Week of March 9, 2020

Such concentration

Reader’s Workshop

     This group of children seem to love to be read to. It is a great time of the day when we all gather on the carpet and enjoy some wonderful stories. This week the children are working on retelling stories that they read or listen to. This is a skill the children could work on at home. After reading to your child or listening to them read at home, ask him/her to tell you about that story. They should include the characters, the setting, the problem and the solution.

Writer’s Workshop

     Our Eric Carle inspired stories are finished. The children enjoyed reading each other’s stories this week. We will be sending the stories home next week. We would like to enjoy them for one more week at school.

Theme Time

       We started our unit on healthy nutrition this week. The children have been discussing different ways that people keep their bodies healthy. Such as; eating healthy food, getting plenty of rest, drinking water and exercising. Nurse Reed came into our class this week to talk about "My Plate" and foods that you should eat anytime and the foods you should eat only sometimes.

Report Cards

     Report cards come home yesterday. If you have not returned your child’s report card envelope, please do so as soon as possible. Parent/teacher conferences are optional at this point of the year. I am happy to meet with you if you would like to discuss your child’s report card. Please let me know by Tuesday, March 17th if you would like to schedule a conference.

Morning Meeting

GREETING: Coin names

ACTIVITY: Buzz counting by 10's

Math Lessons

 Our measurement unit is coming along nicely. The children have become quite skilled at lining up their measurement tool with the edge of the item they are measuring instead of just placing it wherever they want on the item.

Fundations

      The children have learned about 3 digraphs (th, sh and ch). The children are working on being persistent when trying to write words that include these digraphs. They are also working on making the correct sound when they see them in books instead of separating the two sounds. .

March Book Orders

In your child's home/school folder you will find the March 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 March 19th. 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 pay with a credit card. Thank you!

Week of March 6, 2020

Buddies!

A Note from Mrs. E

       It was so nice to see all of those smiling faces on Wednesday morning. It sounds like the children had very busy vacations and there was a lot of energy in the classroom this week. Please continue to send all the winter clothing until we are sure that Spring has arrived. Thank you!

Reader’s Workshop

  After vacation, we started some work with constructed responses. The children are working on completing sentences about books that we have read. In the next few weeks we will be working on retelling stories after reading or listening to them. The children will work on both of these skills in the coming months as well as in first grade.

Writer’s Workshop

        This week we spent time working on finishing up our Eric Carle inspired stories. The children are doing a great job working on creating collages for their illustrations Once our books are completed we will be keeping our books in the classroom to enjoy together and then we will send them home.

Report Cards Are Coming Home Next Thursday (March 12th)

I will be sending home report cards a day early next week as I will be at a kindergarten conference all day on Friday, March 13th. When your child's report card comes home, please take a moment to look at it with your kindergartner. Talk to them about what they are doing well and what they need to work on. Conferences at this time of the year are optional. After looking at your child's report card, if you feel you would like to schedule a parent/teacher conference please send me an email after March 13th. Hopefully, everyone received an email that gave you permission to view your child's video portfolio. If you have not received an email that allows you to view your child's portfolio, please let me know. All the portfolio's were updated before our February break.

Morning Meeting

GREETING: Handshakes

ACTIVITY: Sparkle

Please check the important dates page of this blog to see updates for March

   

Week of February 17, 2020

The kids filled their kindness jar and were able to spend the day at school with their stuffed animals and do special "fun" stations in the afternoon. 

Big Change Round-Up

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of the donations to the big change round-up. Our class raised $449.70! That is amazing! This is a wonderful cause and this money will help so many children and families at the UVM Children's Hospital.

Reader’s Workshop

     This group of children seem to love to be read to. It is a great time of the day when we all gather on the carpet and enjoy some wonderful stories. This week the children are working on retelling stories that they read or listen to. This is a skill the children could work on at home. After reading to  your child at home, ask him/her to tell you about that story. They should include the characters, the setting, the problem and the solution.

Writer’s Workshop

   Our Eric Carle stories are almost finished! We are hoping to have all of the stories finished shortly after we come back from vacation. The "big kids" came down to our room and helped type our stories on Thursday. We created our covers on Friday.

Winter Break Activities

      Winter Break has arrived! Here are some activities you might consider having your child do during vacation to keep up with skills we have learned at school.

1. Keep a journal about the vacation (have your child write about what he/she does each day). Remember the three rules of sentences

• Start every sentence with a capital letter
• Put spaces between your words
• End every sentence with an ending mark (. , ?, !)

2. Read, read, read

3. Play a card game

4. Play a board game

5. Add numbers together, subtract numbers

6. Sort coins &  talk about their names & values

7. Count forwards, backwards, &  by 10’s

8. Have your child write a story and illustrate

9. Practice reading and writing muscle words.

10. Practice writing their full name (first, middle, last)

Morning Meeting

GREETING: Coin Greeting

ACTIVITY: Money Poem

Muscle Word

   You can find all of the muscle words covered so far on the Writer's Workshop page of this blog. These are great words for the children to practice reading and writing over the vacation.

