Does our writing have to be perfect? Goodness no!

On Friday we read the book Freight Train by Donald Crews. This author does a great job with illustrating and labeling. Instead of a story with a beginning middle and end, Donald Crews using his labels to tell a story about a moving freight train. We have been working so hard with labeling our pictures already! I have been encouraging the kids to add more than one sound per word.

I drew two pictures and asked the kids to stretch out the word using their hands,  BA-NAN-A

L-E-A-F. Once we stretched out each word, I had the kids tell me the sounds we heard. This is what we came up with for letters.

Once everyone saw how we stretch out words, it was time for them to show how they can stretch out words to write more than one letter down. Take a peek! Does our writing have to be perfect? Do we need to spell our words correctly right now? GOODNESS NO! We just try our best and never give up!

School Rules

We have talked about our class promise, but we all agreed that we needed a little reminder of our school rules. Our 4 B's are very important to East Kingston as a whole. Be Safe, Be Respectful, Be Responsible, Be Peaceful. We talked all about our school rules, gave examples, and talked about how we could follow through with our school rules in the classroom. We felt the examples below are the most important:

Be safe - have a safe body

Be respectful - use kind words when speaking to others

Be responsible - do quality work and try things for yourself

Be peaceful - treat others the way you want to be treated.

Once we all understood our school rules, we all pledged that we would follow them so that we have a happy kindergarten classroom. Every kindie and teacher pledged and signed the rules. They are now posted in our classroom for a daily reminder. Ask your kindie how they follow our school rules.

Quick looks and recognizing 5

 

 We have been hard at work with recognizing what makes up 5. We counted popsicle sticks, cubes, bears, and foam dots. We found that there can be many combinations of 5! 2 and 3, 4 and 1. Practice counting out 5 things at home and ask your kindie how they can show two groups that equal 5. We have also been working on our "quick dots". We worked in partners and had to lay out cards 0-5 in order from least to greatest and then matched different colored dot cards with the correct numerical number. Take a look above! Our goal is to "quick look" at each card and count in our heads. This is a fun activity you could create and play at home. Try it out!

What does it mean to be a writer?

We are off to a great start with our writing, however, I need YOUR help! Tomorrow I will be talking to the kids about "what it means to be a writer". We will be revisiting the idea that "writing is just talking on paper" and that every one of us is an author. We can ALL write stories just like the ones we read at school and at home. We will be talking about how in order to write a TRUE or real story, writers think of something that we do, get a picture in our mind, and we draw the story of what we did on paper. Then, we write the story! So…..your kindie will be hearing/saying, "We THINK, we DRAW, we WRITE". Please encourage this at home! Our job as a writer is to "think, draw, and write" every day during our writer's workshop. If a child says, "I'm done" I will be saying this phrase…"If you think you're done, you've just begun!" The kindies job is to keep working on their writing for the whole time during our workshop. We will independently write for 3 minutes tomorrow, and then 5 minutes the next day. As the time increases, that shows how our stamina is building. I really want us to work on being independent….even if it just for 3 minutes to start! So, with all that being said….we will be launching our "small moment" unit of writing very shortly! What's a small moment story? It's thinking of a small moment in our lives and we stretch it out. We include small details that make our story come to life! Now, for some of us, writing a story can be intimidating and overwhelming. With your help, I hope to wipe all these "worries" away for your child. I am asking that you take the time to look around your house/print out photos which will help us tell our stories.

Want some ideas for small moment stories? Family vacations, camping trips, fishing with dad, shopping with mom, playing with pets, a picture at the beach, building a sandcastle, playing in the waves, a family birthday party, etc. These are just a few topics we could write about! Here are a few of my pictures for small moment writing….

 

Please look around your house for pictures that tell a story. Please send them into school in your kiddo's FROG book. If you are unable to print pictures, please let me know and I will make other arrangements.

Today we talked all about fire safety and what a fire drill means. We talked about how at school we practice things to keep us safe. So, hence our fire drill! When we have a fire drill we are to stop what we are doing and line up at the door. We know not to bring anything with us. Our priority is to just get out of our classroom quickly and safely! Do you have a plan at home in case there is a fire? Talk to your kids about fire safety and your family's plan. Thank you!

It's all good in kindergarten

….Says Pete the Cat! We just LOVE Pete. He teaches us that it's allllllll good no matter any situation! When we are feeling sad, we think of Pete and cheer right up! I hope everyone loved their Pete the Cat that the kindies took home last Friday. This was a GREAT fine motor activity and the kids loved it. I was so impressed with how well the kids did with listening, being patient, and following directions. They received a warm & fuzzy from me AND Mrs. Guilmette for all their hard work!! Ask your child what they liked most about this activity. Have them tell you what "dot dot not a lot" means.

Let's cheer our names!

We are having the best time with our names of the day! We start at the top of our class alphabet and begin with A and go in ABC order. We cheer two names a day so we can get to everyones for Friday! Our name is all cut up into single letters and the "name of the day" gives out a letter to a friend. We all cheer the letters so we build each other's names. The name of the day uses pom poms to make the cheering fun!  

Happy Birthday to Us!

Birthdays birthdays birthdays! We love our birthdays :) This week for our theme, we are exploring what month we were born in, how old we are, and how old we will be turning. Each child was given a candle and asked to stick it on their birthday month. We then created a class graph to see how many of us were 5 and who is 6. Did you know May had the MOST amount of birthdays and February, March, June, August and November had the LEAST amount of birthdays? Talk to your child about most vs. least!
 
