December 21, 2016

What a fantastic day. Day 81 of Kindergarten. We have learned sooooo much, and today was a party to celebrate (and it is the last day before break).

I loved giving the students a pair of holiday socks. Most chose to wear them.

We watched The Polar Express with Mrs. Weimer's class.

We said good-bye to our friend who is moving to a new town and a new school. Our hearts are full and we are thankful that we had these days with her.

The jolly elf visited school and gave each student a book and a candy cane.

We finished up a little present for the parents.

And celebrated a friend who will have a birthday in a week.

My heart is bursting with the love shown to me today.

I am looking forward to time relaxing and time making plans for next semester. My wish is that you have a safe and magical time these next couple of weeks.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

We've had a couple of very busy days!

On Monday some NHS students came and did lessons with the kinder kids. It was awesome. The lessons were about 45 minutes long, and so full of fun and learning.

The kids learned a new high frequency word--are, and we read a quick story about a tree (we will continue this in January).

Later we were ambitious and did another page in our mindful journal. The cutting was really tricky, so thankfully, we had many adults to help. We were listening for kindness.

In the afternoon, some fourth graders presented a play that they had written. It was very sweet and we enjoyed their performance.

Tuesday was full of Christmas singing with the whole school (The 12 Days of Christmas was my favorite song--each class did actions for a verse-ours was 10 Lords a Leaping), art and a story from Mrs. Wells.

After lunch we met our Buddies. We have been paired with Mrs. Young's class (second graders) and will do activities with them about once a month. Today they worked together to make a snowman by following directions. It was so much fun watching the big kids help the little kids. All I had to do was take photos. (Let's do this again!!!)

Later we did our last page in the mindful journal (seeing kindness). We could have done more, but I think that is enough for now. We will practice more after the break.

Friday, December 16, 2016

We ended the week on a fabulous note! Here's a quick run-down of Friday:

New sound: y, Yakety Yak.

Thinking and writing/drawing about RAK that we could do during our Christmas Break.

Having an All Class Reading Session.

Playing a math game that made us think about "one more than" 8 is 9.

And the beginning of reading high frequency word passages (with words to sound out mixed in). The kids know that they can write words and sentences, now it is fun to see them realize that they can also read words and passages. :)

Have a Happy Weekend!

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Well, we rose to the challenge, again!

After the directed drawing of a van, I told the kids that I thought I would write TWO sentences about it today. Their eyes gleamed with excitement and exclaimed, me too; I'll write three; I'll write my own.

Some wrote three, four, one, copied mine, and one friend wrote his very own sentence with spaces for each word AND he listened for the sounds. Amazing! So proud of the gains for every student. :-)

When they were back from science, we talked about ways to relax during this busy holiday season, or any time they feel "too much." I was so pleased that the work we have done with cutting and gluing this past week has paid off. I have had to help a lot of students with the flap pages that we write under, but today nobody needed my help. I roamed the room and watched the busy children work on their mindful books.

I read a story about real plants and we compared and contrasted it with the fiction story I read on Monday. That was fun!

Another student completed the 123 Challenge and had a huge grin when finished. The kids got to play a game with a 10-sided die. One student rolls, shows that many pennies, and the other student shows the SAME number with cubes. It was fun to see them smile, be kind to each other and encourage each other.

Kindness is contagious.

During math intervention the kids who like candy canes ate one while working on a math sheet to recognize numerals and also to "color by word." The task was to color all parts, not just a smidge of the square.

I took a photo of the completed board with our reindeer writing. Lovely.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

What a magnificent day! Seriously, it didn't go as I had planned, but looking at it now, it was pretty great.

Victor Vampire is our new character.

Everyone wrote their own sentence today. No one copied mine, because I didn't write one. I LOVE that this kiddo wrote this sentence without ANY help from anyone!!! This is Kindergarten progress.

Recess was inside, it was sort of chilly this morning, so we danced. Wish you could see their smiling faces. Others drew or wrote.

Our mindfulness lesson was about "Thanking" Outside the Box. It is easy to thank people, but sometimes we start to expect the gift, so thanking is forgotten. We started thinking about ways of thanking others for kind things they do or give us.

