What a busy week in kindergarten!
Language Arts: Our letter of the week was "x" and our sight words were "yes" and "no." Our theme centered around maps. We read many wonderful fact books and stories which told us about maps. As a result, we created a map of how we travel to school, a map of our classroom, a map of our hearts, a book about Illinois, a book which showed us on the map, and we mapped out places we have traveled. We will continue that discussion next week. We also read some pirate books and went on an "X marks the spot" tour of our school looking for X's. We returned to our room to find a treasure, a yellow ticket for every child!
Math: We continue to practice estimating. We learned about the dime and observed them through magnifying glasses. We practiced counting by 2's using our 100 frame. We practiced addition and subtraction. We played a coin recognition game.
Social Studies: We are having so much fun learning about maps. We studied different kinds of maps and realized that the map of the world is an unrolled globe. We made connections to magnets by looking for the north and south poles. We looked at different landforms such as mountains, valleys, deserts and plains.
Notes: Don't forget to come to the Book Fair and Fun Fair on Saturday, March 19th from 11:00-3:00. Report cards go home next Friday. I have only received the empty report card envelopes from half of our class. Please find 2nd quarter's report card, keep that, and return the empty envelope to be used 3rd and 4th quarters. Thank you to Mrs. Nosek for helping with Literacy Centers. We will need more volunteers for Apr. 13th. Next week we will focus on letter "v" and the sight word "play." Please check your child's folder for a math game to come home next week. Spring Break begins Sat. March 26th. Have a fun one and READ, READ, READ!!!!!
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Mar. 7 - 11
Language Arts - Our letter of the week was "w" and our sight word was "what." We read the story Where the Wild Things Are and discussed what is real and make-believe. We responded to the story by recalling the beginning, middle and end of the story. We read a non-fiction book about whales and wrote a four square. We read a fiction story, Dear Mr. Blueberry which contained some whale facts and added another letter-writing opportunity in Writer's Workshop. We also enjoyed the story Mrs. Wishy Washy. We continue to work on writing words (sound blending). Some of the words have digraph (sh, ch, ck, th) and some have blends (spl, st, nd, gl.)
Math - We are focusing on estimating! We use what we know (such as what the amount of 10 items looks like) and make a "smart guess" to estimate. We also are practicing count on to add, simple addition problems, instant recognition and more than/less than.
Social Studies - Our Citizenship Cool Tool for the week was Mind Your Manners. Saying please and thank you, greeting students and teachers with a "hello," being a good listener, and taking turns are ways that we can mind our manners. Thank you to our guest reader, Mr. McDonagh who could authentically read two fun Irish tales (about leprechauns!) We enjoyed listening to his Irish brogue!
Science - We are enjoying our unit on magnets! We learned about attract and repel, north and south poles, what magnets stick to and what magnets stick through. It is fun to observe, predict, experiment, record data, and interpret what we discovered! We are scientists!
Notes - I believe I forgot to notify you of last week's post, so please read the post prior to this one. I have one parent volunteer for next week's Literacy Centers. Let me know if you are interested (3/16 @ 1:10-1:45) Have a great weekend!
Math - We are focusing on estimating! We use what we know (such as what the amount of 10 items looks like) and make a "smart guess" to estimate. We also are practicing count on to add, simple addition problems, instant recognition and more than/less than.
Social Studies - Our Citizenship Cool Tool for the week was Mind Your Manners. Saying please and thank you, greeting students and teachers with a "hello," being a good listener, and taking turns are ways that we can mind our manners. Thank you to our guest reader, Mr. McDonagh who could authentically read two fun Irish tales (about leprechauns!) We enjoyed listening to his Irish brogue!
Science - We are enjoying our unit on magnets! We learned about attract and repel, north and south poles, what magnets stick to and what magnets stick through. It is fun to observe, predict, experiment, record data, and interpret what we discovered! We are scientists!
Notes - I believe I forgot to notify you of last week's post, so please read the post prior to this one. I have one parent volunteer for next week's Literacy Centers. Let me know if you are interested (3/16 @ 1:10-1:45) Have a great weekend!
Friday, March 4, 2011
Feb. 28-Mar. 4
In like a lion
the March wind blows
Out like a lamb
the March wind goes.
I sure hope that's true! We had fun talking about that saying and making lions and lambs for our room and hallway!
L.A. - Our letter of the week was "o" and our sight words were "on" and "one." We read Do Not Open. Partway through, we answered the question "Should she open it?" We predicted what might be inside. We read Otto is Different and wrote a response. We read a fact book about octopuses and wrote a four square. We sang songs and read books about opposites. We also read fun books about owls and the -ock ending. We read Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog and worked with partners to think of -og words. Every day we are blending 3 and 4 sound words and writing them on our white boards. Wednesday was Read Across America Day. We had two teacher guest readers, Mrs. Raspillar and Ms Deloria, help us celebrate by reading Dr Suess books to us!
Math - We explored nickels this week. We read a non fiction book and used magnifying glasses to look at all the details on the nickel. We counted by fives to see how many nickels were in the piggy bank. We played a coin matching games at centers. We talked about the passage of time. Identical things can take a different amount of time depending on HOW you do them. EX: Singing the abc's takes longer than saying them. Walking across the room takes less time than tip toeing.
Social Studies: Our cool tool for the week was Do Your Personal Best. We discussed how important it is to try your best and that doesn't always mean finishing first. We saw a short video about how one feels so proud when working hard. We had Art Awareness with Mrs. McDonagh (thank you). She introduced us to the artist Henri Rousseau. He paid a lot of attention to detail, used great colors, and loved drawing plants and animals. The students created the own Rousseau inspired drawings. They were wonderful!
Notes: Thank you to Mr. and Mrs. Parrilli, Dr. Platt and Mrs. Marron for leading the Literacy groups this week. Our next one is March 16th. Please let me know if you can come. Please check out the spring fundraiser pack that came home today. Don't forget to look at the March events shown on the right of the blog. Have a great weekend!