be safe and appropriate for school and that it takes one minute or less! Please make sure that on your child’s day he or she is prepared with materials to demonstrate his or her talent! Please let me know if you have any questions!

Have a great weekend!

Happy Friday!

A fun flash-back Friday picture from February!  I miss spending                    time with these faces in our classroom!

Hello Friends!  It's amazing to see that there are only three weeks left of Kindergarten!  A reminder...no remote learning on Monday due to Memorial Day.  The checklist will be posted for the week on Tuesday morning on the SCS Remote Learning Site.  I hope you and your family can get outside and enjoy this beautiful stretch of weather!

Last week I sent out an email about signing up for a Home Visit the week of June 1st.  I am planning to stop by with small end-of-year gift for your child and some materials to use during our last two weeks of learning.  Please sign up if you have not already. If the times do not work for you, then I will just drop the gift and materials off on your front step some time that week.  Thanks!  Here is the Home Visit Sign Up link.

If you did not have the chance to listen in on this week's live Google Hangout sessions, we continued practicing our reading and reading comprehension skills using a Scholastic Let's Find Out magazine.  This week's magazine was about plants and plant parts.  Can your child name for you four plant parts and the jobs they do?  The children worked very hard using their reading powers to sound out tricky words...way to go!  In math, we started with a shape scavenger hunt.  I asked the children to find a circle or sphere and then a rectangle or rectangular prism.  After finding the object, the children then had to justify how they knew it was certain shape, explaining attributes.  We also played a game called Double Top Draw that focused on counting dots in a double-ten frame efficiently, writing and recognizing teen numbers, and comparing numbers using the greater than and less than sign.

That's all for this week!  I look forward to seeing everyone next week!  Enjoy the sun and warmth!

Lantern Poems

It was so fun to read these friends' lantern poems!  Nice job!

Red Clover Vote!

Happy Friday!  I was all excited to tell you the results of our class vote for the Red Clover Vote for the year, but only 8 children completed the Red Clover writing activity.  So I can share the following, but we don't really have enough votes to declare a winner in our class:
Misunderstood Shark- 1 vote
Girl Running-1 vote
Hawk Rising- 2 votes
Potato Pants-2 votes
                                                      Counting on Katherine-2 votes
Thanks to those friends who wrote about their favorite Red Clover book and shared it with me!

This week in our online lessons we practice our reading skills using a mini-book on the Scholastic Let's Find Out site.  This week's book was about Earth Day and taking care of the Earth.  I was very proud of our Kindergarten Readers. They were using so many of their Reading Super Powers!  If you are reading at home with your child and he or she gets stuck on a word, remind them of their reading powers:

• Use picture power....look at the picture to help figure out the word
• Use sound power...use the sounds at the beginning and end of the word to help figure out the word
• Use re-read power....start the sentence again and try the word using other powers as well
• Use sight word power....read the words you know first and then go back
• Use pointer power....point to the words to stay on track

In math, we did more problem solving.  The problems this week were asking children to do repeated addition.  For example, we had 6 frogs.  How many eyeballs in all?  Many children drew a picture and then counted by ones and twos.  Others wrote an equation such as,  2+2+2+2+2+2=6.

I've have noticed that many friends in our class have tried out Lexia and Raz-Kids.  If your child has not tried these programs out yet, please feel free to reach out if you have questions on how to log in.  Also, please reach out if your child mentions that the books on Raz-Kids are feeling too easy.  I am able to easily change the books to a different level, if needed.

Have a wonderful weekend!  Enjoy the warmer temperatures!

Poetry!

Here are some poems about friends!  Enjoy!

New Groups for Next Week!

Reading/ Fundations Group Work

Math Group Work

	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday
9:30- 10:00am	Alex Henry Caroline Zoe Alectra	Lyvia Madison Leo Ray Sabine	Alex Henry Caroline Zoe Alectra
10:00- 10:30am	Clementine Winona Nora Y. Arsenie Jr. Nora P.	Clementine Winona Norah Y. Arsenie Jr. Nora P.	Lyvia Madison Leo Ray Sabine
10:30- 11:00am	Camille Joey Hannah Violet Roman	Camille Joey Hannah Violet Roman

Hi Everyone!  Happy Friday!  I continue to enjoy our group work sessions, but as promised, I want to provide the children the opportunity to work with a variety of their peers.  So I have changed up the groups for our next three weeks of sessions.  I have included the new schedule for our groups in the table above.  I will also be sending email invitations for these sessions that will include the Google Hangout link for you to access.  Please let me know if you have any questions!

Thank you again for supporting your child with these hangouts.  I appreciate that so many of you are nearby if there are technical difficulties.  A couple of children have mentioned that it can be hard to hear during our hangout sessions.  Just a reminder that any background noise (conversations,etc) around your child is heard by everyone in the group.  So I may be asking the children to mute their microphones more often and then turn it back on when it is their turn to share or answer a question.  Just wanted to give a heads up so you can help your child figure out the microphone/mute button independently!  Thanks so much!

This week in our groups we continued to practice digraphs.  This time we were listening to words and trying to the identify the digraph found at the beginning or ending or a word through a bingo game and we worked on building words with digraphs.  In math, we did a review of subtraction.  We talked about subtraction means taking away and that you could also say subtract and minus and all those words mean the same thing!  We did some subtraction practice with counters and then played a fun subtraction race game together, solving and writing subtraction equations.  Everyone did a great job solving subtraction equations!  

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms!  Wishing you a wonderful day!

Drawn Together!

We had some great art and writing collaborations this week!  Thanks to all our of friends who sent me their work!

Happy May!

Welcome to the month of May!  It's hard to believe that it's already May and that we have all been at home for over 45 days! I really look forward to the times when we can all see each other in person again!

It was great to meet all the children again this week in our small groups!  During our Literacy small groups, we were introduced to two more digraphs.  Digraphs are two letters that make one sound. This week's digraphs were th and ck.  See if your child can find any words with digraphs when he or she is reading to you!  In math, we continued to work on solving story word problems that the children created.  Some even made subtraction problems...which is great!  That is the next area we are going to spend some time on in our math groups: solving subtraction problems and writing subtraction equations. 

I want to thank you all again for your continued support in this remote learning process.  I felt like our groups went more smoothly this week as everyone came with a pencil and paper or something to write with and on.  For this upcoming week, I am asking that your child bring 12 counters to his or her math lesson, as well as, paper and a pencil.  We are going to be practicing subtraction and manipulatives are helpful.  Examples of something to count include small blocks, marbles, paperclips, crayons, checkers, pennies, buttons, popsicle sticks, beads, cotton balls, etc.

As always, feel free to reach out to me with any questions or concerns!  Be sure to check the Remote Learning Site on Monday morning for next week's activities.  Have a wonderful weekend!  It looks there will be some sun...so I hope you all can get outside!

Misunderstood Shark....Animal Facts!

Wow!  I learned a lot about animals this week!  Thanks to all the friends who completed the assignment and shared their writing with me.  Check out our work below!