Here's a mid week update on what we've been up to in Kindergarten.

First, we want you to know how much we love this new website:

http://www.poissonrouge.com/

It's totally non- print so it's perfect for kids who aren't reading yet.  It might be confusing for adults but the Kindergarteners LOVE it.  We went to the computer lab today and were totally engrossed in trying new things.

Today, Dr. Grossman, our ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teacher came to the class to co-teach with me today.  She did a lesson on friendship and being kind to others.  After she read us a story, we made a friendship web.  Basically we passed yarn to our classmates and practiced saying nice things to each other.  At the end, it was a rainbow spiderweb of happiness.

We have a few new math centers this week.  We are working on counting and numbers.  Here's a picture of someone's fabulous counting. 

We also have a fun new sorting center with pictures of monsters!  We can sort them by how many eyes they have, their color, or if they have teeth or not!

Thanks for checking in to see how we are doing in room 45!! 

Last week, we read some really great books to start our learning about characters and setting.  The books were Hondo and Fabian, Eleanore Won't Share, Over in the Meadow, and Memoirs of a Goldfish.   Each day we talked about the characters and explained what they did, said or felt.  We also discussed the setting of the story. At the end of the week we drew and wrote about our favorite setting from a story this week. 

We still love going to centers, and a few new centers were added this week!  At the Pocket Chart Pond center, we are sorting uppercase and lowercase letters.  At Word Wharf, we are making sight words in playdough and practicing adding them to sentences.  At the Science Sandbox we are sorting pictures by season.  Reading groups will start next week since Mrs. Ramienski has finally finished all of her Fall reading assessments! 

In Social Studies this week, we learned what a symbol is.  It's amazing how many of us know basic symbols for happy, sad, boy, girl, money, hospital, walk, don't walk, and McDonalds!  Our first U.S. symbol to study was the flag.  We learned about how the flag has changed over time and counted the stars.  We even made our own flag.  We also learned about the Statue of Liberty.  Next week, we will learn more U.S. Symbols! 

In writing we are continuing to use pictures and letters to express our ideas.  At the beginning of the week, we always write about our weekend.  This week, we wrote about our favorite color, favorite special, and favorite setting from a read aloud this week.  We also started our weekly sight word class books, by writing a sentence using the words "I" and "am". 

We sorted many things this week by shape, size, and color.  We also continued our work with position words by using clues to look around the classroom for things.  We know words like top, middle, bottom, above, below, between, and beside.  At the end of the week, we searched for clues that led us to a sweet treat...candy!  We sorted Skittles and M and M's two different ways.  Next week we will begin data collection and graphing!

The October volunteer calendar is ready to go on Sign Up Genius. Please let me know if you'd like to sign up to come into the classroom to help out or read to the class.  :) 

Here's some pictures from this week!  Enjoy!

Kindergarten is SO much fun!! 

In math last week, we continued to work on sorting and position words.  We read clues around the classroom to help us practice our position words like above, below, beside, between, top, bottom and middle.  We sorted ourselves into groups based on our hair color, shoe types, and more.  We even realized we have WAY more boys than girls in our class. :)  We are getting really good at sorting and love to sort things in more than one way. 

This week in reading we really focused on our print concepts.  We love to look at books on the Promethean Board when Mrs. Ramienski uses the ELMO projector.  We can get up and point to words, letters, and punctuation marks.  We read Germs, Rosie's Walk, Corduroy, Ish and many more books this week.

We now know FOUR Kindergarten sight words:  I, am, the and see.  We read one of these words as the password to get into the classroom and we get really excited when we see one of these words in a book we are reading!

In writing this week we wrote about our color words.  It's amazing how many of us are using letters to label our pictures.  Next week we will write about our favorite color, write about our weekend and label a person and our favorite places. 

We know a lot about the weather now!  We are experts on the seasons, precipitation and how to dress appropriately for the weather.  Next week we'll focus on Social Studies! 

This week was especially exciting because we went to the library, computer lab, and the third floor to read with our 3rd grade reading buddies.

Stay tuned for more pictures and information about our class!

Here are some pictures of this week!

Here is one of our math centers.  We sort these foam stickers by color, then by shape. 

 

We sorted cereal by color.  Then we had a little snack! 

Here's how we take attendance each day.  We each send our sea turtle out to sea if we are in school!

We went to the computer lab this week and explored Bailey's Bookhouse. 

Kindergarten is so much fun!



A Colorful Week!

We had a colorful week in Kindergarten this week.  We started our color days and dressed in red, blue, and purple this week.  We will be even more colorful next week!  It is fun to bring in objects that match our color day, and we can think of and draw so many more things for each color.

Last week we learned the words "I" and "am".  We can write Ii, Ff, Ll, Tt and love using whiteboards to show our fabulous handwriting.  We are starting to draw very detailed pictures and some students are labeling their pictures with letters to match the beginning sounds of the objects we draw. 

In math this week we continued to work on our positional words of top, middle, and bottom.  We'll learn more positional words next week!  We also practiced sorting and counting in math centers. We all made a calendar for September that we can hang up in our homes and practiced writing numbers.

This past week in reading, we reviewed concepts about print and loved coming up to point to different things in the stories that were being read aloud.  We know how to find the cover, title, and author.  We know where to start reading and what to do at the end of a page.  We found letters, words, sentences and even some punctuation marks in our stories.  We love reading along with the teacher when we find a pattern in a book we love.  This week's books included Alphabet Adventure, Our Sun, Our Weather, and The Secret Birthday Message.  There were more activities added to our centers so we were busy listening, sorting, searching, matching, and having fun. 

We started a weather book last week on a rainy day, so we talked about how to dress for rainy weather.  We drew pictures of our favorite types of weather and know that a thermometer tells us how hot or cold it is.

Last week was also Back to School Night.  It was so exciting to meet so many moms and dads of my students!!   I'm going to start adding pictures soon to the blog as soon I get permission from everyone.  Stay tuned!

First Week Recap

It was a busy first week in room 45!  We learned so much in just five days.  We are already experts at some of our routines, such as getting unpacked, lining up, getting ready for lunch, putting away supplies, and going to centers. 

This week we read some great books in Whole Group Reading.  We enjoyed making predictions, making connections, and reading along with the story together.  We read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, No David!, Miss Bindergarten Goes to Kindergarten, Chrysanthemum and many more! 

We did some cool projects this week.  We put together a puzzle with the letters in our names.  We colored, cut and glued to make a mask after reading No David!  We colored and cut the letters in our names and glued them to a coconut tree.  We also drew pictures of ourselves and how we got ready for school.  We also visualized a picture of a monster we read about who came to school and didn't follow the rules.  This helped us come up with the rules of our own classroom.

This week in writing, we practiced writing the letters in our names.  We also practiced writing our friend's names.  We learned about how to add details and wrote and drew about our families and our favorite part of Kindergarten so far.

In math we explored a variety of different types of math manipulatives like pattern blocks, Unifix cubes, links, teddy bears, base ten blocks, and counters.  We sorted and counted and even played a little. 

In science this week we learned the correct steps to wash our hands.  We also started observing the weather.  It was a sunny and hot week!

We love centers!  This week we explored literacy centers, math centers, and choice centers.  Everyone did a good job listening and going to the correct spot in the room.  Legos is currently the top favorite center in our room.

We went to Art, Music, and P.E. this week and even had a practice fire drill.  It was a busy and fun week!