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