Guess what? We created and read our first book! It was called "The Birthday Cake". First, we read the big book, The Birthday Cake by Joy Cowley. We realized this book follows a pattern and that we can use picture clues to figure out what the word is….

A red cake.

An orange cake.

A yellow cake.

A green cake.

A blue cake.

A purple cake.

A pink cake.

A brown cake.

A birthday cake!

After we read the big book, Miss Leone gave everyone their very own Birthday Cake book that followed the same pattern as the big book! We each took turns reading the words and touched each one as we read. On our own, we then colored our books to match the words and practiced reading our books three times so that our brains could grow! Take a look….

On Tuesday, Miss Leone gave everyone candles to decorate. We talked about how if we are 5, we will get 5 candles. If we are 6, we get 6 candles to decorate. On Friday for theme, we will water color our very own birthday cake and add the candles so we can hang these up in our classroom!

How can we show 5?

We have 5 fingers on one hand and 5 toes on one foot. What else shows 5? A 5 frame! We talked about what a 5 frame is (a frame with 5 boxes that shows 5) and showed 5. Each kindie was given a 5 frame, cards 0-5 and unifex cubes. They closed their eyes and picked a card. Whatever number they picked, that's how many unifex cubes they placed on the 5 frame. Try practicing this with your child at home for fun reinforcement.

Names, names names!

We are working so hard on building and writing our names. Below, you can see how we trace it, stamp it, and write it all on our own! We continue to practice the letters in our name, writing them left to right, and making sure we only have 1 capital letter and the rest lowercase.

"Name Pass" is a super fun game the kids loved to play! In a sandwich bag, I put a picture of the kindie along with their name tag, and cut up letters in their name. Their job was to build their name with the correct letters in the correct order. Once they built it, they put everything back in the baggy and they passed to the person next to them. This was such a fun way to recognize letters and try and build our friends' names.

(For privacy reasons, I could not post pictures of this activity. Email me and I would be glad to send one your way!)

"Count and Color" is another table time activity. The kindies traced and wrote their first name, counted their letters, and then graphed the number. We repeated the same activity with our last names too!

Buzz Book

Our kindies are working so hard on their writing. We are trying really hard to draw our pictures and label them with the sounds we hear. Encourage this at home too! If your child is drawing pictures, ask them to label. "House. What sounds do you hear in house?" You will be amazed at the sounds we know so far!

Our buzz book asks us a question. We answer it by "buzzing" to the person next to us to share our ideas. Our after the buzz is designed for responding to writing by drawing and labeling.

Our Class Promise

We had a long talk about what we wanted our kindergarten classroom to be. We decided we ALL want a classroom that's calm and quiet. We want a classroom where we work together, share our things, are nice to each other, and listen to one another's words. Ask your kindie what it means to say, "we help each other to bloom". Every day we recite this poem at circle.

Our Class Promise

When we care about each other

and our classroom, we share, listen carefully,

work hard, and have fun together.

We help each other to bloom!

When someone asks us to stop, we STOP!

This is who we are even when no one is watching.

Hopes & Dreams

We talked all about what our "hopes and dreams" are for our year in kindergarten. What do we want to be stronger at? What do we hope to accomplish by the end of our year?

After we discussed what our hopes and dreams were, we drew it and wrote our names on a flower. These hopes and dreams flowers will be up all year so we can check back and always remember what we wanted to accomplish. Ask your kindie what their hope or dream was.

Math Maniacs

We have been super busy exploring math manipulatives. We just learned and reviewed 6 different shapes: hexagon, triangle, rhombus, diamond, trapezoid, and square. We worked in pairs to explore our shapes by looking at the different attributes each one has. Ask your kindie how many sides a hexagon has.

We held up each shape and traced our fingers along the side to count how many there are. Ask your kindie what a trapezoid looks like. After we explored and discussed each shape, we played the shape game. One friend was in the middle of the circle covering their shape and the rest of us marched around in a circle singing a 1-10 numeral song. Once a friend guessed what the correct shape was, the game started again with a new friend in the center. Ask your kindie to play the "blast off" game with you at home. What a great way to count backwards from 10!

Every Monday, we will introduce a new poem. We will say our poem and add hand/body motions to help us remember and make sense of the words. On Friday, we are ready to illustrate the poem and read it to ourselves. We are doing an AWESOME job touching each word and reading! 

 We also read to others at our table and practice our poem so our brain grows stronger. After we finish reading, the poem goes in the poetry book for your child to take home with them and share with you. Practice reading the poem over again and encourage your kindie to read it to others.

We just LOVE recess time! Thankfully, the weather has cooled off and we are able to enjoy our recess….sweat free! Recess is such an important time in your child's day. Play is a very important component of school. We enjoy swinging, sliding down the slide, climbing up the bars, running over the bridge, and doing flips and tricks on the bars. We discussed how if "if we can't reach it, we aren't ready for it". Maybe by the end of the year, some of us will be big enough to try the monkey bars. For now, we are all smiles doing the things we love outside :)

Flashback

Time sure does fly! Let's take a flash back to our first day of school, now that we have permission to post pictures :) 

Our very first class picture…remember how hot it was on our first day of K?!

Our first whole school morning meeting

Morning centers are a daily favorite for the kindies. This is a 20 minute time first thing when we come in. We play and work together. Ask us which center has been our favorite so far.

WE MADE IT THROUGH OUR FIRST DAY OF K WITH NO TEARS! :)

Of course, the kiddos wanted a silly picture.