Tuesday, January 31, 2017

As we end January, I continue to be thankful for the opportunity to spend my days with the fun, energetic and eager Kindergartners. Today I was reminded that we need to have FUN every day.

We have started a new routine in the morning that will be reviewing and solidifying their knowledge of sounds and building words. The book we are making will come home on Friday, so you will get a look at our progress.

Yesterday we had a snowball fight during math. It was to find the combinations to 6, 7, and 8. Talk about FUN!

Later that day we did puzzles. Such problem solving and perseverance. And Fun!

The kids really loved the new structure I taught today. It is called "Find Someone Who." We used it during math. It was perfect!!! The kids were engaged, and moving and learning. Win-Win-Win.

Check the backpacks on for papers on a daily basis.

Friday, January 27, 2017

Last week was a busy week inside and outside of school!

We finished up our second Animated Literacy book! Now the kids have been taught all of the 44 sounds, and we will work for the rest of the year to keep that knowledge strong and stable so that they have a wonderful start of first grade next year.

We learned digraph ng. It is a back of the throat sound.

The kids started learning about some of our Kansas State Symbols. (The foldable book came home on Friday.)

Mrs. Rogers taught a lesson on being kind and hyped us up for Kindness week coming in February.

In math the kids are stretching their learning by thinking about combinations to 6, 7, 8. We will work more on those in the coming weeks.

And we ended the week by celebrating Kansas Day with a Fun Foodie Friday (thanks Mrs. Barron for offering to bring the cookies!)

I am so excited to see what wonderful reading, spelling, writing and math the Kinders will learn this coming week!!!

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Sorry about not posting yesterday. I had parental duties that went late into the evening!

But a run-down of the two days...

Writing in our Animated Literacy journal.

Learned a "new" sound. (Actually it is a similar sound, but now a new way to spell it.) The sound is the long u (spelled u consonant e) and most commonly makes a very similar sound to long oo. Think about cute or moose.

It was super fun teaching this lesson and letting the kids make connections to what they already knew.

Since we are talking about kinds of weather this week, and key details, I read The Snowy Day. Then we retold the story using pictures. Today the kids cut out pictures and glued them in the correct order.

A quick lesson before lunch on when to use c or k. These kids are eating this stuff up! AND becoming fantastic spellers!!!

After lunch we spent 30 minutes with our second grade buddies practicing high frequency words (K) and math facts (2nd).

Math is lots of new (and new again) ways to think about combining numbers.

At yesterday's morning recess some clever boys tried to get their tongues stuck, of course I needed a photo!

Friday, January 20, 2017

It was great to be back with our class today! I certainly missed them yesterday.

We have now uncovered the last letter of the alphabet--Z. There are 2 more sounds to learn (and we will get to those next week). There are 26 letters of our alphabet, which make 44 sounds. So it is very exciting to have learned so much already in Kindergarten!

We talked a bit about The Inauguration, read a little book on it, and watched the oath ceremonies. We did not get political. But I did mention how wonderful it is to have a peaceful transition of power.

Math was quite exciting with number bonds. I love seeing the kids "get" it and make sense of math.

This was an extensive, multi-person project at recess. I thought it was creative and I loved seeing the kids cooperate.

Looking forward to a lovely weekend and a fantastic week!

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

It was an exciting morning of discovering our new sound (AND that ALL the students were here at school)!

Whistling Whale will make our lives tricky until we really learn to hear the difference between "w" and "wh."

We continue to practice reading "top to bottom, left to right, and point to every word."

All of the students worked in small groups to complete a rhyming challenge.

The math sprint was filling in the missing number. They had so much fun, they asked to do a second one right away. ;-)

I super LOVE seeing kids help each other read. We have loads of kids that can help someone in one way or another.

Once again, we ROCKED our End of the Day Dance Party! It was a great big circle that the kids initiated. It made me feel so happy that they wanted to include EVERYONE in our class, no one was left out. Awesome kids!!!

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Oh it was soooooo good to be back with the kinders today! AND we had perfect attendence!!! So Mrs. Wells put a fancy sign on our door. We certainly loved it all day long. :-)

We reviewed our letter names and sounds and got down to the business of reading and spelling. We had just enough time left to draw a boy and write a sentence about a boy.

The next three weeks our overall ELA theme will be weather, and today we read several books about seasons. After one book, the kids drew a picture of a part of the story, then wrote a sentence about it. To share the pictures, the kids did a Hand Up, Pair Up, Share structure. It was amazing to see many smiles and so much good social skills.

I think these kids are smart enough now that they can learn TWO high frequency words in one week. So, this week's words are: is, and little. Most are pros already!

Math was exciting because we are working on combinations to 5, with writing a number sentence and a number bond. Pretty much "easy peezy" as they say.

Hope they are telling you about our Dance Parties that we end the day with. Fun and I LOVE sending the wonderful kids off with smiles, laughter and a tiny bit of play.

PS

When I got home from school, a new book was waiting for me... I cannot WAIT to read it, and use this to help these fantastic readers become even more awesome readers!!!

Thursday, January 12, 2017

It was another BIG day in Kindergarten...

We learned about the sound that oi/oy make. Like in hoist and enjoy.

Yesterday we listened to Martin's Big Words (a picture book about MLK Jr.) so that we would understand why there is no school on Monday, and colored in a reader that came home yesterday.

The kids all read books both days and yesterday we worked on finding evidence in the book. Tough, but great job!

The kids are learning to really look at the letters within a word, and think about what the order means. This sort had the kids looking for short and long a words. As they placed the word, they read it and the partner either said good job, or helped them fix the word (not much fixing is needed).

My mother-in-law came today. She is thinking about volunteering in our class, and she wanted to test it out. The kids loved her, read to her and gave hugs as she left.

In math we are starting a new unit. This one gets heavily into number sentences and number bonds. The kindergarten standard is to know all facts to 5, and that is what we will start with and move on to 10.

This game they played this afternoon is memory, finding matches that make 5. Tell you what--not much work is needed on this!

Hope you have a fabulous weekend! See you (or the kids) on Tuesday!