End of October

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the lack of posts these past 2 weeks - life got busy!  Here's a quick recap of what we have been learning in Room 11 since the last update:

K Focus Centers: We have completed our first unit of community and have started Unit 2: Animals and Habitats.  We have started learning about tadpoles and frogs, and we are starting to learn about fish as well.  In the next few weeks, we will specifically focus on salmon and their life cycle.  Our dramatic play area has been transformed into a woodlands area where students are acting out life cycles of animals and their habitats.  At the block center, the challenge has been to recreate a tadpole or a frog with different blocks.  In the discovery center, the sand table has transformed into a water table.  We also have been sketching the outline of our bodies on butcher paper and labeling parts of the body.  We are using our scientific thinking to identify different features of children in the class and how some are the same and some are different.

In math, we have practiced identifying, counting and writing all of our numbers 0-9.  We have also discussed the concepts of greater than, less than and equal to.

For writing, students have been starting to sound out words to label and write sentences to match their drawings.  We have done personal recounts and are now moving into procedural and informational writing.

In phonics centers, we are continuing our letter names and sounds, starting to sound out simple words, clapping out syllables in words, and reading common sight words.

Shout out to our October Pride Star winners - Amy and Austin.  Great job showing how to be Responsible, Respectful and Safe in school! :)

Thank you to all who have donated socks for our Socktober drive - as of this morning, our class has brought in 250 pairs of socks to help those in need!

Reminder - tomorrow is Halloween and our family engagement activity.  9:45-10:45 families are invited in to our classroom for some pumpkin painting with their kindergartener.  All supplies will be provided for you. :)  Costumes are allowed at school tomorrow, but please no weapons or masks allowed.  Thank you.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Week of 10/8-10/12

Good evening kindergarten families,

I hope everyone has enjoyed their weekend!  Here's a recap of last week's learning, and a preview of the next few weeks:

Last week, we continued our phonics lessons by learning the letters and sounds of /a/ and /g/.  Students were able to practice forming the letters on their whiteboards, finding the letters in the alphabet with their magnet letter tiles, and matching the letter name with the sound it makes.  We reviewed stretching out our vowel sounds.  We have now introduced the letters t, b, f, n, m, i, u, c, o, a, and g.

In phonics centers, we are working on syllable sorting, rhyming, writing beginning sounds, conversational skills using the prompt "I like to ____________________ when I am with my friends.", and using our chromebooks to play phonics game.  As always, we are also practicing independent and buddy reading in the library area.

Our book this past week was The Name Jar, and this week we are focusing in on the story Big Al and Shrimpy.  We are doing a close read to identify the author's purpose for writing and what message the author wanted to share with his readers.

We completed our first quarter writing task on Chrysanthemum.  After reading, students were asked to draw and label pictures of the main character and setting of the story.  We will be finishing up our inital study of personal recounts this week.

In math, we are now working on identifying, counting, and writing our numbers 6-9.

For PBIS, we are watching videos of Bubbles, our school mascot, making poor choices around school, and learning what better choices there are to show how to be responsible, respectful, and safe.  These videos have led to good class discussions on how to behave at school.  We will continue watching more of these videos this week.

Kudos to Javiel, Jayden, and Amy for receiving last week's positive notes for excellent behavior! :)

Reminders: Picture Day is tomorrow, Monday, October 15.  Socktober continues the remainder of the month and donations can be brought right into our classroom.  Class brick donations can be brought in anytime.  Finally, Fundraising order forms are due back by October 26.

Here's to a wonderful week of new learning! :)

Welcome to October!

Hello kindergarten families,

Hard to believe that we are already done with the month of September!  It was a busy, fun-filled month of laughing, learning, and developing our rituals and routines.   Welcome to October and all the new things we will be learning this month!

We are really in the swing of things with our new Boston K Curriculum and the daily centers that go along with it.  Students are learning all about Our Community through the read-alouds this month.  We read Abiyoyo, Abuela, Amazing Grace, Chrysanthemum and The Name Jar.  We have focused on how everyone is different and unique and special in their own way.  The class has also focused in on the concept of characters and settings in a story, and we have been recreating these concepts of print in our centers.

In our Art Studio center, we have explored a lot of different concepts with paint.  We introduced the primary colors of yellow, red, and blue and have practiced with color mixing to create new colors.  Later, we introduced the color white to explore color tinting.  Finally, we added black to the mix to see what happens then.  In addition to easel painting, we have recently added watercolor painting, which has quickly become a class favorite! The walls of our classroom are now covered in beautiful watercolor creations!

In the dramatic play area, we are focusing on how to retell a story with storyacting.  We have read our read-alouds many times, so students are very familiar with the stories.

At the block center, we are trying to recreate settings in the stories we have read.  We are building Abiyoyo's village, Abuela's cityscape and have recently begun to create our school and classroom communities.  We have introduced adding signs and pictures from the writing and drawing center to make our block structures even better!

In our science and discovery center, we have been working on using our five senses to describe different items.  We've brainstormed words to describe how things feel (smooth, hard, rough, bumpy, scaly, scratchy, soft, etc)  We have also used the sense of sight to observe the classroom and draw a classroom map of the important features.  This week, we are focusing on our sense of hearing and how to categorize items into columns labeled Loud, Quiet, and Silent.

In writing, we started with oral storytelling.  We are now beginning to draw and write about personal recounts, after reading the story Bippity Bop Barbershop.  We have discussed the "orientation" of a story - the who, when, where and what of our story.  We are practicing sequence of events and how to draw a conclusion from a story.  Later this week, we will be learning about verbs and how to act out the personal recounts we are writing.

Math has us learning all about our numbers to 5!  We have learned how to count, write, sequence and compare numbers 0-5 using the words greater than, less than and equal to.  We are doing lots of practice with these concepts in our daily math stations.

Finally, we are learning a lot about letters and their sounds in our phonics lessons.  So far, we have learned about the letters t, f, b, n, m, i, u, c and o.  We practice how to form the letters in writing, the sounds the letter makes, and identify a keyword to help us remember the letter sound.  We reinforce these concepts in our daily WOW stations in the afternoon, our morning Fundations lessons, and our weekly phonics poems.

As you can see, kindergarten has been a busy place!  We are 27 days in and have already made such great progress! :)  Of course, we are also working on being kind, respectful and good members of our classroom and school communities.

Shout out to our September PRIDE Star winners - Sydney and Javiel!  And a happy birthday to our September babies - Aiden and Griffin!

Please remember that October is Socktober - any new pairs of socks that you can donate will greatly help someone in need through Hope and Faith and Crossroads RI.  Thank in advance for your generosity!

Have a great week! :)