Week of January 27, 2020

Groundhog Day

    Groundhog’s Day is Sunday! Will he or will he not see his shadow? Regardless, we live in Vermont... we will more than likely have more than six more weeks of winter. But the children are very excited about the prospect of a groundhog predicting the weather. I am sure all of the children would like to catch a glimpse of Punxsutawney Phil on the Sunday news.

  

Theme Time

       This week we continued our work with the water cycle. Check out the song that the children have been singing about the water cycle.

       Today we spent the day focusing on Groundhog Day. The children read stories about the special day, played a math game and learned some facts about groundhogs.

Reader’s Workshop

   This week we continued our work on asking questions before, during and after reading books. The children have learned that asking good questions helps to build our schema. Has your child used the word ‘schema’ at home yet. They have really enjoyed using this grownup word in the classroom. I have overheard a few children talking to each other beginning their sentence with “Hey, I have schema about that!”

Writer’s Workshop

   This week the children finished up their opinion writing. They are bringing home their packet of opinion writing today. Please take a moment to check out their writing. They worked really hard on this unit and are proud of their hard work.

S.O.S

Please, please, please...help your child learn to tie their shoes. We are taking a long time to get to the cafeteria after recess because I am having to tie 6 to 8 pairs of shoes. This is a skill all kindergartners should be working on in order to be independent with their self help skills. There are some great videos online to help teach children to tie their own shoes if that is helpful.Thank you for your help.

Morning Meeting

GREETING: Shoe Greeting

ACTIVITY: Hot Potato (counting game)

Fundations

This week we continued our focus on the formation of both capital and lower case letters as well as stretching and zapping words.

Math Lessons

      Our focus on addition and subtraction equations continued this week. The children are striving for accuracy when looking at the symbol in the equation to decide if they should add or subtract before coming up with their answer.

Outdoor Clothing

Please remember to send your child with all of his/her outdoor clothing every day. Although it may be really cold, we try to get out every day as long as it is at least 10 degrees outside. Please send your child with warm mittens/gloves. We spend a lot of time playing with the snow and the tiny knit mittens/gloves just don't keep their little hands warm.

Week of January 20, 2020

***Art Class Clothing***

  Our next unit in Writer's Workshop with be an Author Study of Eric Carle and Ms. Danielle has offered to help with this project by having the children paint large papers for out books just like Eric Carle. Please have your child wear old play clothes to school on Wednesday, January 29th. The children will be painting “special” papers for our Eric Carle inspired books during art class that day. The paint they are using is washable but it is not always the easiest to wash out. An old t-shirt is the best thing to wear when painting as long sleeves tend to get dragged through the paint.  

Reader’s Workshop

      The children are working on applying the strategies they have learned over the past few months more and more independently. Please continue to have your child read to you every day at home. As we always say in kindergarten….”the more you read, the better you get!”

Writer’s Workshop

       Our opinion writing is coming along nicely. The children are getting more and more comfortable with verbally giving two reasons for their opinion. The writing is where it gets a little tricky.

The kindergartners are focusing on three rules for their sentences.

1. All sentences must start with a capital letter.
2. There should be a space between every word.
3. All sentences end with an ending mark. ( .    ? ! )

Special Visitor

       Today the children attended the Vermont Symphony Orchestra Petting Zoo in the CES gym! They had an opportunity to actually hold instruments such as a violins, a harp, tuba, trumpet and trombone. 

Math Lessons

   This week we focused on subtraction and addition. The children are working more independently with figuring out and writing equations. They are also making connections between known and unknown equations.  

Theme Time

  We have continued our weather unit this week with a focus on “Where do puddles go?” The children are very interested in the water experiments we have in the classroom and why/how the water is getting lower and lower. We will continue this unit for a few more weeks.

Book Orders

    In your child's home/school folder you will find the January book orders. If you would like to place an order, fill out the back of the booklet (with your child’s name) and send your order and payment back to school by January 30th. You may pay with cash or a check made out to Scholastic Book Clubs. You may order online if you would like at www.scholastic.com with our class code which is DVTHH. When ordering online you will pay with a credit card. Thank you!

Morning Meeting

GREETING: ABC order

ACTIVITY: Sparkle (a spelling game)

Fundations

  We are working on completing the formation of all of the capital letters. Please have your child practice letter formation at home.

      Valentine’s Day

    Valentine’s Day is coming up. We will be having a small celebration on the afternoon of February 14th. If you would like to send in a special treat for your child to share with the class, please let me know prior to the 14th. The children will be exchanging Valentine Cards with each other that afternoon. If you are going to have your child write out Valentines, please be sure that they make a Valentine for each of their classmates. There is a class list in your child's home/school folder to help them write out their Valentines. I have included the names of adults that work in our classroom just in case your child would like to give them a Valentine.

