Blog Archives

12/14-12/18

12/20/2015

Announcements:
1. We will be doing another project with recycled materials at the end of our first week back. Please send in any type of recycled materials (boxes, food cartons, toilet paper rolls, etc.) Any time the week of January 4th! Save all those empty holiday packages :)

2. January 15 PM K will go to school from 8:40-11:30. It is an Early Release Day for the rest of the school.

The last week before break! We packed a lot in.

In literacy this week we learned /j/ in Jolly Phonics and Handwriting and did journal writing.
We also continued talking about communities. We read Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett, and then made our very own gingerbread community. We talked about what kind of things we might need in the community. The students made a market, a school, a library, roads, houses, even a massage room! We worked on our community for 2 days the students were so engaged. I loved watching them be creative and collaborate.

We did A LOT of math this week! We worked on combinations of 10 and incorporating more higher level thinking tasks.

We used unifix cubes to practice place value and followed along with this song:

We also made a tens snowman. The students had to decide what 10 objects they were going to put on their snowman... no more no less! If they did add more, they had to figure out how many more they did put on.

We also read How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss and did a math task where the students had to decide what 10 things were in the Grinch's bag. They had to make a combination of presents, trees, or stockings that added up to 10. This was hard and they did so well!

With our buddies we played board games and practiced learning how to follow rules and play cooperatively!

And of course, Olaf came for one more week and caught us being safe, respectful, and responsible :)

Friday we had our PJ day, did fun centers, went and saw the awesome first grade winter concert, and Charlotte's mom was our Mystery Reader! It was the perfect way to end our week.

Lastly, the PTO very generously bought our classroom a brand new rug!! If you are part of the PTO, I cannot say thank you enough! We LOVE it!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Winter Break! See you in 2 weeks.

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12/7-12/11

12/13/2015

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Announcements:
1. Star Wars week starts Monday! Here is the full schedule:

2. We will have Pajama Day in Kindergarten on Friday (12/18)!
3. Jolly Phonics homework will come home on Monday, but that will be the only one this week. We have SO many other fun math and literacy activities to do, we will get back to doing Jolly Phonics more regularly after break.

It was a great week!

On Monday, we had interactive and educational Physics is Fun centers.
They were so cool!

We focused a lot on math this week and counting in tens. We have a chain of shapes we use to count how many days we have been in school, and it changes color every ten. Our chain is always breaking and falling, so I asked the students, "what else can we use to count to 64?" I then gave each group a cup of straws and posed the question, "How can you use the straws to make 64?" I gave them no other guidance and just let them work in groups to figure out a way to do it. They came up with counting by 1s, sorting by color, making patterns, and counting by 10s. We then came together as a class and counted them in groups of 10 with 4 left over. We are going to do many more math lessons like this in the coming weeks... it was so neat to see what they could come up with!

We also did something called a 3-act task. Essentially, this is an open-ended math lesson where the students are the ones who ask the questions, decide what they want to know, and collaborate to get to an answer. They require a much higher level of thinking and it was a great experience! We will be continuing to do these tasks in the future. This specific task focused on counting with 10s and was called Peas in a Pod. We started out by counting using the 10 cards the students made. We counted our own, counted how many were in our table groups, and in our whole class. We then played and sang this song MANY times this week:

I also brought snap peas for the students to taste, play with, and count to get them interested in the lesson. We then watched a video that showed the inside of two snap peas that were small and medium sized. The video then showed a small, medium, and large snap pea, but not opened up. The students have to figure out how many peas were in each pod. They used many manipulatives and worked together to figure it out!

Another math video we use a lot is this counting to 100 one. This would be something fun and easy to practice with your child at home!

Olaf also visited our classroom this week! He caught many students demonstrating safe, respectful, and responsible behavior. We had so much fun looking for his sneaky hiding places every morning. He will be back next week too :)

Friday Brian's parents were our Mystery Readers!

We also made it outside to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather on Thursday. I LOVE this class :)

I cannot believe this is our last week before Winter Break! It is going to be a good one.

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11/30-12/4

12/5/2015

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A few reminders:
- Jolly Phonics assessment on g, o, u, l, f, and b will be Monday, December 7.
- The math tens assignment is due Wednesday, December 9th. Tape any 10 objects on the notecard and practice counting them!
- Book orders are due Friday, December 11th.
- Please remember to label all winter gear AND practice putting on and taking off hats, gloves, boots, etc.
- I am requesting once again recycled materials to use for a few upcoming projects... especially cardboard boxes of ALL sizes! You can send them in anytime between now and winter break.

This week in Kindergarten was all about reviewing and centers!
With a week off, we reviewed our Jolly Phonics sounds and handwriting skills with literacy centers. The 4 centers included a "lego museum" where the students had to build something that started with g, o, u, l, f, or b, using the Jolly Phonics app on the iPad, practicing writing and reading words that contain the letters we have learned so far, and playing the sound practice board game. Centers are also a great way for us to practice our communication and cooperation skills.

This week we also started the Second Step Program in our classroom! Second Step is a social-emotional development program that uses music, puppets, and stories to teach kids age-appropriate skills for success. According to their website, "Students in grades K–5 continue developing their social-emotional skills—including making friends, managing emotions, and solving problems—to set them on the path for social success and academic readiness." If you would like to know more about the program, you can read it here: http://www.cfchildren.org/second-step
It has been so fun introducing and teaching Puppy to be a good learner! Please ask your child to explain to you who Puppy is and how we have been teaching him.

In addition to phonics and writing centers, on Friday we also practiced building our stamina for guided reading centers. Once we start guided reading, I will be reading with a group while the other groups are working independently at their stations. In preparation for when I will not be available, we practiced working in our groups WITHOUT asking Miss Duckman questions. We will continue practicing this next week as well.

In math this week, we reviewed our comparing skills and worked with adding numbers together. We used a number line and talked about how the numbers get higher the further down you go. We worked in centers on comparing number of objects, using the number line, subitizing numbers, and writing comparing equations (like 5 >4).

With our buddies this week, we played a game with dice to build a snowman, and we also made paper snowflakes.

Speaking of snowmen, we had a very special visitor on Thursday...

Olaf! He is going to be here until winter break and he is watching our class looking for good behavior (especially being safe, respectful, and responsible). He is going to be picking students he sees showing these good behaviors to come find him in the morning, and maybe even give them a little present! He will of course be making sure that all of the students get a turn :) Ask your student about his visit, and how they can show good behavior in our classroom.

That is all for this week!

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12/14-12/18

12/7-12/11

11/30-12/4

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