Our Halloween party was a great success! Thank you to all the parents who helped and a huge THANK YOU to our room parent Stephanie Perenyi for organizing it all! The kids wore some very cute costumes and enjoyed a craft table, a Halloween game, and listened to a spooky story.
This week in the classroom, we learned a new math game called Spin A Number. As children played, they worked through a game board and developed their number sense. This game, and others, can be found on the Everyday Math site. Use the card inside your child's Friday Folder to log in and play!
Our letter this week was "r," and kids practiced writing and writing about "r" topics. Kids wrote about rats, rainbows, and the letter "r" itself. Next week, we will start learning two letters a week, now that kids are more comfortable with the class and handwriting. In reading, we practiced listening to words for their sounds. We stretched out words for kids to hear the beginning, middle, and end sounds. We are also encouraging our kids to start trying to spell words by putting letters down that they hear. We created a fun Halloween book where children illustrated their own pages with the costume they planned on wearing, as well as writing the word as they hear it on the line provided. It came out great! The class also learned a new Sight Word Reader book That Hat. The kids only had one day with this book, so they might need a bit more help with it at home.
I hope all the kids have a safe and fun weekend!
Friday, October 29, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
Week of October 18-22
Halloween Party Information
On Friday, October 29th, we will have our Halloween parade and party. Please have children come to school wearing their costumes and a change of clothes in their backpacks. Please do NOT have masks that cover faces and NO swords or other costume weapons. The parade will start roughly around 9:15am and our party will start when the parade ends. The party will go to 10:40 and we will then have children change and continue the rest of our day. If you would like to help, please contact our room parent Stephanie Perenyi at intouchwithsteph(at)hotmail.com.
Cold Season
Many of our children have sniffles and other signs of a cold. This is a friendly request for any hand sanitizer you would be willing to donate to the class to help prevent the spread of germs. Please be sure to model good hand washing at home (saying the Happy Birthday song while rubbing hands with soap and water), and how to catch sneezes and coughs in our elbows. And as always, if your child has a fever or signs of the flu, please keep them at home, thanks!
Class this Week
For our literacy centers, we introduced Learning Passports. Every child received their own passport and it was their responsibility to take this with them to their centers. They get a stamp for behaving well (on task, not yelling, etc.) and a stamp for finishing their work. I'm going to use these passports to reward the kids who work really hard and well together by granting special rewards. So please encourage your child to do their best to get as many stamps as they can!
The letter "i" was our letter of the week. So many activities revolved around this letter. In writing, children wrote about ice cream, igloos, and many other topics that begin with "i." In reading, we worked on really looking at beginning and end sounds in words, and how sounds in words help us read. Children listened closely to words to pick up on sounds. We also learned to count syllables in words and used clapping to find out how many syllables we hear. This will help kids with their fluency and to really listen to what sounds make up words. We are training our ears to really hear all the sounds! In math, we looked closely at shapes and what makes each shape special. Then kids had to find shapes, without looking, in a bag. So their fingers would have to walk the shape to find the certain kind I asked them to find. Next week, we will learn a new math game called Spin the Number.
Keep practicing letter names and sounds at home using flash cards! For kids ready to work on sight words, here is a link to a website that has the sight words that you can easy print out to make flash cards and find other grades too when they are ready for an extra challenge like first grade words!
http://www.kidzone.ws/dolch/kindergarten.htm
Have a great weekend!
On Friday, October 29th, we will have our Halloween parade and party. Please have children come to school wearing their costumes and a change of clothes in their backpacks. Please do NOT have masks that cover faces and NO swords or other costume weapons. The parade will start roughly around 9:15am and our party will start when the parade ends. The party will go to 10:40 and we will then have children change and continue the rest of our day. If you would like to help, please contact our room parent Stephanie Perenyi at intouchwithsteph(at)hotmail.com.
Cold Season
Many of our children have sniffles and other signs of a cold. This is a friendly request for any hand sanitizer you would be willing to donate to the class to help prevent the spread of germs. Please be sure to model good hand washing at home (saying the Happy Birthday song while rubbing hands with soap and water), and how to catch sneezes and coughs in our elbows. And as always, if your child has a fever or signs of the flu, please keep them at home, thanks!
