Today marks the 31st day of school. Students are becoming more familiar with the routines and expectations of kindergarten with each passing day. It’s really exciting to see so many friendships forming. Our name posters are done and hanging in our classroom! Please feel free to come in and check them out!
Open Circle:
In open circle this week, students watched a puppet show about Molly, the cow. Molly got really excited when Mrs. Bonzey told the class that they were going to be celebrating a friend’s birthday at school. Molly got so excited that she started hugging and jumping all over her friends and screaming about how happy she was. At the end of the puppet show, we talked about the problems that had arisen and students offered suggestions about different ways that Molly could show she was excited in a more appropriate way. We also talked about how sometimes friends don’t like to be hugged or touched and it’s important to be respectful of other people’s personal space. We reenacted the puppet show in a more appropriate way and all decided that it turned out much better the second time.
Reader’s Workshop:
In reader’s workshop last week students were introduced to the writing grid that helps us learn how to form letters correctly. Your child may have come home talking about the sky line, plane line, grass line and worm line.
This week students were introduced to the letter ‘t’ and the sound that it makes. We spent time generating a list of words that begin with the /t/ sound, finding the letter ‘t’ in our daily morning message and engaging in a variety of activities. Students also spent time searching around our classroom as “detectives” looking for all of the places that the letter ‘t’ could be found.
In reader’s workshop we have also been learning about words. We are learning that words are made when letters come together. We practiced reading and pointing to the words in “My Tt Book” that students will bring home in their Friday folder next week.
Next week we learn about the letter ‘b’.
Read Alouds & Shared Reading:
Through daily read alouds and shared reading experiences students are being exposed to many introductory skills that will help them develop their understanding of letters, words, and print. This week we talked about what a title is, where we begin reading, and what direction we read in (from left to right).
Poetry Corner:
The students’ poetry folders are continuing to grow. This week’s poem is actually more of a song about pumpkins that caught the students’ attention quickly.
Have You Ever Seen a Pumpkin?
(Sung to “Have You Ever Seen a Lassie?”)
Have you ever seen a pumpkin,
a pumpkin, a pumpkin
Have you ever seen a pumpkin that grows on a vine?
A round one, a tall one,
a fat one, a small one.
Have you ever seen a pumpkin that grows on a vine?
On Wednesday we made up hand motions to help us remember the words. Ask your child to sing this song with you and show you the hand motions.
Writer’s Workshop:
The authors in KB have been doing a fabulous job this week writing true stories about themselves. We have been thinking like writers and drawing pictures that help tell our readers what our story is about by including details about where we were, what we were doing, and who we were with.
This week we began talking about a new strategy that writers use when writing stories: labeling. We are learning how to label objects in our pictures by thinking about the sound we hear at the beginning of the word. For example, if a students draws a sun in their picture they have been encouraged to listen to the sound they hear at the beginning of the word (/s/) and write that letter next to the picture of a sun. It’s exciting to see the students continuously grow as authors and illustrators.
Soon we will start to stretch out words to discover what other sounds we can hear in the words we want to write. Stay tuned…
Math:
This week in math we learned about attributes and sorting. We learned that when we sort things we are making piles of objects that have something in common. We spent some time thinking of different ways we could sort the boys and girls in our class. Here are some of the ways we came up with:
-boys and girls
-Velcro shoes, tie shoes, neither Velcro nor tie shoes
-orange group friends and green group friends
-short hair and long hair
-color of our shirts
Students also spent time in math centers sorting a variety of math manipulatives (buttons, counting bears, beads, and counting animals) to see if they could find ways to sort each manipulative.