The Wall of Sparkle

  Many of the children are very interested in learning how to tie their shoes. With interest comes determination...this is a great time to teach your child how to tie his/her own shoes. We have started our “Wall of Sparkle” but it does not have many names on it yet. This is always of great interest to kindergartners. Children who can tie their shoes on their own, have them names made out of glitter and placed on The Wall of Sparkle. Please spend some time over the vacation helping your child with this step to independence. Here are some YouTube links that may help with this activity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKlB5UCrUrU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4q2vKlvuXM

Fundations

    We have been learning about digraphs for the past few weeks. Last week we learned about the ‘th’ digraph. This week we talked about 'sh'.

Math Lessons

  This month our calendar theme has been coins (penny, nickel, dime and quarter). This week the children explored more activities about coins during math time. Our goal is to have the children be able to name the four coins and state their values. Here are some activities the children could do at home.

1. Give your child a handful of coins and have them sort them
2. Read books about coins
3. Hand your child change you get at the store and have them add the coins together.
4. Make patterns out of coins and then say the name and/or value of the coin as they check the pattern.

I hope everyone has a healthy and restful break!

Week of February 10, 2020

 We had a great time celebrating the 100th day of kindergarten!

Reader’s Workshop

     We have become quite skilled in the parts of a story. Next time you read a story to your child ask them the following four questions.

1. Who was the character in the story?

2. What is the setting of the story?

3. What was the problem in the story?

4. How was the problem solved?

     These are all questions we have been asking for the past few weeks during Readers and Writers Workshop. We have talked about story problems and how they are solved and even chatted about many different character traits (ie. brave, shy, silly, persistent…)

Writer’s Workshop

       We continued our work on our Eric Carle inspired stories this week. All of the children picked out their main character, the setting and the problem for their individual stories. Next week we will work on putting our stories together and hopefully start our work as illustrators and create our pictures using collage just like Eric Carle. This unit will most likely continue into the week after our Winter break.

Morning Meeting

GREETING: Skip greeting

ACTIVITY: Sparkle

Math

   This week we celebrated the 100th day of kindergarten! We made special headbands, we counted to 100 in a variety of ways, we made necklaces out of 100 Froot Loops and counted 100 of many things. We even had a special visitor. Zero the Hero came to visit us via Facetime from a land far, far away! This week the children discovered that 100 isn’t as large as they thought.

Fundations

  We are learning about digraphs. A digraph is when two letters work together to make one sound. This week we focused on the sound /th/ makes with the letters ‘t’ and ‘h’. ‘Th’ is a digraph.

Valentine’s Day

      The children really enjoyed passing out the cards they had for each other. It was a little chaotic and some of the valentines may have been placed in the wrong bags but they had a blast. Your child brought home a bag full of cool Valentine cards yesterday. Hopefully you all had a chance to open the bag and enjoy reading the cards. Thank you to everyone for sending in special treats for our afternoon snack.

We painted "Love Bugs" for Valentine's Day

Big Change Round Up

Keep those coins coming in. The children are really

excited about raising money for the UVM Children’s Hospital.

Next week is the last week to collect the coins.

Week of February 3, 2020

Morning Meeting

GREETING: Banana Fanana

ACTIVITY: The Tongue Wizard

Reader’s Workshop

This week’s lessons focused around the parts of a good story. The children are working on picking out the characters in the stories, the setting, the problem and the solution. When you are reading with your child over the next few weeks, ask them to tell you those parts of the story.

The kids made Chinese New Year's masks during their library class this week.

Writer’s Workshop

   This week we finished our Opinion Writing Unit. I was so impressed today when I asked all of the children to write an opinion piece on something they felt very strongly about. They wrote it completely independently from start to finish. I saw kids using spaces between their words and capital letters at the beginning of their writing. I am so proud of how hard they are working on their writing. Please check out the Writer's Workshop page of this blog to see some examples of their writing.

Theme Time

    We have continued our unit on weather, climate and the water cycle. Our focus this week was on different types of weather. The children all shared what their favorite type of weather is and created a page for our class book.

Fundations

    We are working on a few things during Fundations right now. We are learning how to form capital letters, reviewing the formation of lower case letters as well as 'zapping' words in order to put down the correct letters that correspond with the sounds we hear. Ask your child to zap and write a CVC word for you (ie. map, fog, sit, cup, get)

Math Lessons

     It is almost the 100th day of kindergarten! We will celebrate the 100th day of kindergarten on February 13th. We have been getting ready for the 100th day by reading special stories, counting out 100 objects and talking about different ways to count to 100.

Next Week

     Next week we have a few things you may want to be aware of. The 100th day of kindergarten will now be on Thursday, February 13th (due to our snow day on Thursday) and we will be celebrating Valentine's Day on Friday, February 14th. A class list went home a few weeks ago. If you plan on having your child pass out Valentines, please be sure to have them make one for each child in the class so that feelings are not hurt. The children will pass out their Valentine's in the morning and then bring them home to open them that afternoon. We will have a special afternoon snack time. If anyone would like to make a special treat to send in for the class, please let me know on Monday. Thank you!