The Three Little PigsWe have been reading different versions of The Three Little Pigs. The children are making comparisons between the stories, noticing how the characters, setting, and events are similar or different. We took turns acting the stories out as our classmates helped to retell the stories. The kids loved being the actors in the story! Problem SolvingPattern Block PuzzlesWe worked with a partner to solve some Pattern Block Puzzles. Sharing the work with a friend made our job a little bit easier! We will soon begin solving and recording Shape Puzzles on our own.
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Thinking About CharactersCan you name a favorite book character? Can you tell something about that character? Readers think about characters to help them understand the story and make predictions. We met a fun new character named Petunia in the story A Pet for Petunia by Paul Schmid. We talked about what we learned about Petunia from this story. Then we read another story about her. We were curious to see if what we learned from the first story about Petunia might also be true in the next story, Petunia Goes Wild, and it was! We hope Paul Schmid writes more stories about Petunia! DecomposingWe have been doing a lot of work composing and decomposing numbers from 0 to 5. This foundational understanding is very important to the children as they problem solve and it also supports them in learning basic addition and subtraction facts. We want the kids to be able to tell the parts that make up a number (5 can be 2 and 3, or 1 and 4 or...). Through exploring the many ways we could compose and decompose numbers from 0-5 we discovered that when finding all the ways to make a number it will always have one more way then the number you are trying to find. For example, there are 6 ways to make 5 and 5 ways to make 4. Reading Poems and BooksWe have added many new poems and books to our reading binder over the past several weeks. We are locating our "popcorn/snap" words in all that we read. Reconstructing poems and books on the pocket chart is another way that we read in our classroom. This calls the kids to really look closely at the text as they reassemble familiar books and poems. We are making sure that we point under the words as we read. Pointing under the first letter is helpful because it ensures our eyes are right where they need to be when solving tricky parts of a text. There Was An Old Lady...Last week your child will bring home a paper Old Lady (see picture) to enjoy sharing with you at home. We read and sang the books, "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" and "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie." After reading both books the students colored and cut out the foods and animals the Old Lady ate. They then put them in the stomach of the Old Lady that they colored. Over the last week or so they have been spending time practicing retelling and singing the song with friends. The Old Lady is for your child to keep at home to enjoy retelling and singing this classic tale. Salute to AmericaIt was so nice to see so many of you at the Salute to America program. Thank you to everyone who provided refreshments for after the show. We appreciate your help. If you were unable to catch the show, you can see it here! Enjoy!
Telling and Writing StoriesWe have been sharing stories about us since the start of school. Each day we have a chance to share a quick piece of news during our Headline News Circle. We share things like, "I had soccer practice last night and we got rained on." or "I went to the park with my friend and we pushed each other on the swings." We have learned a lot about each other through this routine at the start of our day. During Writing Workshop time we are also sharing stories about ourselves. We have been turning the stories we have been telling out loud into books. It is so important at this age for children to be telling and hearing stories told aloud. At home it would be helpful for your child to be hearing you tell stories and having them tell you a story. For example, if you went to the pumpkin patch to get a pumpkin you and child could retell the story together. You could prompt them by going back and thinking what happened first, then next and so on. This will support them here at school as we tell and write stories from their lives. Word Wall and Reading NotebookThis year we will be using a white binder that we will fill with poems and easy to read short books. These white binders that we call our "Reading Notebooks" will be used regularly and added to throughout the year. We will use them during reading time at the beginning of our day and during reading workshop. We have already added a few favorite poems and songs like "Zero the Hero", "Big Black Buy," and "To the Bus." These songs, poems and stories will also helps us think about and look at the high frequency words we will learn to read and write through kindergarten. Along with our "Reading Notebooks" that help us think about high frequency words we will also be using a word wall in our room that we can go to and pull words off to help us when we are writing. We will refer to these words as "popcorn words" or words we need to know in a "snap"because these are words we just need to know. We can't try to stretch them out, we just need to know them quickly and right away. We will work on these words and add to our word wall through the whole year. Racing BearsThis week we learned a new game called "Racing bears." This a game that can be played by ourselves or with a partner. There are four bears at the bottom of the game board that have to move ten spots to capture a button at the top of the game board. This game helps us to think about subitizing the dots on a dice, counting spot to move the bear closer to capturing the button, and also how a whole number can be split into parts. For example, if I rolled a 6 and I only need to move two spots to capture a button, then I will have to move another bear four more spots to complete my turn.
