A New Year

What an interesting first week back we've had. I've had some extra time to get a new post up with many pictures for you to see. Before we get to the pictures, I wanted to touch base on guided reading. Most of the kids have been leveled, and I expect to finish the rest today. Next week, students will be bringing home guided reading books regularly (3-5x week). If you see a book that has already been read, it is okay to read it again with your child. Repeated reading allows for fluency and growing confidence in your child. Please make sure that your child is pointing to each word as he/she reads and remind him/her to use those reading strategies. Remember, we want to have all students grow in their guided reading level by the end of kindergarten, and more specifically, we would like them to be secure at a level C. Thanks for all that you do!

Here are some pictures of our bus ride to the high school to practice for our winter program and pictures from the night of the program.

I had to capture a picture of Devin conducting the other grades. 

In math, we were working on shape attributes and characteristics as we compared them. In all subjects, but especially in math, it is important that students can take different routes to get an answer and share their thinking with the class because it builds confidence and makes us smart!

This weather can sometimes make us antsy, especially without recess, so we have incorporated many brain breaks and yoga sessions in the new year. The kids are loving it!

Here are some pictures from our Polar Express Day. We had such a fun day reading the book, drinking hot cocoa, and watching the movie. Plus, we got to wear our pajamas!

It was a lot of fun making gifts for our parents!

Here are some pictures from our Winter Party. We had a blast thanks to our room parents!

December is Here!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families. I have 23 extra little ones to be thankful for this year. I have updated the blog with many pictures for you to see. Throughout this post, you will see what we are working on right now in kindergarten. I am excited to share with you your child's progress at his/her conference!

Ipods have been introduced to the kindergartners! They are very excited to practice reading and math skills with those fun apps!

In math, we are working on reading our numbers 0-31. As we start applying those basic math skills, it's important that your child can read and write numbers 0-31. After winter break, we begin more challenging things like addition and subtraction and money. The pictures below show the kids practicing reading their numbers while racing to draw the parts of a turkey. 

Winter-like weather is here! Please make sure your child has all the necessary pieces to stay safe and warm at recess. When it's time for recess, I really push the kids to get all their recess gear on by themselves. I think this class is my most independent so far when it comes to getting on all that gear!

Here's pictures of the kids as they began to work with money. We've discussed the characteristics of the four basic coins and practiced identifying them by those characteristics as we sorted them. 

Recently in math, we practiced comparing numbers. We usually play top-it by finding the number that is "more." This time, we practiced finding the number that is "less."

We made pattern block turkey feathers as we practiced identifying shapes and counting, reading, and writing numbers.

We also reviewed the kindergarten patterns (AB, AAB and ABC) as we created patterns for our partners to describe and extend. We even got to review the names of our shapes!