Spring is in the Air...Kind of

      Hi everyone! I am so glad I finally had time to get on the blog to write a new post. It has been a very busy couple of weeks. I was just looking at the calendar and noticed that April is already half over! I cannot believe how fast time has flown this year. 

    This week we will be learning and studying plants and how they grow. We will even get to do some planting ourselves. In order to do this, we need a couple of things: nylons (knee highs or regular work - they do not need to be new, just clean), styrofoam cups, and grass seed (a small baggie will do). A family has already brought in the potting soil, so with a couple more things we should be all set. If you have any of these things at your house that you would be willing to donate, Miss Miller's class sure would appreciate it! 

     Did you know that we have some awesome readers in room 206? I sure did, but now we even have some pictures to prove it. During morning work and choice time, the kids can sign up with their name and the title of their book to read a just right book from their book basket at snack time. Some great things about this new part to our schedule is that anyone can do it, students get to show their friends what terrific readers sound like (which pushes each one of us to try even harder), it builds confidence when we get to cheer on our classmates after they read a book by themselves, and it means we get to celebrate reading every day. Pretty cool! Here are some pictures of our daily readers.

      The line was long for signing up that morning!

          One thing that we are really working on for writing in kindergarten is our finger spacing. Sometimes we get on a roll when we write, and we forget to put a space between our words. That makes it really difficult for us and others to read what we have written. We decided that we needed bigger popsicle sticks to help us remember those spaces, and we wanted to decorate them, too. Check them out!

     We have been working really hard on being able to name the 2-D and 3-D shapes, so for a hands-on activity, we worked with pipe cleaners and straws to create them ourselves. It was so much fun, and now it is one of our favorite things to choose for math centers. 

      Our class has started collecting warm fuzzies that look like little colored pom poms. Sometimes if I notice something that a student or the entire class does that shows really hard work or an act of kindness (especially when it's something that is hard to do), we put in a warm fuzzy to celebrate. When we see students doing the right things and being kind to one another, it gives us warm fuzzies and makes our hearts feel good! Our class filled up an entire container of warm fuzzies, so we had a little celebration with Easter pencils, frosting some cookies, and drinking some juice. It was a blast. We are already getting close to our next celebration!

      

Fun Math and Reading Activities!

      I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! Today's post serves as a reminder of things that you and your child could be doing at home to further his/her learning. You may not know, but there are many resources available through links on my blog!

    If you scroll down on the home page of the blog, you will see that it is bordered with math and reading links, as well as some of our favorite educational youtube videos. I know that these are some things that the kids would love to do!

   Also, if you press the kindegarten wiki link on the home page (or you could go here: http://sibleykindergarten.wikispaces.com/), there are numerous resources that can be printed to use at home like learning games and flashcards. Please take advantage of these things to help support your child's learning at home.

     We are almost down to two months of kindergarten left, so these next two months will be spent making sure your child is secure in those skills from their data notebook, they are reading near or at a level C, and getting them ready for first grade.

     If I do not talk to you before, have a very Happy Easter!