Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  Our Kindergarten class has enjoyed some fun New Year's stories.  We read the book Shante Keys and the New Years Peas and talked about New Year's traditions.  We read Squirrel's New Year's Resolutions and talked about what our goals were for the new year.  We also illustrated a book called Snowflake's New Year with our reading buddies.  We are definitley ready for a new year. 

In writing we are almost done with our second quarter weekend journals.  We can't wait for you to see them.  They will come home in a few weeks.  You'll be so amazed at our writing.  We are writing sentences and using spaces, capital letters, word wall words and periods in our writing.  We have been writing about the stories we read in the morning, and this week it's all about snow.  We wrote about snowmen at night, snowmen all year, and sequenced the steps to a snowman melting.  Now we just need some snow! 

In math, we have been working on decomposing numbers.  Basically, that means that we know how to make a number with two different numbers.  We started with a game called Shake and Spill.  We had a small cup with magic beans.  We shook the cup and dumped the beans.  We counted how many were red and how many were white.  Then we knew one way to make our number.  We kept trying to get different combinations to get our target number.  We also made a caterpillar with 7.  We used circles in only two colors to design a creature that shows 7.  We also know how to play Inside/Outside.  We get colored chips and dump them on a picture of star.  When we count how many are inside and outside, we discovered new ways to make the number 9.  We can also break apart a rod of 10 to show many ways to decompose the number 10.  Ordinal numbers are up next so we'll learn about the position words first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and so on. 

Science is about to get VERY exciting.  We got mealworms today!!  We will learn about what they are, what they need to survive, and how their life cycle changes.  They'll live in our classroom for a couple of months!

In Social Studies we are almost done with our geography study. We looked at maps of the world and the United States to find where we live.  We talked about oceans and continents. We learned about landforms and bodies of water, such as hill, mountain, valley, plateau, plain, desert, ocean, lake, and river.  We know that these are natural features of the land, and we know that some of our land contains human features.  We sorted pictures to show we understand the difference between human and natural features. 

See, we've been so busy in Kindergarten.  Mrs. Ramienski's goal for the new year is to update this blog more often, so check back soon!

Teddy Bear Fun

From December 13-December 20th, we had a week of fun with teddy bears!  We each brought our teddy bear to school. Our teddy bears came to the carpet and listened to stories with us.  We taught them the rules of how to sit on the carpet and they enjoyed some teddy bear fiction stories and some non fiction stories about bears.  During centers, our teddy bears either came to a center with us, or stayed quietly at their seats.  In writing, we wrote in a teddy bear journal about the adventures of our teddy bear at school.  We tried to use bears as much as possible with counting in math.  Our teddy bears even learned to count at some of the centers too!  We got to show them how a ten and double ten frame work.  At the end of the week we had a teddy bear picnic.  We sang songs and ate some delicious teddy bear snacks.  It was a "beary" fun week!  It was fun to come in each morning and see what our bears had been up to when we left them alone all night long.   Mrs. Ramienski's mom, Pat was our mystery reader!!!

 Here we are getting our bears ready to listen to a story.  We had to teach them the rules.

 Here we are practicing our counting.  We were learning to compare numbers using words like less, greater, more, and equal.  We even know how to use the symbols <,>, and =!

 These bears are learning to count at math centers with Unifix blocks.

 These bears are learning to count dots on dominoes at math centers.

 Look at the yummy teddy bear treats Mrs. Ramienski brought in for us to enjoy.  We had to count the treats and use our math words like more, less and equal before we ate. :)

This is Pat!  She's Mrs. Ramienski's mom, and is a retired teacher.  She loves to volunteer in our classroom and brought some teddy bear books for us to enjoy. 


Here's a link to the song we sang for the teddy bear picnic! 
Teddy Bear Picnic Song on Youtube

Mini Golf!

Mr. McKinley's 4th grader were learning about geometry in their math class.  They decided to use what they were learning about shapes and angles to make a mini golf course at Flora Singer.  We got to work with them one afternoon and got to play mini golf on the course they made.  It was a lot of fun!

Yikes! It's been almost a month since my last post!

I don't know where the time has gone, but I can't believe it's been a month since my last post.  Sorry for the delay, but we have certainly been busy in Kindergarten!  Here's an extra long update.  :-) 

In reading, we loved reading different versions of The Gingerbead Man.  Most children loved The Gingerbread Girl, because she outsmarted the fox and tied him up with her licorice hair! :)   Now, we are reading books about bears and we will have our teddy bear picnic next week.  Some of the reading strategies we are focusing on with these books are making predictions, asking questions, and retelling the beginning, middle, and end of the story.  We even made a graph of our favorite book!

 

 

 

In writing we are hard at work with sequencing.  We sequenced some of our routines such as brushing teeth, washing hands and getting dressed.  Then we wrote sentences about these things and our writing is getting a lot better.  We know to use a capital letter at the beginning of the sentence, lowercase letters for the rest of the sentence, spaces between our words and a period at the end of each sentence!  We also sequenced the steps on how to eat a gingerbread cookie!  Now we are writing a book about what we do in the morning, afternoon and evening! 

