Week 5 and 6 in Kindergarten

Can you believe its been a month and a half? It seems like a long time, but these kindergartners have accomplished a lot in a short amount of time!

In Math we have been studying the numbers 1-10. We are journaling about them and practicing writing them in our "numeral" song. We are up to number 3 in our journals and we are up to number 8 in our numeral song. In our journals we write the number, fill in a ten frame with the number, color that many cubes, make that many tallys and draw a picture of that many things.

In Writing we are learning how to plan our writing, how to stretch out the sounds in a word and how to set up our page for writing with words and pictures. The confidence is growing in our classroom! We write in books that are 8 1/2 X 14 pieces of paper folded in half and stapled. Right now we are going through one book together. Most of us are writing about our playground.

In Reading we have reached our goal of 10 minutes of independent reading. We have even read for 11 and 12 minutes. This is uniterupted reading time, where the children are looking at their books the entire time and thinking about their books. The only noise we hear are children whisper reading to themselves. I am quite proud of their progress in this area. This part of our readers workshop will be important so that I can meet with small groups of children while everyone else independent reads.

Also in Reading we have learned a lot of new letters. We have read, written and said the sounds of 19 of the 26 letters. Feel free to visit the website that has all of our Alphafriends on it. You can hear each song and have your child sing for you!

https://teacher.ocps.net/janet.cahill/page7.html

As we near the end of learning all of our letters, I am beginning to plan our Readers Workshop that we will be doing every day. The children will be doing buddy reading, independent reading, word work, guided reading and journaling every day in our readers workshop. They work very hard every day!

We have also been doing an art project every week focused on pumpkins, as we begin to prepare for our field trip to B-Zi Farms on Thursday, October 30th. We are very excited! The PTO (Parent Teacher Organization) donated $300.00 to kindergarten so that we could buy white t-shirts to tie-dye for each class for our field trip. This should make it a little easier to keep track of all our angels!

Remember to return all paperwork and money sometime this next week! I don't want anyone to be left behind. The most important thing is the permission form. Your child cannot go without it.

Things to remember:


October 21st - October 24th:  Early Release for conferences. Early release is at 1:15. Kindergarten will not be holding conferences.

October 22nd: Fall Festival at Endeavour 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM. This is hosted by the PTO. There will be games and activities for all ages.

October 30th: Bi_Zi Farm Field Trip 9:30 AM - 11:45 AM. Please make sure your child is at school by 9:15.

I hope you have a great week! Let me know if you have any questions!

Thanks!

Mr. Mason

A Month in...

Wow! Has it really been a month of kindergarten? The time has gone so quickly.

In the past two weeks we have been very busy. We have been working on our reading stamina. At last check-in we were able to read for 1 minute without looking around the room or talking to a friend. We have been practicing everyday and now we are up to 8 minutes!

Our community is starting to develop, also. The children are starting to call eachother by name. That may seem silly to you, but for the longest time they just refered to each other as he and she. 

We have a lot of fun together. Every Wednesday we do an art project. The month of October we are doing a pumpkin unit. This past week we started an are project where we mixed red and yellow to make orange. We also mixed blue and yellow to make green. I also was able to teach them about oil pastels. We created a pumpkin night scene. More picture will follow, but we just finished the project today.

Every day we work on a new letter. So far we have covered half of the alphabet. As I mentioned in my previous blog, we identify the letter in our Alphafriend songs. The children circle the letter of the day. They read a small poem that uses the letter of the day. They practice writing it and they utilize a textured version of the letter to feel the letter. This utilizes all of the learning styles.

We have also been practicing writing our names. A lot of the children came into kindergarten able to write their names. My goal is to get them to use a capital for the first letter and all lowercase for the rest of their name. This is something you can focus on at home too.

If you're interested in learning more about the alpha friends, you can follow the following link:

https://teacher.ocps.net/janet.cahill/page7.html

This has all of the songs and lyrics for each Alphafriend we are learning about. We have learned the first 12 s,m,r,t,b,n,h,v,c,p,g,f.

In math we have been creating bar graphs by grouping similar items, like our favorite colors. Starting next week, we will begin discovering the numbers 1-5. We will be writing, reading and counting the numbers.

In writing we have continued to focus on the traits of good writing (in our pictures). The traits are: At least 5 colors, details (hair, ears, mouth, legs, feet etc. Details also include things like what is around us (setting) and pictures that give clues to what is happening in the picture.

Next week we will begin narrative writing across multiple pages. This will be a long process. The children will be creating books, filled with pictures (in chronological order), but the students will eventually be encouraged to try stretching out and writing words on each page. The students will really begin to feel stretched.

A few things to remember:

Picture day is on Tuesday, October 7th. If you have the opportunity, please email me when you have sent money in for picture day. That way I can keep an eye out for it. If you choose not to order a picture, your child's picture will still be taken.

There is no school on Friday, October 10th. Teachers will be in professional development that day.

On Thursday, October 30th, we will be taking a field trip to Bi-Zi Farm. A letter and permission form were sent home on Friday. Please sign and return the form as soon as possible. The field trip fee is $6.50 to cover entry into the farm and the bus ride. Please let me know if this cost will be a burden for you.

I am currently looking for 1 more volunteer to go on the field trip. If you are interested, please let me know!

October 21st-24th are all early release days for parent teacher conferences. Kindergarten will not be holding conferences on those dates, so you do not need to schedule one for your child.as the b

There will be a special event at Endeavour on Wednesday, October 22nd, in the evening. More information will be coming from the PTO about this event.

I think that is it for this week. I hope you have a great weekend! I am the MC at my childhood friend's wedding reception...I'm living the life!

Here's a great picture I took near the school on Thursday morning! Fall is coming!