Class this Week
For our literacy centers, we introduced Learning Passports. Every child received their own passport and it was their responsibility to take this with them to their centers. They get a stamp for behaving well (on task, not yelling, etc.) and a stamp for finishing their work. I'm going to use these passports to reward the kids who work really hard and well together by granting special rewards. So please encourage your child to do their best to get as many stamps as they can!
The letter "i" was our letter of the week. So many activities revolved around this letter. In writing, children wrote about ice cream, igloos, and many other topics that begin with "i." In reading, we worked on really looking at beginning and end sounds in words, and how sounds in words help us read. Children listened closely to words to pick up on sounds. We also learned to count syllables in words and used clapping to find out how many syllables we hear. This will help kids with their fluency and to really listen to what sounds make up words. We are training our ears to really hear all the sounds! In math, we looked closely at shapes and what makes each shape special. Then kids had to find shapes, without looking, in a bag. So their fingers would have to walk the shape to find the certain kind I asked them to find. Next week, we will learn a new math game called Spin the Number.
Keep practicing letter names and sounds at home using flash cards! For kids ready to work on sight words, here is a link to a website that has the sight words that you can easy print out to make flash cards and find other grades too when they are ready for an extra challenge like first grade words!
http://www.kidzone.ws/dolch/kindergarten.htm
Have a great weekend!
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Week of October 11-13
Thank you to all who came for our Fall parent/teacher conferences! We have set some great goal for our kids and it's always nice to meet and discuss how things are going in the classroom. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please let me know!
This week in the classroom, we continued to talk about the changing season and what it means for it to be Fall. With the help of a parent volunteer and Scholastic Weekly Reader, kids learned a song about Autumn leaves falling down.
In math, we looked closely at the shapes of the circle and square during math and also practiced our number poem that helps us remember how to form the numbers. Soon we will begin the concept of symmetry, so anything around the house that you notice to be symmetrical, point this out to your kid so that when we talk about it they can better apply their knowledge. In reading we have been stretching words out to hear all the sounds (beginning, middle, and end). This will help us become better readers and give kids a tool to use to decode new words. We also read a new Sight Word Reader book titled Me Too! This is a fun story about a little brother trying to be just like his older brother that teaches kids the new sight words "me" and "too." These words will be added to our Word Wall next week, so please encourage your kid to use the resources in the room, like the Word Wall, to help them spell words. In writing, we did topics beginning with our letter of the week "a." We described an alligator, the letter a, an ant, as well as our oral language picture of a kid playing in puddles. Our goal in writing is to put spaces between words, so as your kid writes at home, please remind them if they forget spaces. We also began creating a class book devoted to words kids already know how to read from their world! After the book is made, I will pick super kids to borrow the book over the weekend so that families can read it together.
Last week bookmarks went home for kids to list books they read. This is for Scholastic's Book Challenge. If kids in our class read 10 books each by December 17, 2010, Scholastic will donate one million books to kids in need! As your child reads and fills in the titles of their books, they can bring the bookmark to me and I will add it to our wall then enter the books on the website. So far 4 kids have finished their book marks and we are 210 books away from reaching our goal of 250 books! Great job kids! Next week I will send the November and Holiday book club catalogs home. The due date for the November books ordered is November 15.
Be on the lookout for a slide show on this blog highlighting photos kids have taken for Fall. Please email or give me hard copies of Fall pictures your kid may want to show the class and I can add them in.
This week in the classroom, we continued to talk about the changing season and what it means for it to be Fall. With the help of a parent volunteer and Scholastic Weekly Reader, kids learned a song about Autumn leaves falling down.
