Friday Fun Facts...

Happy Friday!  It has been pretty hit or miss these day for our outside recess time!  We have definitely made the best of the situation with our indoor recess games.  We got a lot of use out of our Makerspace tubs.  Check out some of the fun projects that kids worked on:

This week we continued to work in our social studies unit on Neighborhoods.  We have had a lot of great discussions about what types of buildings and places you can find in a neighborhood.

During our OG time, we are learning about the sounds -ank, -ink, -unk, and -onk.  We are about 3/4's of the way through our sight word list so keep practicing them at home. Our next big focus has been writing a sentence that is dictated to the class.  Each child tries to write a sentence daily with me and we are looking for our sight words to be spelled correctly, capital letters and punctuation, and we are looking for the chidlren to practice using the spelling patterns of words that we are learning during the week.  This is a great time of day when we try to be fluent writers and get a product on the page quickly. 

Our focus this week in writing has been creating a "preview page" for our how-to stories.  We have looked at several how-to books to see what information they included on their preview page.  We talked about how it gives a brief insight into their story.  We have also been sharing the children's how-to stories to help spark new ideas and to help make sure all of the steps have been included in their writing.

 I hope to get the leadership binders back to you next week as well.  I have sent off some new pages to be copied and I am waiting for them to be delivered before giving them back to you.  Mrs. Rohan will also be trading out the take home books, so please make sure those are in your child's backpack next week as well.

We wrapped up our unit on penguins this week and we are going to learn about the groundhog since Groundhog's day is coming up next week.  I hope you have a great weekend!

Welcome back to a new year!  We have settled in and have enjoyed a nice three day weekend!  We are definitely off and running with our new semester.  It is hard to believe, but this week is our 100th week of school.  The official day is this Thursday.  We have a lot of fun activities planned for the week.  We are going to be making books with 100 words, filling out a 100 number chart, making predictions and then actually counting to see where 100 steps will get us, drawing our selves at 100, and many more fun activities!

During social studies, we are learning about "What is in my neighborhood?"  We have had a lot of great discussion to describe the many different buildings, sights, and places you might find in a neighborhood.  We have had a lot of great moments when the kids realize that their neighborhood doesn't have the same things as some of the other children in our classroom.

We have kicked off a new writing unit in class.  We are learning to write "how-to" stories.  These are stories that teach a reader something.  We have learned that these types of stories are "bossy", they have steps, the steps are labeled, and there is picture for each step.  Some popular stories have been how to make a pbj sandwich, how to ride a bike, and how to build with Legos.

During some of our writing time we have also been writing about winter.  Even though we don't seem to have a lot of snow these days, it has been fun writing about snowmen and all things winter.  Next week, we will be working the topic of penguins.  We are doing some work with being able to tell fiction stories apart from non-fiction stories.  We will continue to work on this topic next week in class. 

Finally, during our OG time we have been working on the -ng sound.  These are words with -ang, -ing, -ong, and -ung at the end.  It has been great to really challenge the children to come up with words that would have these ending sounds.  We have also started to work really hard at sentence dictation.  This is embedded in our OG time and it is meant to practice all of the skills that we have learned up to this point.  We practice sight words, finger spelling unknown words, and practice writing a complete sentence.  We use what we call our COPS rules.  This is where we look at the sentence when finished and make sure there are capitals, punctuation, word wall words, and spelling in the correct spots.  When we do find an error, we give that error a "ticket" and everyone has a goal of zero tickets on their sentence each day.  I have told the kids this is why the list of sight words is so important to learn because it helps when writing words down quickly.

This Friday will be a binder check in day.  Please have all binders turned in to me so I can update them and check in on the goals.  Thanks!

Have a great week!

Gingerbread Field Trip

Our Gingerbread field trip was so much fun!  We started out hearing a retelling of the classic gingerbread man story and then we went on our own hunt around Conner Prairie in search of the Gingerbread Man.  We ended our trip by decorating our own cookie and having some milk too!  

Weekly Facts

Wow! These past two weeks have flown by!  We are having so much fun learning about the Gingerbread Man in class.  So far we have read five different versions of the story.  Today, we even read about a Gingerbread Girl.  After each story, we have been comparing the different story elements in each book.  We talk about the characters, the setting, the cookie's refrain, and what happens at the end of the story.  Each day we are reading a different adventure to compare and contrast.  Ask your child what their favorite is so far.

During our writing block, we are working on adding a great beginning to each story.  We want a reader to understand what our topic is about before just diving in to details.  Today in class, we worked on how to find a beginning sentence in a story and what a beginning sentence would look like. 

Last Friday we met with our Fifth Grade reading buddies to share some books.  It has been wonderful to see so many of the children in Kindergarten reading books to their buddy instead of just the Fifth grader reading.  This Friday, we will be meeting again to make gingerbread houses.  Thank you to all that have sent in donations.  We are still in need of frosting.  We go through a lot of this for our "glue".

Our can drive is off and running!  We are up to 141!  Thank you so much to everyone that has brought in some can goods.  Our hallways are filling up and the kids are so excited to see the amount of cans when we are out and about.  We will be collecting cans through December 15th.

Our room parent has sent home a paper about signing up for volunteering for our Winter Party.  This is a great time for everyone. Anyone is welcome to attend.  Please see that paper for more information.

Finally, our Body Safety date has to be changed again due to a conflict with the company that is running the program.  Our new date is going to be Friday, January 6th.  All opt-out slips are still due by December 15th.  Thanks so much!

Have a great week!

Weekly updates and reminders

Wow!  It was a fantastic day.  I am happy to report that everyone clipped off of the chart today!!  What a great accomplishment for all of the children.  We had so much fun in our classroom.  We started out our day by rotating through the other three kindergarten classrooms.   Each classroom had a different Thanksgiving activity for the children to work on.  The children worked on making a headband that had Native American symbols on it that told a story.  Each child made a bracelet with beads to help retell the story of the first Thanksgiving.  The children also read several stories about Thanksgiving including a story about Pete the Cat on Thanksgiving.  Finally, we wrapped up the stations by talking and graphing about each child's favorite Thanksgiving food. As an adult, I had a great time working with all of the other children in kindergarten and I know the students enjoyed visiting the other rooms as well.  I have added a picture below that describes the bracelets. 

We are gearing up for December in here.  We are excited because we spend the month learning about and working with the Gingerbread man.  We have our field trip coming up and are very excited to go learn about the gingerbread man.  Please remember that this trip is outside so please plan accordingly with clothing.  We also spend time reading several different versions of the gingerbread man story and compare and contrast the stories during the month.

With December almost here and the colder weather finally hitting us, please remember to send your child to school with appropriate outside clothing.  We go out to recess every day as long as the temperature with the windchill is 20 degrees or above.  You can always keep hats/gloves/scarves/etc. in your child's backpack for them to wear during recess.  Please also continue to practice zipping up jackets at home.  :)

Just as a reminder, I will be sending out the Scholastic Book Order on Monday, November 28th.  If you are interested in ordering books, please do so by then.  If you are ordering books as a gift and would like to keep them a secret, feel free to let me know and we can make arrangements for me to get them to you. 

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving Break!  I am very thankful to have all of you in my classroom and to be able to work with your children each day!