Week of January 13, 2020

Our muscle word wall as of January 2020!

Reader’s Workshop

   We continued our discussion about using schema while reading this week. The children are becoming quite skilled at making predictions about stories by using their schema. We also started to talk about connections to books. At this point, we are working on text-to-self connections as that is the easiest type of connection for young children to make. The children are thinking about parts of books and telling what it makes them think about in their own life.

Writer’s Workshop

     Our opinion writing is coming along nicely. The kindergartners certainly enjoy sharing their opinion with everyone. They have become quite skilled at using the word ‘because’ and giving at least two reasons for their opinion. I have posted a few photos of some of the writing the children have done.

Fundations

This week we continued our work on the formation of capital letters. We have learned the formation of the letters from A through G so far.

Reading & Math Assessments

     This week a lot of our reading time was taken up with literacy assessments. Even though next week is a short week with no school on Monday and I will be at a conference on Tuesday, my plan is to start the kids back into their reading groups on Wednesday. I was pleased with all of the progress the children have made and plan to update their video portfolios and re-share them with their families by mid February. Math assessments will be completed in February so I plan to do all of the updates at the same time. Thank you for your patience.

Morning Meeting

GREETING: Popsicle stick name greeting

ACTIVITY: Sparkle (a spelling game)

Math Lessons

  Our focus this week was combinations to 10. The children are becoming quite skilled at their fact fluency. That means that for many of them they no longer need to count on their fingers to know that 2+3 equals 5. That is fantastic. Once children have fact fluency to 5 and 10, they are often able to make connections to other equations without feeling the need to use their fingers such as; if 5 + 5 = 10 then I know that 5 + 4 = 9 because it is one less.  Addition and subtraction equations is something all of the children could be working on at home as homework.

Theme Time

  Our theme time focus has been on the water cycle with two main questions... "Where do puddles come from?" and "Where do they go?" We started with a discussion with the children and heard some great thoughts about where the puddle might go. In order to demonstrate that plants may be part of the answer to where puddles go, we did an experiment with a celery stalk. We placed the stalk in a vase with colored water. The children were amazed that the water in the container went down and that the leaves at the top of the celery changed to the color of the water. We will continue with our discussion on the water cycle over the next few weeks.

Week of January 6, 2020

Our new art gallery paintings

Reader’s Workshop

   This week the children focused on a new word during reader’s workshop. Our word this week was “schema”. This means prior knowledge or to the kindergartners…stuff that we already know. We used our schema to make connections to stories and to work on book discussions.
Independent work during literacy stations has really taken a huge leap since the children came back from the vacation. They are moving between stations more independently and spending time really focused on their learning during this time. This has made meeting with individuals and small groups so much easier.
Next week I will begin the second round of literacy assessments. I am really looking forward to seeing all of the growth the children have made. These assessments will take a couple of weeks to complete for all of the children. I will update and share your child's google slides with you by the beginning of February so that you can also see their growth.

Writer’s Workshop

  This week we started our work on opinion writing. Kindergartners may not know it but they do have a lot of strong opinions. We are learning to give reasons for our opinions by using the word 'because'.

   Journal writing is coming along nicely. The children have moved from just doing pictures, to writing sentences with assistance. Many of the children are writing sentences with very little assistance from adults. This is great!

 Morning Meeting

GREETING: Letter Sound Greeting

ACTIVITY: Gingy, Gingy

Math Lessons

  This week our focus was on addition and subtraction. We spent some more time learning the difference between the sign for addition and the sign for subtraction. Many times children this age just rush ahead and assume that all equations are addition. This is a difficult habit to break but we are working on it.

Muscle Word

want & went
These are often tough sight words for kindergartners. When spelling the word 'want' we say to ourselves "I want an ant" and we remember that the word want starts with a w and ends with ant. :)

Fundations

    Now that we have learned how to form all of the lower case letters, this week we started with the formation of capital letters. This unit will go quickly as we will focus on eight letters a week. This week we worked on A through D.

Saying Goodbye

    Today the children and I said goodbye to our friend Mr. Tanner. The children and I have really enjoyed having Mr. Tanner's help in our classroom for the past few months and today was his last day with us. The children created a really nice book for him telling him all of the things they liked about him, we had ice-cream sandwiches and a dance party at the end of the day.

A Look Ahead

Please note that January 20th there is no school.