Living vs. Non-LivingOver the last week we have spent time reading, discussing, and wondering about what things in our world are living vs. non-living. We realized that there are five questions we can ask ourselves to help us identify what makes something living. "Does it move all by itself?, Does it breathe?, Does it need food and water to survive?, Does it reproduce? Does it grow and change?" Through answering these questions we began to realize what things in our world are actually living. We also realized that there are some things, like seeds, in our world that have the potential to be living, but are not always alive. The Zoo Came to Visit GREGlacier Ridge raised over $3,000.00 through the Tiger Trot for tiger conservation. The Columbus Zoo wanted to thank us by bringing some animals for us to learn about. Thank you for your support! Visit to the Glacier Ridge Metro ParkWe had a wonderful visit to Glacier Ridge Metro Park. Miss Chrissy helped us learn about the gifts of trees and how seeds travel from place to place. We also spent time observing many different nuts, seeds and berries that mice, deer, birds, bears and squirrels eat. Park Ranger Neil and Ms. Sarah took us on a nature walk on the red oak trail and we discovered so many neat things! We found an old hornets nest, buck antlers, snake skin, spiders, old tree stomps, mushrooms, leaves and nuts! It was fun observing the forest in the fall!
Comparing Our NamesThe students enjoyed looking closely at each others names this week. We built name sticks, using snap cubes, to show the length of our name. We compared our name to our friends' names and recorded our findings on a paper. We shared what we learned about our name as it compared to others' name. We figured out who had the least amount of letters in their name in the class and who had the most.
Tiger TrotOur annual Tiger Trot was HOT! After reading and writing about tigers and talking about what ways we, as kindergarteners, can help the tigers, we enjoyed "trotting" to the Glacier Ridge Metro Park to help raise awareness! The students had fun walking with the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders, as well as indulging in a nice cold popsicle when they got back to school! YUM! Bears in the CaveAs we continue to grow our number sense, specifically with the number 5, we played a game called "bears in the cave" this week. The students played with a partner. They were given 5 bears with which they would hide some in the cave, or leave some out of the cave. One student would hide the bears, while the other person would use their number sense of 5 to figure out how many bears were still in the cave. Our goal is to be able to quickly determine how many bears are missing. We love this game! Have you played at home yet? Tiger Math ProblemWe solved a tricky problem about tigers this week during math! The students were given the following problem: There are 5 tigers at the zoo. They can be inside a cage or out in an open space. Show all the ways the tigers could be in the cage and open space. For example, 3 tigers could be in the cage, while 2 tigers could be out in the open space. The students had to persevere as they worked to find as many ways as possible for the tigers to be in their habitat. Our earlier work investigating 5 was helpful as we worked to solve this complex problem. This type of problem allows the students to be creative with their thinking! Our Mentor Authors: Eric Carle and Mercer MayerWe are kindergarten writers and we have stories to tell! During Writing Workshop, we love to hear stories and so far this year we have heard quite a few of them. Two authors that we have taken a closer look at are Eric Carle and Mercer Mayer. As well looked closely at Eric Carle's books, we noticed that he uses a lot of color in his drawings. We also noticed that, at times, he zooms-in to the most important part of what he wants to show. We are trying to do these things in our own writing. Mercer Mayer's wordless books about a boy and his frog are wonderful! It is so fun to tell the story as we look at his drawings. The expressions on the character's faces are what we noticed about Mercer Mayer's work! On your next stop to the public library, check out some of his wordless books. They are so much fun to read! We will be trying to give our characters expressive faces just like our mentor, Mercer Mayer. Comparing Lengths/Measuring
Dot DayOn September 15th it was International Dot Day. In celebration of Dot Day, we read the book The Dot by Peter Reynolds. This day was started because of this book. We learned and thought about how the book taught us to be brave, try, never give up and most of all to help someone else. After reading the book each child created their own unique dot with their fifth grade buddy and thought about how they help at home or at school. Each dot now has a message that the fifth or fourth grade buddy wrote for their kindergarten that tells how they are helpful! We will continue to think about and work on being helpful to others. The dots are hanging throughout the building. We read the "The Dot" online on Tumble Books. You can get to Tumble Books by going to the library web page. It is on the the right hand side of the screen a little ways down the page.
