A Story Hand

Along with reading many Goldilocks and the Three Bears books, we have also been focusing on Chicken Little.  We reviewed how to retell a story by using character cards.  Each student had the opportunity to be one character in the story and play the part in the retelling.  They LOVED this, especially if they were Foxy Loxy!

We have also been talking about our Story Hand in Writer's Workshop.  Students have been working on writing personal narratives.  We talked about how each story needs to have a character, a setting and three events (beginning, middle and end).  Our Kindergartners had all kinds of stories to share!  Some students wrote stories about falling off bunk beds, breaking bones or vacations they took.  We interwove this into our Reader's Workshop by going more in depth on characters.  We talked about how characters can be a person, an animal of a thing (i.e. a snowman).  We also talked about characters use dialogue and we can tell when a character is speaking by the quotation marks.  We practiced changing our voices to match the characters when we retold the story of Chicken Little!

Goldilocks and the Three....???

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been reading various versions of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  Students got REALLY excited about this story and we used to hit many skills!  One of our main focuses was to practice retelling familiar stories.  Over a period of several days, we read almost ten different versions of Goldilocks, including Goldilocks and the Three Hares.  We practiced retelling it by using key words such as "first", "then", "next" and "last".  We talked about the beginning, the middle and the end of the story.  We also compared each version to see if they were the same or different.  Students were SO excited about it that they decided they wanted to write their own versions!  So, today, we finally began working on our own books!  Some titles include Goldilocks and the Three Princesses, Goldilocks and the Three Cows, and Goldilocks and the Three Sharks.  I can't wait to read the finished products!

                                        

Happy Monday!

Happy Monday!  I hope you all had a great weekend!  I know ours was SUPER busy!  Nonetheless, Kindergartners got right back to work when they returned this morning!  One of our favorite times of day is when we get to work in our centers.  Take a peek at the centers we worked on today!

I-Spy Number Fun!  Students had to "spy" a number using their magnifying glasses and record it on their sheet.  Then, they had to write the next two following numbers.

Weekend writing!  Students had to draw a picture and write about what they did over the weekend.  Students are encouraged to use developmental spelling.

Harvest See Say Color!  Students picked a card from the middle and colored in the beginning sound on their recording sheet.  I'm impressed that most students know most of their letter sounds already!

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Fishing for Numbers!  This is an AWESOME game that students LOVE!  They each had to fish for a number and match it to their game board.  They thought using a fishing pole was pretty cool!

Listening Center!  This is a center that was recently introduced and they are loving it!  Each round of centers, a new book is put out and students get to listen to the book on CD.  Soon, they will begin filling out a listening response sheet to their book.

In Math, we continued talking about the number 7.  We worked again on building the number, but today, we took it up a notch!  Each student had to write a short number sentence to go along with it.

Apples, apples and apples!

Kindergarteners are learning all about apples this week!  We began today by reading Apples A to Z by Margaret McNamara.  This was a great ABC book that helped us learn more about apples.  We created a brace map and jotted down some information we learned from the book as well information we already knew!

In Math, we reviewed our numbers 1-5 and played a math bingo game. Students' bingo cards had boxes of objects and when I called a number, they had to use one-to-one correspondence to color the correct box.  The rest of this week we will be working on numbers 6-10.  For the first quarter, Kindergartners are expected to use one-to-one correspondence up to 10 and identify and write numbers 1-10 correctly.  We will also be working on composing and decomposing these numbers, although mastery of this skill is not required until later this year.

Today I also asked each student to count as high as they could.  Our goal for the first quarter is to count to 21. I am so pleased that many students can do thus already!  I often find that 13 and 15 are the tricky numbers and ones most often missed. Pease practice this skill at home daily!  Below is a short video we often watch to help us count. 

Counting Super Hero

Whirlwind of a Week!

Wow! This has been a whirlwind of a couple weeks in Kindergarten! I am so excited for you to follow us along and see all the adventures we have in our classroom! We frequently do hands-on activities in the classroom in which students may not tell you about. This is a great way for you to stay connected and talk with your child about what is happening in the classroom! In our centers, we have been working hard on staying on task within our centers and cleaning up when it is time to move to our next center. Soon, I will begin meeting with small groups of students. In these small groups, we will work on letter identification and letter sounds, phonemic awareness skills and for those that are ready, guided reading. Below are a few pictures of what we have been working on in our centers!

Kindergartners worked on stringing the alphabet using letter beads and pipe cleaners. This is a great fine motor task as well!

This was one of our FAVORITE centers of the week! It's called "Pokey Pins". Students use a large push pin to poke holes through numbers. Then, students had to punch the corresponding circles on their ten frame. They thought this was awesome! (It also helped that we worked on holding our push pins with our "owl eye"...more on that later!)

Kindergartners are working hard in the writing center on using their sight words to write sentences. This week, we read the book Superhero ABCs. Students had to draw a picture and write about their favorite superhero! Check out this awesome finger spacing too!

We used play-doh and play-doh mats to recreate numbers and then roll play-doh balls to match the number on our mats. This helped strengthen our one-to-one correspondence skills! Thanks so much for stopping by! Hope you enjoyed a sneak peek into our classroom!

