May is Flying By!

        Can you believe May is almost half over? We have 18 kiddos that are almost first graders! Crazy! We have been doing so much the past couple of weeks with our data notebooks to see how much we have grown this year in kindergarten. It is a ton of fun to see how much growth the kids have made from the beginning of kindergarten and how much joy it brings to them when they find out that they are "secure" in one of our kindergarten standards.

      On Tuesday, we will be having our Sailing into Summer Parent Night from 4:30-5:30 at Sibley. I have gotten many RSVPs back already, some that can come and some that cannot, but would still like the information sent home. If you haven't sent the yellow form back, please do so by Monday, so that we can get enough copies made for everyone. If you lost it, just send me an email stating that you can either come or you would like the information sent home. I hope to see a lot of you there as that night might be the last time I  get to see some of you before the end of the year. 

     I have two different sets of pictures for you to explore. The first one is when we were working on our kindergarten shapes during zoo week. The kids were able to take some tangram shapes and create a zoo animal from them. It's so fun to see what they came up with!

    The second set of pictures is from our field trip to the Historical Museum yesterday. Overall, it was a VERY exciting day! Not only did we get to go and see how people lived 100 years ago or more, we also had a mystery guest! All week I gave the kiddos clues as to who our guest would be on Friday. Most of them were surprised to see my twin sister, Erin (another Miss Miller), waiting outside the door to greet them yesterday morning. For the field trip, half of our kids got to go with her and the other half with me. Both Erin and I captured some fun moments from our field trip. Take a look! 

Sailing into Summer

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

4:30-5:30 PM

Sibley Elementary School

Room 200

Over the summer, the average student can lose 1-2 months of learning. To prevent that from happening, we are having a parent night to share ideas with you on games, web sites, and other activites that will keep your child's skills sharp as he/she goes to 1st grade.

We will have free stuff! (books, games, etc.) for families that attend.

If possible, please bring your child along, so that you can play the games together. It is best if siblings are left at home.

Pleae RSVP by this Friday, May 10th, so that we can make sure we have enough materials prepared for everyone!

Another reminder for you is that our last day of school at Sibley Elementary is Wednesday, June 5th. Because Sibley will be preparing for the new HVAC system, teachers will be cleaning out their rooms on June 6th (the last day of school for the rest of the district).

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!