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Sunday, September 15, 2019

Classroom News

We have been hard at work in Kindergarten recently! Our routines are starting to fall into place, and the class is doing such a nice job of following directions, treating friends kindly, and doing their best work each day. Below are a few pictures and summaries of what we have been doing during our time together!

The books we have read this week have all held important lessons on kindness. As we read Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes, we empathized with the main character as she was teased for her unique name. We talked about ways other students in the class could have helped Chrysanthemum stop the teasing. Then we celebrated all of our unique and beautiful names by signing our names on a class poster!






Next, we read The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig. In this story, a shy boy who feels invisible at school, with no one to talk to or play with, is changed by a new student in class who includes him. The new student simply used kind words, invited him to play with him, and included him as part of the group, and suddenly the main character was no longer invisible! We practiced using kind words with our classmates, made a promise to include anyone we see who may be feeling lonely, and uncovered our own hidden smiles.






We also read A Little Spot of Kindness by Diane Alber, which provided great discussion points on what it means to be kind, and ways in which we can spread kindness and do good deeds. We all received a spot of kindness to stick to the back of our hands as a visual reminder to do something kind. We hope to spread kindness at school and outside of school, every day! 




During calendar time, many of our math concepts have been slowly increasing in difficulty as we begin to work with larger numbers. So far, we have introduced place value with the tens and ones place in a number, ten frames, counting by ones and tens, and identifying days of the week and months of the year. In math, we have practiced grouping objects by pairs, and identifying similarities and differences between objects, and identifying and writing numbers.



I love watching the students do this exercise where they sort their cubes on a 4-square chart to show 1, 2, 3, and 4 cubes in each square. After observing how some students joined their cubes laying down on the paper, some joined them standing up like a tower, and others left them separated, we talked about how this is what it means to be a mathematician. All of us can do the problem or the task in different ways, but still arrive at the same answer! It was very cool to see and draw their attention to this representation of all of the different ways we can do a math problem.







We have been working hard to build our fine motor muscles, so we can have more control over our letter formation. We had fun rolling play dough and cutting segments. 


Our Handwriting Without Tears materials and routines help us to practice correct letter and number formation. We first practice on our chalkboards with a small sponge, then a pom pom to trace & dry, and then chalk to trace. After practicing on our chalkboards, we use our pencils to trace and write in our Handwriting Without Tears notebooks!




I think most of our Kindergarten friends would agree that centers are their favorite part of Kindergarten! They have been doing a wonderful job of learning how to share, take turns, work together, and handle disappointment that may occur during center time. In Kindergarten, we have two types of centers- free choice play centers, and center rotations. During center rotations, we do more academic based play activities, and our first set of center rotations were all Chester the Raccoon themed. He's one of our favorite characters! We matched lowercase and uppercase letters, matched numerals to collections of objects with that number, did a roll and cover number game, and found missing letters in alphabetical order. 





Last week our centers rotations focused on letters and names! We matched magnetic letters to spell our names as well as those of our friends, completed an ABC puzzle, sorted uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet and put them in order, practiced stamping and writing our names, and perhaps the favorite- made our names and those of our friends with play dough!








Computer time in the LMC is a recent highlight of our week! We have been practicing our click and drag skills with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom letter activities, a shape sort, and even learned all of the steps to locate the Kindergarten activities on the LMC website. We will continue to build our basic technological skills with these fun activities.







Last week, we started our All About Me bag routine, where I modeled the procedure for sharing our "Me Bags" to tell about ourselves and our favorite things. Each child has their own assigned week to share their "Me Bag", and on Friday of your child's week, you are invited to be a guest reader in our class! Because my own parents live far from here, Mr. Glaser served as my guest reader and shared a funny story our little Glasers enjoy, Dinosaur Police, complete with the silliest character voices! In the file folder you received on Curriculum Night, there is a letter about the Me Bag, and on the back of that letter is the schedule for the year. I will send you an email to confirm the week before it is your turn to read. I am excited to learn more about each of our friends in K-1!










Monday, September 2, 2019

Classroom News

What an incredible first week of Kindergarten we have had! We are getting settled in and feeling comfortable in our classroom! It has been so neat to watch new friendships form and personalities start to shine through as each day passes. We've been working hard to establish routines and build our classroom community.



First Day of Kindergarten from Lauren Glaser on Vimeo.

We spent first couple of days reading and comparing books with the lovable character, Chester the Raccoon. On the first day, we read The Kissing Hand, a story where the mother raccoon shares a kiss in Chester's hand to remind him that her love is always with him, even when he is at school. Chester was feeling nervous about his first day of school, just as many of us were! When we finished the book, we discovered that Chester left us a clue that kicked off a scavenger hunt around the school! We spotted raccoon tracks in the hallways, and followed them to find important places like the LMC, art room, music room, gym, and office. When we returned to the room, we found special hearts that Chester left for each of us. Our special hearts remind us that if we are ever missing someone at home, we can touch the heart to remind us that our grown ups love us!



Over the next few days, we read more Chester stories: Chester the Brave, and Chester and the Big, Bad Bully. Chester helped us learn about overcoming our fears and being a good friend. We also made our own Kissing Hand projects, which we brought home last week. Everyone did such a nice job following step by step directions!



We also compared Chester's school experience to our school experience, and worked together to identify a few differences between the two.


Calendar time is an important part of our day, as we tie in math concepts as well as weather observations, along with establishing a sense of community and starting our day together with a familiar routine. We began introducing some of our calendar routines this week. Each day there will be a different "Hello Helper" who will be our calendar assistant for the day.


During math, we have been exploring the numbers one and two, and will be focusing in great detail on the numbers 1-5 throughout this first unit of our Math in Focus curriculum. We spent time examining objects to identify similarities and differences, and made the discovery that some items can be the same AND different. For instance, the counters and cubes the students are using in the photos below can be the same because they are the same color, but different because one is a cube and one is a counter.






Some other highlights of our week included playing with friends, both at recess and during play centers time in the classroom, as these young friends learn to navigate social interactions and gain independence! 













We took our first steps towards writing this week as we began our Handwriting Without Tears lessons. We began by practicing correct pencil grip, followed by the introduction of Mat Man, a multi-sensory approach to drawing. We learned the Mat Man song and built our Mat Man together, focusing on the types of lines used to make each part of Mat Man's body. Next, we sang the song together again, pausing between phrases to draw each piece of our own Mat Man. I was so impressed with how our drawings turned out! Drawing is the second step to the writing process we will practice throughout the year: "Think, Draw, Label, Write".







The next step of our writing process, labeling, requires us to say the sounds we hear in a word and match them to the letter that makes that sound. We practiced this skill together as we matched letters to the alphabet chart that we keep on our tables. These alphabet charts come in handy as we are trying to match letters to sounds, so it was important to build our familiarity with these charts! 








We put these drawing and labeling skills into practice as we began our Jolly Phonics notebook. Each day, we read a short story about a new letter sound, learn a song and motion to help us remember the sound, and work together to generate two examples of a word that starts with that sound. We work together to stretch the sounds out in the word and try to match the sounds we hear to the letters we need to use to write the word. Next, we draw and label in our notebooks with the two ideas from class, and save the third box for our homework. So far, we have learned the sounds for the letters s, a, t, and i.



We put our writing skills into practice with a project to learn more about something each friend in our class likes to do!




I am looking forward to another terrific week in Kindergarten! We have so many fun adventures ahead!