Inventory BagsAccurately counting and representing How Many? is an important math skill. We had a lot of fun with Inventory Bags! We counted, doubled checked to make sure we were accurate and then recorded how many items were in the bag. We had to double check our representations too! We are working on showing How Many? in more than one way. This is an activity that you could set up for your child at home. Grab some brown paper lunch bags and fill them with items from around the house: spoons, uncooked pasta, wrapped candy, Legos, crayons, ... Give your son or daughter blank paper and they can record How Many? The kids also recorded the item in the bag by writing the word. They were BRAVE writers and recorded the words "Just Like a Kindergartner!" Learning about TigersWe have been learning a lot of interesting facts about tigers as we prepare for the annual Glacier Ridge Tiger Trot. Together, we wrote about some of the things we learned through a practice called interactive writing. During interactive writing, the students use white boards and dry erase markers to write words in our message. We are brave and give words a try. We say the words slowly and listen for the sounds. This a time for the students to work on developing their letter/sound connection as well as practice letter formation and high frequency words. We take turns coming to the easel to add the words to our message. We took our work public by hanging our writing and our art work in the hallway. We hope everyone will stop to read about why tigers need our help and to learn some interesting facts about tigers.
Thinking about 5In kindergarten we will be working to develop a strong sense of number. Number Sense refers to a student's flexible thinking about numbers. We want the kids to know the parts that make up a given number and to be able to use that knowledge to solve problems. Currently, we are not attaching number sentences or symbols to our work. We started thinking about 5 by doing a simple activity in which the students used 5 red and yellow counters. The counters are red on one side and yellow on the other. The students dropped the chips on the table and then recorded the way they landed. They did this 8 different times. As a class, we looked at our recordings and organized them into groups. After organizing all the recordings, we talked about what we noticed. As we continue to work with 5 and later other numbers, we will refer back to this work. The more experiences the students have with this type of work, and over time, they will come to understand that 5 can be represented in several different ways and this will support them as they think about number and solve problems. Visiting the Kindergarten TreeThis week we visited The Kindergarten Tree for the first time. After reading the story The Busy Tree, and talking about the importance of trees, we took a close-up look at the beautiful tree in front of our school. Each child made a drawing of the tree. We talked about making our drawing match what we saw. We will visit our tree often during the school year and watch how it changes. Letter BooksIt was a lot of work, but the children have finished their work on their personal letter book! We looked at and read many different alphabet books. Each child found pictures of things that start with the same letter as their first name using Pixie and with support from alphabet books. The pictures were printed, the students cut them out and then added the label for each picture. Soon (when teachers get everything laminated, cut out and made into booklets) we will have a lot of new books to help us think about letters and sounds. :0
Pixie 4A big part of the learning we do in kindergarten is exploring and creating on our own and collaborating with others. We spent a couple days doing those exact things using Pixie4. Pixie is a program on the computer or iPad that allows children to create pictures, write words, create stories, and record their voice and even take photos. Right now the children have learned how to paint, add stickers to their creations and add some words. This is a program we will continue to use throughout the year. It was very neat to see what each group was creating and talking about together. If you are interested in learning more about Pixie, just ask! This is a great educational program. You can also get this prpgram on an iPad as well. Our PromiseBefore writing our class promises below are a few of the stories that guided our discussions and our thinking. Ask your child about these stories and what message the author is sending. After so much reading, thinking and talking we created Our Promise. We worked together to write the promise and then we all signed it with a drawing of ourselves as well as our names. Our FlagOn Friday, we learned that a patriot is someone who loves their country. We talked about The USA and how it is made up of 50 states. We looked at our flag and noticed the 50 stars for each state. We noticed the 13 stripes for the original 13 colonies. We each made a small part of the flag and then brought our pieces together to make one big flag. Counting JarCounting and recording how many are two important math skills. We read Mouse Count by Ellen Stolls Walsh and then counted a set of objects in our classroom Counting Jar. We each showed how many objects there were and then shared our work. We came up with different ways to show how many. Take a look! Problem Solving on the FarmTaking risks and making mistakes is all in a days work! We had fun singing Old Mac Donald's Had a Farm and then thinking about farm animals as we solved math problems. Drawing pictures was very helpful as we worked on the problems. We discovered that there are different ways to solve some problems. We listened to our friends share their solutions. When someone makes a mistake, it's ok! We know that mistakes are a part of learning!