In math, we looked closely at the shapes of the circle and square during math and also practiced our number poem that helps us remember how to form the numbers. Soon we will begin the concept of symmetry, so anything around the house that you notice to be symmetrical, point this out to your kid so that when we talk about it they can better apply their knowledge. In reading we have been stretching words out to hear all the sounds (beginning, middle, and end). This will help us become better readers and give kids a tool to use to decode new words. We also read a new Sight Word Reader book titled Me Too! This is a fun story about a little brother trying to be just like his older brother that teaches kids the new sight words "me" and "too." These words will be added to our Word Wall next week, so please encourage your kid to use the resources in the room, like the Word Wall, to help them spell words. In writing, we did topics beginning with our letter of the week "a." We described an alligator, the letter a, an ant, as well as our oral language picture of a kid playing in puddles. Our goal in writing is to put spaces between words, so as your kid writes at home, please remind them if they forget spaces. We also began creating a class book devoted to words kids already know how to read from their world! After the book is made, I will pick super kids to borrow the book over the weekend so that families can read it together.
Last week bookmarks went home for kids to list books they read. This is for Scholastic's Book Challenge. If kids in our class read 10 books each by December 17, 2010, Scholastic will donate one million books to kids in need! As your child reads and fills in the titles of their books, they can bring the bookmark to me and I will add it to our wall then enter the books on the website. So far 4 kids have finished their book marks and we are 210 books away from reaching our goal of 250 books! Great job kids! Next week I will send the November and Holiday book club catalogs home. The due date for the November books ordered is November 15.
Be on the lookout for a slide show on this blog highlighting photos kids have taken for Fall. Please email or give me hard copies of Fall pictures your kid may want to show the class and I can add them in.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Week of October 4th-8th
I want to send out a huge THANK YOU to my whole class and their parents/guardians for a wonderful birthday! I was so surprised and truly had a great day. I was also very impressed at how well the kids used the calender so they were the ones who informed their parents. I have such a great class!
Cold season is approaching fast and our classroom supply of hand sanitizer is getting low. If you're looking for a way to help the class, we could really use any that you find on sale! Also, as you use eggs at home and empty the egg cartons, I could use those for some math activities. Our school is also collecting pop tops for McDonald House, so as you pull those off soup cans, pops, etc. please send those in. For every pop top collected, McDonald House donates .01 for sick kids. We also have a basket in our room to collect Silent Auction items. Thanks ahead of time for anything you can donate!
This week we worked on a new letter, "c" with many activities. Kids described topics beginning with the letter "c" in their writing journals, as well as brainstormed "c" words. We explored how to make leaf rubbings and worked on matching color words to the rubbed leaves. These rubbing papers will provide the backgrounds to the descriptive writing about leaves to be put on display in the hallway. If you are unable to stop by the hallway outside of our class, pictures of both this display as well as the Ten Apples Up On Top display will be posted soon on this blog.
Are any of the kids photographers? When you go on hikes or walks, do the kids like to take pictures? As the seasons change and we see such spectacular sights in Colorado, feel free to send pictures the kids take to my email address! I would like to make a slide show on this blog illustrating the seasons as seen through the kids' eyes.
Cold season is approaching fast and our classroom supply of hand sanitizer is getting low. If you're looking for a way to help the class, we could really use any that you find on sale! Also, as you use eggs at home and empty the egg cartons, I could use those for some math activities. Our school is also collecting pop tops for McDonald House, so as you pull those off soup cans, pops, etc. please send those in. For every pop top collected, McDonald House donates .01 for sick kids. We also have a basket in our room to collect Silent Auction items. Thanks ahead of time for anything you can donate!
This week we worked on a new letter, "c" with many activities. Kids described topics beginning with the letter "c" in their writing journals, as well as brainstormed "c" words. We explored how to make leaf rubbings and worked on matching color words to the rubbed leaves. These rubbing papers will provide the backgrounds to the descriptive writing about leaves to be put on display in the hallway. If you are unable to stop by the hallway outside of our class, pictures of both this display as well as the Ten Apples Up On Top display will be posted soon on this blog.
Are any of the kids photographers? When you go on hikes or walks, do the kids like to take pictures? As the seasons change and we see such spectacular sights in Colorado, feel free to send pictures the kids take to my email address! I would like to make a slide show on this blog illustrating the seasons as seen through the kids' eyes.
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