Last week was full of fun! We are continuing to practice new routines, but each day we are learning something new about the classroom, our classmates, and what goes on throughout a typical day in kindergarten.
This past week was spent focusing on growing our stamina. As we practice read-to-self and ABC/Word Work, we time how long our bodies and brains can do those things without getting tired. We are really proud of our class because our stamina is growing more and more every day to our 20-minute goal. Each day we record the minutes on a stamina graph, so that the kids can visualize their growth, and it gets them very involved in their own learning. Here are some pictures during read-to-self time and ABC/Word Work time.
Every day, the kids get to participate in some free exploration time (we call it choice time). You have probably heard about this time of the day because the kids love it! They really enjoy getting to choose what they want to do each day, and they get to socialize with their friends.
We read poems almost every day in kindergarten because it helps with fluency and one-to-one correspondence, and it gives the kindergarteners confidence when they read it on their own because they have it memorized from doing it as a whole class. Each week, they will get to put paper versions of the poems into their poetry folders to read at read-to-self time.
Here are some pictures from homecoming/apple week. The kids had so much fun dressing up for the different dress-up days, and I sure had fun getting to see what they (and you) came up with!
To celebrate the end of apple week, the kids got to do a taste testing of three kinds of apples (red, yellow, and green) and decide which was their favorite. We then graphed our results.
Our homecoming pep fest was amazing! We had kids of all ages participating. It was great to see the entire school come together in support of the Tigers. During the pep fest, the kids got to learn some cheers, hear some 5th graders talk about sportsmanship, do a special dance that Ms. Hanson taught them, and sing the school song. The school song might have been the loudest part of the pep fest because that's when Mr. Williams was kidnapped by the Tiger!