We had two surprises today, but they were both postponed due to circumstances. That means we spent a LOVELY morning relaxing, writing, drawing, reading, being together. I loved it. It was super low-keyed, my kind of day!

We did manage a quick reindeer writing. It is on the bulletin board in the hallway. Come check it out!

Math was a journey into the concepts of longer/more/less. Again, the kids are pros and we breezed right through it.

We have added a new thing to our math time: The 123 Challenge. I project a file that displays numerals one at a time, our MVP (or another student) takes the challenge to name each numeral. If they get stuck, they get to phone a friend. I love it! It goes through numerals randomly to 31. Perfect to practice and get good by May.

Looking forward to a fantastic Thursday!

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

I am just so proud of the kindergartners that I frequently call them first graders! Whoops!!! But they are so smart and learning so much, that sometimes I forget.

Today was a review day for phonics, and a directed drawing of a bird. I love how the kid's sentences often use high frequency words that we have learned. That makes writing so much fun and readable!

It is important to me that the kids at least know (even if they do not apply this skill every time) that the vowels make more than one sound, and how to look at a word to know which sound to use. I am excited to have the students sorting words (just looking) into short i sound or long i sound. This activity could also be used as a listening activity. The better they can hear sounds, the better writers and readers they will be!

Have a great day!

Monday, December 12, 2016

Happy Monday! We had a full day of learning and being kind.

We began by learning a new sound. This is a tricky one, because there are 3 ways to spell the sound. I taught the kids to read all three ways, but to spell,  just use one. What sound are we talking about...

Er is the way I told them to spell, and the first grade teachers can teach rules for when to use the other spellings.

After science we talked about ways of being kind that do not cost money (read a book to someone, let my mom take a nap, etc) and added an idea to our mindful book.

The new high frequency word is "my." And we are reading books about growing plants. It may seem silly to read about it now, but this gives us plenty of time to learn and be ready to grow something in the spring! The vocabulary words for the week are: require (what does a plant require?) and seed.

We reviewed noun, verb, adjective, and I introduced pronouns. I do not expect the kids to master these concepts, but my goal is to give them a solid foundation so that in future grades they will master the parts of speech.

Math was SUPER fun. We set the table for a pretzel party. Each student needed a plate, napkin, spoon, and cup, but I didn't pass out the correct number. This helped us talk about needing more, having too much and how much more is needed.

I finished up some testing for the report card and the kids had an opportunity to write or draw. I was the fortunate recipient to an awesome book and several notes.

Looking forward to a lovely day tomorrow!

Thursday, December 8, 2016

It sure was good to be back with the class! (I miss them when I'm gone and when they are gone.)

We started the day learning another sound. This one is digraph sh (Sheriff Shad shaves) and the sound is sh.

For ELA time we started learning about being "mindful." Being aware of our surroundings, and people around us, and not running on auto-pilot. It is definitely a big idea, and we will continue to break it down into Kinder-sized lessons to better understand. We started with thinking about presents that we have received and really loved. We added this information to our Mindful Notebook. (More to come.)

Math was a breeze! We continued to talk about capacity and comparing. They get this as well. Measuring, comparing sizes, and capacity seem to be natural lessons as preschoolers, so when they get to Kinder, all I have to do is review and add vocabulary. Awesome!!!

This was a fun game: Beans in a Cup. In pairs, one child had 5 beans. She puts some under a cup (while the other person hides her eyes), then the person who hid the eyes must tell how many are under the cup. Then they traded roles. This is a wonderful ways to concretely show addition sentences to 5. Soon, not only will they say the number, but they will write the number sentence on a paper.

Looking forward to another FANTASTIC day of math testing on Friday while Mrs. Fitzgarrald teaches the class.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Yesterday was a full and busy day, and when I got home I was too tired to move. And today I had a sub while I completed day 1 of Winter ELA benchmark testing, so no photos from today.

But, yesterday...

Started with a lovely sight of food for the food drive. There is still time to add to the collection.

Practicing reading is always more fun with a Big Book.

And math was fun measuring and comparing weights with pennies.

Fluency reading is really kicking in.

And numbers to 20 are becoming a breeze.

That's it for now, but I'll be back tomorrow!