December

This past week, we kicked off the month of December with some holiday fun!  The students really enjoyed a performance of holiday songs by the Glee Club today to get us all in the holiday spirit.  We have been reading various versions of the Gingerbread stories and comparing and constrating these stories.  We will continue these into next week with Gingerbread crafts and activities to go along with them.  This week, our focus was letter Hh and next week, we will move onto the letter Ii.  Students from Belleville East came today to

The December sight words were sent home this week, and we will be working on these words throughout the month.  Please practice at home as well.

November Family Project

The class loved sharing their turkey creations!  It was so much fun to hear about all of their unique disguises and the family members that helped them!  Thank you families for your participation in this!  Check out all of the disguises below!

November News

Last Week

Last week, we learned about the letter Ee.  We read several elephant books and made our Ee word list.  Students used this list to help them with their journal writing.  They enjoyed the story, Elmer, by David McKee and colored their own Elmer the Elephant.

In math, we worked on recognizing the numbers 11 - 15 as well as counting objects that correspond with the numbers.  We finished playing our Pumpkin Number game from the week before.  The ghost hides behind one of the pumpkins and the students take turns guessing which pumpkin it is behind.  In November, we will extend this game by hiding a turkey behind the pumpkin and the students will practice writing the numbers as they guess.  They have a lot of fun guessing and it is a fun way to practice the numbers!

Our poem of the week last week was about Pumpkins.  This came home with your child as one of the homework activities.  This week, we will have a poem about friends for our letter of the week.

This Week

This week, our letter focus will be Ff.  Today, the class wrote in their journals about words that start with an Ff.  We also spent time learning about Veteran's Day.  The second grade classes did a wonderful presentation for the school in honor of  Veteran's Day.  During this assembly, they presented the word of the month for November - Peace. Please remember to bring in canned foods for our November food drive!  The school is trying to reach the goal of 800 cans by Friday!  We appreciate everyone that has sent in items already.

When we return to school on Wednesday, we will be learning about Pilgrims, Indians and Thanksgiving.  This theme will continue on for the next two weeks.  We will focus on several writing and research activities on this topic.  We will also incorporate many fun crafts, and learning games into our activities in the coming weeks! Thank you to all of you that have returned your Family Turkey.  If you have not had time to complete this yet, that's okay.  Please return it when you are finished and your child will share it with the class. Sharing the family projects are part of the speaking and listening lessons we complete in Kindergarten.  Check out all of the fun October Family Pumpkins from last month! It is always so enjoyable to listen to the students share their family creations.

October Fun

This week, we did not have a new letter of the week because it was a short week. Instead, we spent some time reviewing all of our letters and the popcorn words that we have learned so far.  Please remember to review the October sight word list at home.  We will continue with letter Dd next week.

Yesterday, the class did some research on pumpkins and learned about pumpkins and how they grow.  We used the information to make a pumpkin graphic organizer.  The students then wrote three things about pumpkins and sequenced the life cycle of pumpkins.  Their hard work is hanging on our classroom door.  They did such an amazing job with their writing!! I was very proud of them.  They can not wait to bring these home and share them with their families!

We also had some fun reading a Mickey Mouse Haunted House story and making a class book about a spooky night! :)  Be sure to check out the class books when you come in for conferences.  Our class book bucket is sitting outisde of our classroom.  We try to make one class book every week.

The class also used their cutting and listening skills to make some ghosts to decorate our classroom for the upcoming Halloween party.

Along with our everyday math lessons from Chapter 2 in our math series, we have been working on patterns.  This week the students made AAB patterns with pumpkins and bats.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns reagarding your child's progress in Kindergarten!

Bb Week

This past week, we have focused on learning and writing the letter Bb.  We had two new sight words for the week: see, be.  Please review these with your child at home.  We spent time reading several fall stories this week, painting fall leaves and trees, and making jack-o-lanterns.  The students also worked on making various fall patterns.  The class did a great job making owls to decorate our bulletin board for the new season (picure below).

The class has been working on journal writing and we have also made a few class books that you will be able to look at during parent-teacher conferences.  Parent-teacher conference reminders were sent home this week.  If the time listed does not work out for you, please let me know!

Our  new poem this week was about a bear. We again used the poem to practice word order, word identification and rhyming words.   Please read this with your child when he/she brings the poem home.