The kids are off to a GREat start in Kindergarten! We marked Friday as our 13th day of school, and the kids are really getting into the swing of things. Please view the Blog portion of the Weebly site with your child and ask them to tell you about the photos posted here. We LOVE Books!The children begin each and every day with books! We love to read with our friends. Here you can see some pictures of us reading together! Building with 15 CubesThe children spent one day creating anything they wanted with cubes and then the next day they counted out 15 cubes. They then built something out of the 15 cubes. The children added captions to their photos of their creation. We practiced saying the words slowly, listening for sounds, and recording the sounds with letters. Our work is now hanging in our rooms! Writing Just Like a KindergartnerWe read Bunny Cakes by Rosemary Wells and talked about how Max tried his best to write a message to the grocer to get some yummy candy, Red Hot Marshmallow Squirters! In Max's own way, he was able to communicate to the grocer what he wanted. He did the best he could for a very little bunny. We talked about writing in kindergarten. We discussed that we won't write like the teacher or our parents or older brothers and sisters just yet. We will write like kindergartners! We talked about saying words slowly and listening for the sounds of letters. Below you can see pictures of how we worked together to write Red Hot Marshmallow Squirters - just like kindergartners! Bus SafetyLast week a Dublin Bus Driver helped us learn how to be safe in and around a school bus. Ask your child about how they should sit on the bus (back to the back of the seat and bottom on the bottom of the seat.) Have them tell you about the safety zone all around a school bus (must stay 10 big steps away from all sides of the bus). Ask them to tell you about the hand signals the bus driver uses to signal kids to stop and to go (hand held up means to stop and a lowered hand means they can go). Math GameWe played a matching game that helped us think about how many dots were on a 5 Frame and then match it to the correct numeral. Here are some pictures of us playing the game with friends in our classroom. Writing WorkshopYour child has jumped right into creating their own books during writing workshop. We have been reading books by Eric Carle and discovering a lot about his illustrations and writing. We have noticed how Eric Carle uses multiple colors as he creates the grass, sky, animals... everything! We also noticed how he sometimes zooms-in to the picture. He did this in The Very Hungry Caterpillar on the page of the egg on a leaf and in Pancakes! Pancakes! on the last page when the boy is eating the pancake. We are thinking about why Eric Carle might do these things. The children are trying out some of these techniques in their own illustrations. You will hear us talk about Mentors all year long as we grow as writers and illustrators! Building BridgesThe kids had a lot of fun being problem solvers as they worked in teams to build bridges out of paper and cups. As members of a team, the children are learning how to collaborate, sharing the work and encouraging friends to join in and help. They are getting opportunities to share their thinking, while also listening to their classmates. They are experiencing failure and learning to keep trying. Collaborating, Sharing Ideas with Confidence and Persevering are 3 of the 6 Habits of Thinkers which we will focus on throughout the year. Creating a bridge allowed the children to explore engineering, estimating, and scientific concepts like strength, flexibility, and other properties of materials. A note about letter formation... OK, maybe it's a novel.The children work on quick and efficient letter formation of lower case letters everyday in kindergarten. Please reinforce what you see us working on at home (check your child's sign-in sheets to see our focus.)
Important concepts to remember: *almost all letters begin at the top *Magic 'c' helps to form the lower case letters of a, d, g, and q *most letters are formed without picking up your pencil (one fluid movement is our goal!) *we pair spoken words with our formation example for lower case 'a'- "magic 'c', up, down" Why do we focus on all of this? This type of formation (De'Nelian) is quicker, more efficient, and more legible. We want the formation to be done with little thought so that the writer can focus on the most important thing-- their message. This is ongoing work! Sometimes even beautiful handwriting is not efficient. Watch your child to see how they are forming the letters when they write at home. If they are inefficient, hop over to a blank piece of paper to practice and then go back to their written piece. We do a lot of letter formation practice during interactive writing. This is when we compose a message together on the large chart paper. All of the students are working on white boards. We are brave as we try to record the sounds we hear in the word we next want to add to the chart. After we work on recording the sounds, we often do some quick formation work. Our letter formation practice is imbedded in real writing. This is what you can do at home! When your child is adding a sign to a Lego or block creation, or making a grocery list, or writing a card, this is a good time to show them correct letter formation. Pick one or two things to work on. Remember the message is the most important thing. Happy writing! |
AuthorWe are thrilled to be in Kindergarten working, playing and learning alongside your child. Check the blog to see what we have been up to in Kindergarten! Archives
December 2016
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