Valentine's Day and the 100th Day of School!

      What a fun couple of days we've had in kindergarten! We celebrated Valentine's Day with a great party thrown by our room moms. We frosted cookies, drank through licorice straws, played pin the heart, made Valentine bug headbands, and even got to pretend that we were cupid as we aimed at targets with straws and q-tips! It was such a "sweet" day! Hopefully, the kids shared their candy with everyone because they sure had a lot!

     Today was the 100th day of kindergarten. We did many things to celebrate 100 days of fun, learning, and building friendships. We did some 100th day challenges like 100 seconds of silence, 100 twists, and 100 hops. We read books about the 100th day, found a secret message on a hundreds chart, and even tallied how many rolls of the dice it took to cover a hundreds chart. It was so much fun! Take a look at the pictures below.

Reminders

We have our Valentine’s Day bags decorated and ready to fill.  Feel free to start sending valentines in as soon as you get them done so that the students can start sorting them into their bags. We will be opening them on Friday.  If you lost your class list for valentines, let me know and I can get you another copy. (Note that Lloyd moved away, so we are down to 19 students).

 

The 100^th day of school is coming up on Tuesday, February 18^th (assuming we don’t have any more snow days J).  As a way of celebrating, we will be doing many activities that day and the days leading up to it involving the number 100.  On Friday, students were given a paper ready to be cut into the shape of a heart.  Please help your child to cut it out and then to cover it with 100 items from your home.  Some ideas include: 100 stickers, 100 noodles, 100 cheerios, 100 stamps, 100 marshmallows, 100 sequins, 100 cotton balls, 100 scraps of paper, 100 words or letters cut from a magazine or 100 of anything else small enough to be glued onto the heart.  We will be hanging these in the hallway, so make sure they aren’t too heavy to hang.  Please return the completed

project to school before February 14^th so that we can display and share our 100^th day collections.

Pennies for the PLUNGE!

We are collecting money to contribute to the food shelf drive taking place at the Blue Ice Plunge during the BIG FREEZE community festival on February 15th. If our schools raises $200, some of the Sibley teachers will take the plunge!  Help us reach our goal by sending in your spare change anytime before Friday, February 14th.

Due to the many snow days, the school board has made some changes to the school calendar.March 21^st was a conference day but is now a regular school day for students. April 4^th was a teacher work day but is now a regular school day for students. June 5^th was the last day of school for students, but now June 6^thwill be the last day of school for students. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Just Right Books

     We have readers in room 206! Yes, the kindergartners are reading books and loving it! We recently practiced choosing Just Right Books. It is important for the kids to have choice in the books that they read, but more importantly, we want them choosing books that are "just right" or at their guided reading level. We want all students to be reading at a level C by the end of kindergarten. Below, you will find pictures of the kids book shopping for the first time on their own. They loved it! We go book shopping each week to find just right books to read during read to self time. 
     Finding a just right book can be compared to riding a bike on a flat road. It's a smooth ride, not too easy, and not too hard. It's also enjoyable. This is important so that the kindergartners enjoy reading and understand what they are reading. They should be able to answer questions regarding the story that they read independently. If a book is too challenging, it is like riding bike up a hill. The kids will get frustrated, will most likely give up, and will get hung up on decoding words that they do not know. The kids will not find joy in reading those books. If a book is too easy, it's like riding bike down a hill. The kids will read it too quickly, and as a result, will not comprehend or understand anything that they read. 
    We have been working on expression through the use of readers theater scripts from our reading curriculum. It's important that students read smoothly with an interesting voice. We don't want to sound like a robot. Today, we practiced expression by changing our volume and pitch in our voice in a way that makes sense with what we are reading. 
     We also have some kindergartners performing The Three Little Pigs below. They decided to do it during choice time, and I just had to capture a video of it. 
     I hope to see you at Fun Night this Friday!