Homework: 
October Reading Logs - Read each night and color a pumpkin.
Ocotober Family Pumpkins - Due October 15
Sight Words - Reivew at home: color words & the, here, is, see, be

Specials Schedule for the week of Oct. 13

M - No School     T - Computer       W - PE    

 TH - Art        F - Music 

Aa Week

This week, we have been busy learning about apples and the letter Aa!  Below you will find a few photos of the activities that we have been doing in class.  We have used our apple poem to learn about word spacing, patterns in print, rhyming, and sentence structure. We labeled the parts of the apple, sequenced an apple tree through the seasons and made a few apple crafts using our fine motor skills.

October Popcorn Words came home this week!  This week's words are: the, here, is.  

Please practice at home!

This is what we are working on every day in class.  Many students have been able to sign our charts for being superstar listeners and speakers!

The students had fun painting apples on the tree.  

This is always one of my favorite Kindergarten keepsakes. :)

Great work using those little finger muscles to tear the paper for our apple craft!

This is our apple poem in the pocket chart.  

We practiced mixing up the words and putting them back together.

In math, we have used ten frames to show how many while learning about the numbers 6, 7 and 8. Tomorrow, we will focus on writing the number 6, 7, and 8.

Homeowork:
Reading -Your child should read our apple poem 3 times and return the signed slip tomorrow.
Math - Chapter 2-Lesson 2 Homework Sheet
October Reading Log - Read for about 10 minutes with your child and color a pumpkin.
Ocotber Family Project - This came home today, but is not due until Oct. 15.  Have fun creating this with your child!

OCTOBER SNACK:
A note came home today about snack.  Please send snack with your child next week!

Catching Up

We have been a busy class this last week and a half!  Sorry that I have not had a chance to update our blog recently.  So, here's an overview of what we have been doing and what's to come!

Last Week:
We spent a lot of time reviewing in math.  We reviewed one to one correspondence, numbers 0 - 5, counting to tell how many, greater than, less than, and equal to.  If your child is having trouble with any of these concepts at home, please review at home as well.  We also worked with patterns and extending patterns.
We finished up our letter of the day program for our phonics lessons.  Below there are a few pictures of the crafts we made to go along with these letters.
We also finished all of our lessons for our story, Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come.

A Look Ahead:
This week, our letter focus is Aa.  Today our lesson was on becoming Superstar Letter Detectives!  The students practiced looking for the letter A, hearing the letter, sorting and writing the letter!  We will have several Aa lessons this week that will go along with our theme of apples for this week.  We will also be learning an apple poem this week to work on word order, sentences, and rhyming words.  In Language Arts, we are reading the story, Boomer Goes to School by Constance McGeorge. Your child's first Pre-Decodable book came home yesterday.  When these small books come home, please read them at home with your child, sign and return to school.
We also began Chapter 2 in math yesterday.  This chapter will focus on numbers 6 - 10 and ordinal numbers.

Letter T - Turtles

Letter S - Snakes

Today in Kindergarten

Both yesterday and today, we practiced sequencing the events from our story, Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come.  Yesterday, the class sequenced all of the story events after we reviewed the story together.  Today, we focused on a particular section of the story.  As Henry walked to Kindergarten, he imagined all of the things he would do in Kindergarten.  We put his thoughts in order today.  Both of these activities came home today with your child.  Please ask him/her about the story.

In Math, both yesterday and today, we have been reveiwing Chapter 1.  Tomorrow we will have a Chapter 1 Test.  It will be a fairly simple test and then we will move onto Chapter 2 on Thursday.

Today, we focused on learning the sound of the letter Pp.  We read a couple of stories about pigs and the students painted pink pigs at the end of the day!

Reminders:
Homework - Today students came home with two review homework sheets for math to help them prepare for the test. Please return this tomorrow!
Wednesday is Hat Day!  Bring $1 to donate to our Character Education Fund and you can wear a hat to school.
Wednesday is also 2:00 Dismissal.
Friday is the Kindergarten Grandparent's Lunch!  If a grandparent can not come, a parent, aunt, uncle, etc. can attend in their place.

Ll is for Lizard!

Today, we continued on with the letter of the day and the students turned a large letter L into a lizard for our activity at the end of the day.  Most of these came home today unless your child was not quite finished.  We reviewed Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come, focusing on the characters and setting of the story.  Our math lesson was a review and assessment today, so NO MATH HOMEWORK!  Please review color words with your child at home and remember to read for at least 10 minutes.  The reading record sheet for August and September is due at the end of the month!

Kk is for kites!

Today, we learned about the sounds of Kk and the students made kites this afternoon.  In our language arts lessons, we will be focusing on characters and setting for our Kindergarten story of the week.  We will finish up the week with some sequencing activities for the story.

