Classroom News

I hope everyone is enjoying the last bit of Thanksgiving Break! I am so thankful for my sweet kindergarten class and their families. These little friends bring so much joy and wonder to my days- it is a gift to see the world through their eyes as they learn and explore! Their excitement about learning is contagious!

We are also very thankful for our Veterans! We had a special morning honoring family members and local Veterans at our Veterans Day program.

                                       

Math

We have just completed the unit on size, length, and weight comparison in math. During this unit, we focused on ordering objects by size, length, and weight, comparing sizes using words like bigger/smaller, shorter/longer, and heavier/lighter. We had a great time with many of the hands on activities to practice using this vocabulary in our math discussions.

I had to chuckle when I called on this friend to identify the lightest fruit in the picture, and she pointed to the cherries, as she wore a cherry headband! What a fun coincidence!

 Reading

We are continuing to explore features of books and what makes a successful reader during reading workshop time. We learned about the differences between fiction and nonfiction, and practiced sorting the books in our book bins into fiction or nonfiction piles.

We also spent time learning how to retell a story using specific words to start our sentences and keep our retelling on track, making sure to include all of the important events in a story!

We practiced having conversations with books with our turn and talk partners, identifying a thought or idea about a book, and then agreeing or disagreeing with our partner, and sharing our reasoning. Disagreeing about books is something that we learn to discuss respectfully and that it's okay to have differing ideas about what we are reading.

Punctuation marks are another feature of books that we are focusing on and learning how to change our reading depending on what type of punctuation mark we come across in a sentence. 

LMC

During LMC, we learned how to login to Freckle, and completed a pretest to help direct our individual learning on the site. We will be sending information home soon on how to use Freckle at home!

The book, Bob, Not Bob sparked a funny conversation for us about ways we can prevent the spread of germs! After the story, we sorted pictures into two categories- preventing germs and spreading germs.

Word Study & Writing Workshop

Our most recent word study focus was on clapping and identifying the number of syllables in a word. During writing workshop time, we wrote about a place we would like to go, and practiced labeling a picture. This is such an important step of our writing routine, and one that is sometimes forgotten! 

Zones of Regulation

Our latest Zones of Regulation lesson focused on identifying the size of a problem. We learned that the size of our reaction to a problem should match the size of the problem!

All About Me Weeks

We loved learning more about our friend, Sara! She shared with us some of her favorite collections, like her LOL dolls and Shopkins. She also showed us her favorite toy car, and a beautiful painting she did. She is quite an artist!

Andrew was next, and he shared with us a picture of him with his brothers, money from China, and a windmill that came with him from Ohio, where he lived before moving here! He also brought a book that is special to him, Andrew and the Superhero. He rounded out his presentation with his favorite pen and favorite toy car.

 We enjoyed having Andrew's dad visit us to read the silly story, There was an Old Lady who Swallowed Some Leaves!

I will leave you with two more pictures- one from Crazy Hair Day and these cuties enjoying the snow during recess one day!

Thanks for reading, and see you Monday!