Wednesday, September 30, 2015
We Love Milk!
Today was milk day in the cafeteria and we were having fun showing our muscles thanks to the milk we drink! Mr. Jerry even helped us out!
Centers
We worked really hard during centers today. It was tough after gym class. The kids took a pacer test. Ask your child all about it. They were really tired after gym!
Weekly Update
Wow, the days seem to go by so fast lately. We have been incredibly busy in class and I haven't had the chance to update our class blog like I would have liked to. My apologies!
We had a great last week in class. All of the dress up days were so much fun with the best day on Friday. We really had a great time at the homecoming parade and enjoyed seeing Mrs. Klinginsmith all dressed up since we met our fundraising goal!
We have officially learned all of our sounds for OG! Yahoo! We are currently reviewing the more difficult sounds (vowels, ch, wh, th, sh, etc.) Our next big push with sounds and letters is to use what we know and put them together to build words. We have started this task out with three letter words (consonant vowel consonant words). See if your child can blend some of these for you at home and see if they can do it our "OG" way (they should all be able to do this independently for you). This just means blending the unknown word one sound at a time and building upon what is in front of them. Using this skill has really helped during our Daily 5 time in the classroom when we are working on reading stories with words.
Speaking of words, in Kindergarten, we are looking for each child to master reading at least 84 sight words by the end of the school year. To help with this task, we are going to be setting goals with your child for the school year. More information will be coming home soon on what exactly this looks like and how you can help your child out at home.
With the start of Fall, we have started to read several books about the season change and started to have some great conversations about what does it mean when we say Fall. Some things we have talked about is how the leaves change colors and fall off of trees, how the temperature gets cooler, and how it is darker sooner at night and longer in the morning because the days are getting shorter.
We have also continued to work on our handwriting skills in the classroom. This week, we have practiced the letters S, A, I, T, and J. After this week, we will be finished with the capital letters and next we will work on the lower case letters of the alphabet. I do pick up the pace a bit with lower case letters since they have already been a key focus during our OG time in the classroom each day.
Finally, during centers, we are reviewing rhyming words, middle sounds in words, basic number order (1-10), and we have started working on independent writing skills.
Sorry for such a long blog post this week! Have a great week and upcoming weekend!
We have officially learned all of our sounds for OG! Yahoo! We are currently reviewing the more difficult sounds (vowels, ch, wh, th, sh, etc.) Our next big push with sounds and letters is to use what we know and put them together to build words. We have started this task out with three letter words (consonant vowel consonant words). See if your child can blend some of these for you at home and see if they can do it our "OG" way (they should all be able to do this independently for you). This just means blending the unknown word one sound at a time and building upon what is in front of them. Using this skill has really helped during our Daily 5 time in the classroom when we are working on reading stories with words.
Speaking of words, in Kindergarten, we are looking for each child to master reading at least 84 sight words by the end of the school year. To help with this task, we are going to be setting goals with your child for the school year. More information will be coming home soon on what exactly this looks like and how you can help your child out at home.
With the start of Fall, we have started to read several books about the season change and started to have some great conversations about what does it mean when we say Fall. Some things we have talked about is how the leaves change colors and fall off of trees, how the temperature gets cooler, and how it is darker sooner at night and longer in the morning because the days are getting shorter.
We have also continued to work on our handwriting skills in the classroom. This week, we have practiced the letters S, A, I, T, and J. After this week, we will be finished with the capital letters and next we will work on the lower case letters of the alphabet. I do pick up the pace a bit with lower case letters since they have already been a key focus during our OG time in the classroom each day.
Finally, during centers, we are reviewing rhyming words, middle sounds in words, basic number order (1-10), and we have started working on independent writing skills.
Sorry for such a long blog post this week! Have a great week and upcoming weekend!
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Monday, September 21, 2015
Homecoming Week
This week we are celebrating Homecoming with the high school and celebrating Go College Week. We have some fun dress up days planned. On Wednesday we plan on doing "Workout Wednesday." Wear your favorite workout wear to school. Thursday is "College Day". Wear your favorite college shirt. Friday is "Blue and Gold" day. We get to walk over to the high school and watch the homecoming parade as they go by. It is a fun time for everyone because we get to see a parade and we pair up with our fifth grade buddies.
Friday Facts!
Well, it is another rainy Friday but we are not letting that bother us! Thanks for all of the spare change that was sent in! The kids really enjoyed seeing our progress on the announcements each morning. We are trying to earn enough money to dye Mrs. Klinginsmith's hair on Friday. If we meet our fundraising goal we will have a good time!
Today we stared learning about writers and what writers do. We even tried writing on our own. Everyone did a fantastic job and was so proud of what they were able to do.
This week at centers we are continuing to learn about apple facts and color word recognition skills. We continue to work on number skills as well.
Math Workshop
Today during math we worked on shape recognition skills using a mystery feel box. This box had an assortment of shapes inside and each child reached in to try to guess the shape inside. 
We also learned how to play the game called "top-it". This is a card game similar to the game war. The children work in pairs to play this game. Each person flips their card over at the same time and the person with the bigger number wins the round.