REMINDER: Please help your child cut apart the color word flashcards that were sent home today.  Below is a link to the flash cards in case you need extra!

Color Word Flash Cards

September 8

Today we read the story, Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come.  This will be our story for the week that several of our langauge arts lesson will focus around.  Please ask your child about Henry the mouse and his first day of Kindergarten! We also focused on letter Jj for our letter of the day program.

REMINDER: Character T-shirt orders & money are due tomorrow!
BOOK ORDERS:  If you would like to order any Sholastic Book orders, I will be submitting an order at the end of this week.  You can order at www.scholastic.com/bookclubs  with our classroom code: GMY9Y

REMIND APP

I sent a note home today explaining a "Remind" app that you can download.  You can join my classroom by entering the class code @e6da8.  You will then be notifiied via text messaging of important dates, events, etc.  It's a great way to stay informed!  I encourage you to sign up!

Have a great weekend!  Check out the "My Classroom" tab for next week's schedule.

G is for Gumballs

 GUMBALLS GALORE!

So much fun!!  This was great fine motor work for the class.  They really had to work those little finger muscles in order to turn the construction paper squares into circles and fill up the gumball machine! Try it at home. Give your child a square piece of paper (any size).  Have him/her cut off all four corners and trim up the pointy edges in order to make a circle ("little tiny baby snips" we call them).  The possibilities are endless!  Encourgae your child to use his/her imagination and create a masterpiece!

 

Letter of the Day & My Math

This week, we continue with our letter of the day program.  We focused on letter Ff yesterday and ended the day by reading the story, Finklehopper Frog,  by Irene Livingston .  The students created their own Finklehoppers.  The picture below is a sneak peek of a few that finished early. Love these frogs!  They always make me smile! :) The class did a great job!  Today, we will talk about the letter Gg and make gumball machines!

Our My Math lessons are moving right along!  Thank you for reviewing at home and keeping up with the nightly homework.  Last week, we focused on counting and writing to show how many.  This week, we will learn how to compare the numbers and learn more than, less than and equal.

Reminders

Next week, we will continue on with our letter of the day program, focusing on letters F - I.  We will also continue in Chapter 1 of My Math.  Chapter 1 focuses on counting and writing from 0-5.

Next week's schedule:
From now on, I will place the Weekly Schedule under the "My Classroom" tab.  It will be easier to locate there for your reference.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns regarding the start of our school year! We are off to a great start!   Have a wonderful long weekend with your family!  There is no math homework today, just try to squeeze in a little bit of reading time!

IMPORTANT DATES
Sept. 1 - No School
Sept. 9- Character Shirt orders due
Sept. 17 - 2:00 Dismissal
Sept. 19 - Grandparent's Lunch (a note came home today.)

A, B, C . . Letter of the Day!

We have started our letter of the day program this week!  We have briefly introduced A, B, and C so far and will continue with D & E for the rest of the week. For each letter, we will focus on the sound and formation of the letter.  It will be a brief introduction through the entire alphabet.  Once letter of the day is compelete, then we will move onto to our letter of the week program.  During letter of the week, we will focus more on the sounds in words, letter formation of upper and lower case letters, and various literacy activites that go along with each letter.

Letter B

Yesterday, we read the story The Wheels on the School Bus by Mary Alice Moore.  This is one of my favorite letter B books.  The students are familiar with the tune and it's a lot of fun.  Check out the adorable school buses the class made yesterday!  I love how they brighten up our door!  

This activity came from Kimberly at www.learncreatelove.com!  

School Bus Craft

 

Homework Information

What a great start to the second week of school!  The class is doing a nice job learning our routines and epxectations.  Yesterday, some homework was sent home.  In your child's folder, there was a nightly reading record sheet.  Please use this for the next several weeks to log your reading at home.  When students bring it back at the end of September, they will receive a small prize. Please try to read to your child each night for a few minutes.  Research shows that students who are read to become better readers!

Your child also came home with printing homework last night.  If you didn't have time to complete this with your child, please do so this evening and return tomorrow.

My Math:  This week, we began our new math series.  There will be a short math homework sheet almost every night this year.  I won't send math homework on Fridays.  Also, days when we are introducing a new chapter (like yesterday), there will not usually be homework.  PLEASE check your child's folder each night for homework, ensure it is completed correclty, and return it the next day.  This extra practice and reinforcment at home is very important.  I appreciate your support.  As always, please remember to talk with your child about his/her day at school and ask many questions!  And...READ! READ! READ!