3-Dimensional Shapes

Kindergarteners have had a great time learning about 3-dimensional shapes recently.  Our goal for the 3rd quarter is to be able to identify the cone, sphere, cylinder and cube.  To help us better understand the differences between the four, we created an anchor chart.  We wrote about what we see when we look at each shape, including what shape the base is, how many sides there are, number of corners, etc.  We also talked about objects in our environment that are these shapes.  I was amazed at some of their responses! 

However, our FAVORITE part was learning a new song called "3D Shapes I Know".  This is highly requested and we LOVE to listen to it!  Check it out below!

Teen Numbers Always Start With a 1!

Those teen numbers are tricky, aren't they?  Some friends in our class commonly transverse their numbers.  For instance, instead of writing "17", they will write "71".  I thought a catchy song might help us remember that teen numbers always start with a 1!  Our goal the third quarter is to be able to write numbers from 0-20.  Keep practicing at home!

The Action of Subtraction

Introducing the concept of subtraction is always tricky because it is the opposite of what we have worked so hard, and so long, on...addition.  Over the last few weeks, we have been working to understand that subtraction is when we start with a group of objects and "take away".  We have been practicing by using manipulatives and story problems.  You can help your child understand this concept by using any manipulatives you have around the house, including pennies, cotton balls, or race cars!  Make it fun!  We had fun making up story problems about animals on the farm doing silly things!  (For instance, there were eight pigs on the farm.  Six pigs went rolling in the mud and had to take a bath.  How many were left?)  We read a few different books to help us further understand the concept.

And...another fun video for you too!

What's Happening in Room 207?

Sorry for the hiatus I took from updating our classroom blog.  However, we have been BUSY in this classroom!  We are truly turning into a classroom of readers and writers.  The second semester also poses a shift for us as we begin applying the information we have learned throughout the first half of the year into our independent reading and writing.  I see students making connections each and every day, which is what I LOVE about Kindergarten.  The amount of growth our students show is tremendous and they never cease to amaze me.  Over the last month, we have been working hard on our listening and story comprehension.  We utilize the Turn and Talk method, where I pose a question to students and they will "turn and talk" with their partner and be prepared to share either their answer or their partners.  This is a great way to get all students involved and have them work on listening to a partner's response.  We have also been working on identifying the characters, setting, problems and solutions in a story.  Check out what we did with The Mitten!

KinderOwl

Wow! What fun we have been having with Hoot, our KinderOwl! She has been super busy with some friends recently! Each week when the KinderOwl of the week returns Hoot, he/she tells us what they did over the weekend. Read below to see what Wyatt, Ava and Aidan have been up to !

A Birthday!

Last week we celebrated Brooke's birthday! Her mom came to read us a story. She read us two fairy tales and we LOVED them! Happy Birthday Brooke! I hope you had a wonderful day!

Winter...or is it?

We keep talking about winter in Kindergarten, although it certainly hasn't felt that way much!  We are so excited to get some snow...enough snow to make snowmen and build snow forts anyways.  In class, we shared our December family projects.  This was AWESOME.  It is so interesting to see how each family celebrates the holidays in their own way.  I learn so much this way!  Below are some from our friends...

We also created our own snowmen, since we don't have enough snow to make them for real!  This was a great opportunity to work on our fine motor and cutting skills.  

Before break, we also talked about the real meaning of the holiday season.  We talked about all the things that we hoped to get for Christmas and then read the story Night Before the Night Before Christmas.  In this story, a family runs into all sorts of problems when getting ready for Christmas.  The cookies are burned, the tree is too skinny, the outside lights don't work, Mom is sick and on and on and on.  At the end of the story, the family realizes that all they really need to make their holiday special is each other.  We talked about the things in our lives that are the most important to us and how more often than not, they are not things, but people.  We talked about how we are thankful for our families, pets and the hugs and love we get from our family members.  We wrote about it and drew a picture inside the present.  So sweet!

  

 

  

The Gingerbread Man

Before winter break, Kindergarteners focused on comparing and contrasting various Gingerbread Man stories.  We read The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth, The Gingerbread Boy, The Gingerbread Girl, The Gingerbread Baby and The Gingerbread Man.  We have been working hard on strengthening our story listening and comprehension skills.  Kindergarteners have been practicing their Turn and Talk, which is where students turn to their partner and respond to a question I have posed about a story we have read.  We have also been working on retelling key events in a story, making predictions, and making connections to other Gingerbread stories we have  read.  Our culminating activity was to read The Gingerbread Baby with Mrs. St. John's and Mrs. Schuttrow's Kindergarten students.  We read the story and then made a real gingerbread man of our very own!  Students helped mix the batter and decorate him.  Then, we took him to the kitchen to bake.  We then headed down to the library where Mrs. Sarro read us The Gingerbread Man is Loose in the School.

 

After the story, we realized that our gingerbread man was done cooking!  We headed to the cafeteria to take him out of the oven and much to our surprise...he was on the loose!  He left a clue for us that led us to the office.  Each time we arrived at a location in the building, a new clue was left for us.  We searched and searched and searched.  Finally, our last clue led us to our classroom, where we realized the Gingerbread Man left us a plate of gingerbread cookies.  We enjoyed eating our cookies and also created a graph showing which part of him we ate first!  This was the BEST DAY EVER according to many Kindergartners!

Pattern Block Fun

Before break, students were given an opportunity during our centers time to explore with pattern block cut outs. Oh my, it's amazing what creativity we see when they are given free exploration! I saw students building people, making landscapes, using symmetry and more! Check out some of the awesome work below!