In math we've really been busy with numbers!  We had a lot of fun counting with gingerbread people.  We use cubes to count and know how to use a ten frame, double ten frame and even a triple ten frame!  Now we are working on even and odd.  We know that even numbers always have a partner, and odd numbers have one left out.  We also like to compare numbers by using the words more, less, equal, most and least!!

We've been busy planting grass in science, and learning about the life cycle of a butterfly, frog, and plant.   Now we're focusing more on Social Studies and are learning about maps and globes.  It's important that your child know the broad to specific areas they live:  North America---> United States ---> Maryland ---> Montgomery County---> Silver Spring. 

We've had some fun mystery readers. Noah's dad came back for a second visit and Griffin's mom was our mystery reader Friday!

We know that good readers make predictions and ask questions before, during, and after reading.  We've been practicing that lately as we read informational books about seeds!  We've been connecting reading and science a lot lately, and have learned so many new things about seeds and how plants grow.  I've been encouraging the kids to find seeds outside and inside their homes and bring them in for a seed collection.  So far, we only have two.  Can you bring in some seeds from home for our new science center? 

Can you guess what these seeds are?

In writing we wrote a memory book.  We wrote about something we remembered, wrote who we were with and how we felt.  The books are super cute!!  Here's a page from three different books. 

 

 

We've also been working on stretching out our sounds with stretchy the snake in writing.  We are getting really good at stretching out three letter words like big, cup, pod, tap, and bed! 

Math has been filled with numbers, numbers, numbers.  We love to count and are really becoming amazing mathematicians.  We love to count without looking and we even have some cool strategies for counting. We've been writing numbers too.  We're just learning, so sometimes we make our numbers backwards.  Here's a link to our favorite counting songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0dJWfQHF8Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9-pEVaO4pM

Something exciting that arrived in our classroom recently was our dramatic play set!  We have a fridge, stove, sink and pantry cabinet.  A few students have donated pretend food and plates and cups.  If you have any at home that you'd like to donate, please send them in!  This center is the #1 pick for everyone in the classroom. 

We have had some exciting mystery readers this past two weeks.  Mr. Ramienski, my husband came in and read two stories with puppets.  The next week, Mrs. Petrucci, one of our paraeducators, came in and read a story that relates to recess.  Would you like to be a mystery reader?

There are still a lot of times available to volunteer in the classroom.  We also need a few more mystery readers.  If you are able to sneak away from work for a short time, we'd love to have you visit and help out in the classroom.  

Thanks for ordering so many Scholastic Books.  Having great books at home will really help your child become a great reader!!  The December order will come home Monday, just in time for holiday shopping!

It's already November?

Time is flying by in Kindergarten!  It's amazing that it's already November.  We have had some serious fun and some great learning going on in the past two weeks. 

One highlight was our first field trip. We went to Sharp's Farm in Brookville, MD. First we fed the goats and cows, then we went on a hayride. It was a bumpy ride and we even went through a small creek! After that, we picked pumpkins. We had a picnic lunch, and then we went through a corn maze. We got to see how cotton grows and then we saw the rabbits and chickens. Before we got back on the bus, we picked an ear of popcorn! It was a terrific trip. Here are some pictures for you to enjoy!

Another exciting event was Halloween!  We had a lot of fun at our parade and party.  Here's a picture of our class all dressed up!

We love having mystery readers.  Noah's dad was our mystery reader and he read the story Abiyoyo to the class.  Everyone LOVED the story, and after Noah's dad left, we wrote him thank you notes for coming.   We also know how to write friendly notes and reminder notes!

In math, we finished the quarter by reviewing patterns, position words, and graphing.  One day, we graphed our favorite ice cream flavors!

In reading, we have been reading both fiction and non fiction books.  We are working on the comprehension skills of predicting and asking questions.  After we read a book about spiders, we made one!

Thanks for checking in! :-)

Last week in reading we worked on making predictions.  Before we read, we guessed what the story might be about.  As we read, we guessed what might happen on the next page.  Even after reading we guessed what might happen to the characters now that the story is over.  Practice making predictions with stories you read at home, or as you watch TV shows or movies! 

We are getting really fancy with our patterns in math.  We can name patterns with letters, and even count the repeating units of a pattern.  We can even make non-patterns. This week we drew our own patterns and continued to practice making them online with Virtual Manipulatives and the Promethean Board.  Next week we will review some concepts from the first quarter like position words and graphing.  We'll also start our next unit on counting and cardinality.

This week in Science, we finished up our study of the water cycle by making a rain stick.  It was a lot of fun, and we really worked like scientists.  First, we looked at all of our materials and tried to figure out what we would make.  Then, we tried to figure out how to put the cap on the paper towel holder.  It was tricky.  Then, we had to decide what would make the best rain sound.  We could pick rice or corn.  Finally, we added some tin foil to our tube to help make the rain sound.  Some people rolled it, some tore it up, and some rolled it into a ball.  We realized that different ways of making the rain stick produced different results!  The next day, we painted white, gray and black clouds on our tube. If we shook the tube, would it rain?  Who knows, but we sure had a rainy Friday after we made them!!

In writing this week, we wrote about our weekend, made a list of things a firefighter wears, labeled a firefighter, and wrote a sentence with the words "I like".  We are getting really good at stretching out our words to listen for letters so we can spell words!

 One of our favorite Center is Playdoh.  We can write letters and words and even spell our names!