We love guided reading!

One of the best parts of the Kindergarten day is guided reading and literacy centers. It is during this time when students have small group instruction tailored to their individual learning needs ad strengths. During guided reading lessons we do word work, practice reading strategies, read for fluency, and work on comprehension. Every day or two we get to bring home a book we have practiced and read it to someone in our family! We are all making great progress and improving our reading skills tremendously! 

Hour of Code!

Today we went to the computer lab to learn how to write code!! We used a program called Scratch. We used commands to make a cat dance. It was fun changing the colors, sounds, watching the cat dance and turn!! We even learned how to change the background so the cat was dancing on the stage. Very cool stuff!! 

Lets count!!

In math we are working on numbers and counting. We love to sing counting songs to start off the math block. Here are our favorites:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9-pEVaO4pM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4rhzjD5ohw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0dJWfQHF8Y

 Then we show numbers in different ways. We can write the numeral, number word, draw a picture, use tally marks, show the number with dice or dominoes, base ten blocks and even ten frames!! Who knew there were so many ways to show a number. We love to go to math centers and work in small groups. Today in small groups we worked on our 11 to 19 number book. We learned a cool math game called Try to Go Home! At home, you can practice counting objects. Ask your child to count objects in different arrangements and look for numbers in the store, at home or on the road!! Ask your child questions like...What is one more than the number? What is one less? Is the number even or odd?  How many tens and ones?  Have fun counting!! 

An exciting guest speaker!

Gunnar's dad came today and was a special guest visitor for science!! He works to prosecute crimes against animals and taught us some very cool things. He even brought with him some very interesting artifacts. We learned about many animals including sea turtles, polar bears, tigers, walruses, elephants and birds. It's a good thing there are people like Gunnar's dad who work to help make sure people who break the law and harm animals get in big trouble. Here are a few pictures:

Our first mystery reader!

Today we had our first mystery reader!! Eryn's dad came and read a Thanksgiving story. Then he showed us how to make wild turkey calls. We all got to try and it was lots of fun. Eryn's mom came and hung up our self portraits. Don't they look great?  We had a half day today but we were busy reading Eric Carle's story The Mixed Up Chameleon, writing about our weekend, making numbers in different ways, and learning about Veterans Day. We also have new math centers. So much learning and fun! 

We love Eric Carle

In reading and writing we are doing an Eric Carle author study! Everyday we read one of his books and then write a connection we made during Writers Workshop! We even made a very hungry caterpillar craft too! 

Field Trip Fun

Today we went to a local farm called Heyser farm. It's just up the road between Cloverly and White Oak. We saw how apple cider is made!! It was a lot of fun and we even got to take home three apples and a pint of cider. We got to see chickens, bees, peach trees, grape vines, and more!! Check out these pictures. 

What a fun week!!

I had a great first week back at Flora Singer. I love my class!  In reading this week we worked on making predictions. It's a good idea to stop periodically when you're reading and guess what might happen next!! The kids in our class are pros at literacy centers. We will add more new centers next week and resume guided groups. In writing we are writing sentences with our word wall words. Every sentence should have an uppercase letter to start, lowercase letters, spaces and a period. We are almost done with patterns in math. We did a pattern search around the school this week and made patterns on the promethean board!  It's been great getting to know the students. I'm looking forward to talking with all of the parents at conferences coming up in a few weeks. Here are two more pictures from this week. 

Making patterns with characters from Brown Bear, Brown Bear. 

 

Walking for the Homeless

The first day of school...for me!

Today was my first day back from maternity leave. We had a great day today. It was so fun getting to see everyone. We started the day with a new hello song and played a getting to know you game with a huge number cube. We read a cool story about fish and sharks and a boy in a boat. We made predictions on each page. We went to literacy centers and everyone showed me how independent they are. Dr Grossman, our ESOL teacher, came for math and red the Dr Suess book Ten Apples Up On Top and we counted and made patterns with apples! We exchanged library books and went to the computer lab to try a new program called Kidspiration. Everyone was really helpful and made the day so fun and easy. I'm looking forward to a great school year. 

A Whole New Year....

Although the Back to School commercials started in June, it's really time now!! School starts tomorrow and it's an exciting time for my new bunch of students and their parents. It's a strange feeling though for me because I won't be there to experience the first day with my kiddos this year. For those of you who don't know, I'm on maternity leave until October 23rd. Lucky for me and my class, I found the most fabulous long term sub so everything will be okay. Not just okay...everything will be terrific! I met most of my kids and their families last week and I'm excited to work with them to help them learn and grow and love school the way I did growing up! Since I won't be in the classroom for the first 8 weeks, I probably won't update the blog too often at first. However, expect things to really get rolling in November. Happy Back to School!!

Fun Friday!!

Today was a really fun day! It started off with a surprise. Apparently a leprechaun came to our classroom overnight! The leprechaun left a message, played with our choice centers and kitchen and left us some treats.

Toms dad came and was our mystery reader. He brought hats, flashlights and t shirts and taught us about the food chain.

Then we had our February and March birthday club celebration with donuts.
Don't worry, we settled down and went to literacy centers and guided reading after that.

After recess we were surprised to see our door was locked. That tricky leprechaun came back!! And made another mess!! At least he left some cupcakes!! Everyone pitched in and cleaned up the mess.

In writing we have been working on a how to book all week. We wrote about how to make Kool Aid! Today we got to taste it with our cupcakes and we wrote about the last step.

See? It was an exciting day and now Mrs Ramienski needs a nap. :)

Career Day fun!

Today was Career Day! We had 11 parents come to share all about their jobs. Check out these pictures!