Friday, September 18, 2015
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
OG time in the classroom
I am very excited to be using the Orton Gillingham approach in the classroom. This is a multi-sensory approach that is used to teach letters, sounds, and words. I attended a week long training last summer to learn about using the "OG" approach in the classroom. When I left the training, I was so excited to get back to school and start this new style of teaching! Last year was the first year that I incorporated this style of teaching into my daily lessons and I was amazed at how quickly the children picked up these new skills and I was amazed at the amount of material we were covering. I had some of the best spellers, readers, and writers last year when comparing them to previous year.
Each day, we go through a card deck of letters and review the letter name, letter sound, and the keyword for that letter. Then, we do a whole group lesson. Each child fills out a paper to show me what they have been learning. I have sent these pages home today. Typically, I will keep these papers to look at them and make any notes for myself and then I will send them home to you when I am done. It has a triangle, square, and a heart on it. The triangle line is for the children to write the letters that we have already learned. If a mistake is made, the children have been asked to just cross out the letter and correct it above. I am looking for all lower case letters on these papers. The square on the page is where we spell words using the letters that we have worked on. We have started to learn how to finger spell these words. Basically, each child puts up a finger for each sound heard in a word. Finally, the heart lines have two purposes. First, the children practice the phoneme, or new letter sound, for the day. Then, the bottom line is meant to practice the sight word that we are working on learning. We will eventually add sentence dictation into this paper as time goes on.
Here is what you can do to help out at school. When you do receive these pages, go over them with your child. See if they can go through the letters at the top and say the letter name, keyword, and sound for each letter. If not, this is an area to practice. Another thing to practice at home would be finger spelling simple consonant vowel consonant words. Most importantly, have fun with this! We have a great time in the classroom and I hope that enthusiasm is coming home. I am excited to see the growth from everyone this school year.
Each day, we go through a card deck of letters and review the letter name, letter sound, and the keyword for that letter. Then, we do a whole group lesson. Each child fills out a paper to show me what they have been learning. I have sent these pages home today. Typically, I will keep these papers to look at them and make any notes for myself and then I will send them home to you when I am done. It has a triangle, square, and a heart on it. The triangle line is for the children to write the letters that we have already learned. If a mistake is made, the children have been asked to just cross out the letter and correct it above. I am looking for all lower case letters on these papers. The square on the page is where we spell words using the letters that we have worked on. We have started to learn how to finger spell these words. Basically, each child puts up a finger for each sound heard in a word. Finally, the heart lines have two purposes. First, the children practice the phoneme, or new letter sound, for the day. Then, the bottom line is meant to practice the sight word that we are working on learning. We will eventually add sentence dictation into this paper as time goes on.
Here is what you can do to help out at school. When you do receive these pages, go over them with your child. See if they can go through the letters at the top and say the letter name, keyword, and sound for each letter. If not, this is an area to practice. Another thing to practice at home would be finger spelling simple consonant vowel consonant words. Most importantly, have fun with this! We have a great time in the classroom and I hope that enthusiasm is coming home. I am excited to see the growth from everyone this school year.
Friday Facts
Even though Friday was a rainy day, we still had a lot of fun!We started out our day meeting our school resource officer. He talked to kindergarten about staying safe and how to stay safe at school. We talked about the different drills that we might have at school. See if your child can tell you what to do in the classroom in case of fire, severe weather, or an earthquake.
Last week, we have been learning all about apples. We have talked about the life cycle of an apple and how it starts as a bud and grows into petals, and then finally an apple. We had a lot of fun talking about each person's favorite color of apple. We also learned that an apple has five seeds in middle just like the five petals on the apple flower.
During our math time, we have been working on patterns and how to describe them. We talked about how to make an ABAB pattern (red, blue, red, blue). We also tried to make and ABBABB pattern (red, blue, blue, red, blue, blue). This week, we also practiced writing the numbers 0-20 and practiced sorting coins.
We continue to work on handwriting skills (proper formation and starting letters at the top). Last week we worked on the letters H, K, L, U, and V.
Last week, we have been learning all about apples. We have talked about the life cycle of an apple and how it starts as a bud and grows into petals, and then finally an apple. We had a lot of fun talking about each person's favorite color of apple. We also learned that an apple has five seeds in middle just like the five petals on the apple flower.
During our math time, we have been working on patterns and how to describe them. We talked about how to make an ABAB pattern (red, blue, red, blue). We also tried to make and ABBABB pattern (red, blue, blue, red, blue, blue). This week, we also practiced writing the numbers 0-20 and practiced sorting coins.
We continue to work on handwriting skills (proper formation and starting letters at the top). Last week we worked on the letters H, K, L, U, and V.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Math Stations
We started math stations this week in class. The kids either work with an adult or independently. This week we practiced sorting money, worked on illustrating basic story problems, and practiced drawing and recognizing shapes.
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Leadership Jobs
Today we continued to talk about how to be great leaders at school. We learned about how each person can play an important role in our classroom. Each child has a leadership job each week in the room. See if your child can tell you about it. Some other things we talked about is what happens if you don't get the leadership job you wanted right away and what leadership job you are really excited about.
Reading Buddies
Once a month we have our 5th grade reading buddies come down to our classroom to work on different activities including reading books. This week the fifth graders interviewed their buddy. Everyone had a great time!
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