Week 15

We have been having so much fun in kindergarten and staying busy, busy, busy! I realized I didn't take as many pictures this week. We've had so many extra activities such as the 5th grade music program and a super drill that took lots of time too. I have been busy on assessments for report cards and also we have been working on a surprise for you too.

This week, we learned the letter Cc with the help of Cathy Cook. Our sight word was "have".

This was our focus book. We worked on summarizing and inferencing.

We read several different versions of the gingerbread man. Here are some of the ones we have read.

Our gingerbread man disappeared from school and left us this note.

Then we started receiving postcards from the gingerbread man. We have been tracking his travels on a map.

In math, we have been working on the numbers in the teens. We used a magnifying glass to find these numbers and then represented them in many ways. It was lots of fun!

We enjoyed our new gingerbread math work stations too.

We are looking forward to our winter carnival next Thursday. This is how we will be celebrating the holidays with our carnival.

We have also had 3 cases of confirmed strep, so please be on the lookout for that. Stay warm and have a great weekend!

Week 14

Boy, is it cold outside or what? In spite of the freezing rain, we had more students at school today in our class than we did the entire week. Way to show up and be safe!

This week, we learned the letter Nn with the help of Nellie the Nurse. Our sight words were "no, not and to". We also learned the sight word "it" right before Thanksgiving break.

Our focus book of the week was Apple Farmer Annie. We practiced retelling the story and focused on beginning, middle and end.

We began our unit on the gingerbread man. We read the classic story.

We love our gingerbread boy. We call him "Gingy" for short.

We read multiple versions of the gingerbread man. Here are some we read this week.

Then we compared them in a chart.

In math, we began a unit on patterns. We made patterns in a pocket chart. We practiced making patterns with manipulatives and we made patterns with our bingo dabbers. 

In science, we focused on being healthy this week. We learned about germs and how to keep clean. It is very important to wash our hands and cover our mouths when we cough to prevent germs from spreading. 

It is also important to brush our teeth and keep germs out of our mouths to prevent cavities.

The PTA purchased iPad minis for each teacher at the end of last year. As a kindergarten team, we have put ours together to share in a small group. This was my week to have them. We LOVE working on iPads. Unfortunately, they won't be back in rotation for a couple more months. It is hard to rotate them with 8 teachers.

We also had a new dollhouse to play with this week. A big thank you goes out to Greg (Aiden's dad) for assembling the dollhouse for us.

We had lots of fun playing in other centers too.

The homework notebooks seem to be a big hit. I hope that you are enjoying these as much as the children are. I also hope that they read their books to you this week. I would love to hear feedback about these. Feel free to send me an e-mail.

We also started our fuzzies this week. The students cashed in their fuzzies today for reward coupons. You will find these coupons in the zipper pouch in their take-home folder. I have asked the students to keep the coupons in there until they are ready to use them. If it gets lost, they will also lose their reward.

Have a fabulous weekend and stay warm!

Week 13

This weather has been crazy this week! We had beautiful weather in the 80's and then nearly freezing temperatures and pouring down rain the next day. That's Texas weather for you. I hope that you have a nice weekend and have plans to stay indoors.

This week, our focus book was Duck on a Bike. We looked at characters, setting and plot.

Some of my former students came back to read to our class.

We added a turkey poem to our poetry notebooks.

We reviewed our letters and sight words this week. We learned two new reading strategies. Lips the Fish tells us to get our lips ready and say the first sound in the word we are trying to read.

Chunky Monkey teaches us to break the word down and look for chunks in the bigger words.

In math, we began a unit on measuring. We read this book to introduce us to measuring and standard units of measurement.

We practiced our skills measuring with unifix cubes.

In science, we continued learning about objects in the sky. We started by reading about the sun.

Zoey was our sun and we talked about what makes day and night by using the globe as a reference.

We read a fun book about the moon.

Then we read some non-fiction books and wrote down facts that we learned about the moon.

We painted moons using glue to make craters and then we water-colored them. 

We wrote our facts down underneath the paintings. These are up on the bulletin board outside my room.

We simulated how craters are made by dropping ping pong balls into flour.

We read a book about what it would be like to go to the moon.

We talked about phases of the moon and read this book that showed many of them.

Then we made moon phases using Oreos. This was so much fun!

We finished up our week by learning about the stars. We also learned that shooting stars are not stars at all, but pieces of rock or iron that burn up in the atmosphere. 

We've had a bit of difficulty with tattling. We read this book and talked about the difference between telling and reporting. Also, Mrs. Phillips talked about Kelso's choices and big/little problems during her counseling visit.

In social studies, we began talking about the Pilgrims.

We learned what it was like to live long ago.

We made Pilgrim and Native American hats.

And we wore them to lunch on Thursday when they served the Thanksgiving lunch in the cafeteria.

We learned the story of the First Thanksgiving and made bracelets. Each color represents something from the story that we learned. Ask me to tell the story back to you.

We read some fun Thanksgiving books.

Due to the rain, we missed Hill Harbor and recess on Friday, so we ended our week with a game and craft afternoon. We had fun learning new games and creating crafts.