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!