April Showers?? Nope. April Snow!

 What a week!! Early outs and late starts in APRIL! It seemed like a short week, but we learned a lot!

Language Arts: Edie the Elephant was our letter this week. She helped us remember that letter /e/ has two sounds. We spent a lot of the week writing, reading and sorting the long /e/ sound and the short /e/ sound. We read Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw and heard 32 long e words! During our Daily 5 choice time we looked for words that had double e in our reading and writing and came up with an even longer list of words. We also focused on some new sight words: now, ate and walk. We continue to work on these words everyday!
 

Math: We learned what a sphere was this week and made a list of all its attributes:
 -A sphere is 3-D. 
 -It is not flat. 
 -It is shaped like a ball. 
 -It can roll. 
 -They can be all sizes. 
We continue to work on solving story problems and use multiple strategies to solve them. Next week we will be focusing on sums to 5 and I will be sending home flashcards/game ideas to do with your child at home!


<--------working hard during math time.

Writer's Workshop: Since we have been studying the rainforest, we took the past two weeks off from our regular writing curriculum and did a lot of informative writings. Each day we read a book and looked at pictures on the internet of a certain animal. After that, we came up with a list of facts and used those to help us in our writing. We finally finished our Rainforest Animal Research Books full of awesome facts! They came home with your child today. They worked very hard!!!

Discovery: The rainforest has been our theme of study the past two weeks. We have been very busy! We have made jaguars, sloths, butterflies, tree frogs and our very own rainforest! The students have learned the 4 layers of the rainforest and what lives in each layer. Today we finished up our unit by making a collage of the 4 layers of the rainforest and whats in those layers. Next week is Earth Week and we will be learning about why it is important to keep our Earth clean!

Our Rainforest :)

Working Hard

               

Catching Up!

I am so sorry it has been so long since I have updated on everything we have been doing in kindergarten! Here is a quick re-cap of the fun we have been having.

Language Arts: We finished our last group of consonant letters in our Letters Alive program. As well as being able to recognize the letters name and sound, we also know lots of fun facts about each animal the letter corresponds with and can write true sentences about each one. We spent the past month learning the "u" word families: ug, ut, un, um. They have become so good at recognizing word families in their own reading and writing! We have also been talking about the problem and the solution in stories as well as a stories sequence.

Math: We have been focusing on "division" story problems the past month. It took us awhile to figure out some strategies to use to solve these problems, but now they are naturals! They are learning the meaning of "the same" and showing me in their work what "the same" looks like. Here is an example of one of our division problems:
     
     Miss Richardson has 12 cookies she would like to give to 3 friends. How many will each friend get if they all get the same?

They use linking cubes, draw pictures, or do mental math to solve their problems. It is always fun to see what they come up with to get the answer! I love seeing how differently each of them does it.

Writer's Workshop: Thank you for sending pictures in your students writing folder! This has helped us remember special moments in our life and how we felt. We have been focusing on "zooming in" on our stories and only telling the most important parts. We have also been working on expressing our feelings in our writing and making our illustrations match those feelings. I love reading their stories and seeing the memories they have made!

Show and Share: This month we are sharing our favorite books! It is fun to see the books your child is bringing and we have even had some of them read to us! So fun!

Discovery: We did a short unit on Dr. Seuss in the beginning of March and studied some author traits of Dr. Seuss. We noticed that he always uses a lot of rhyming words, makes crazy and colorful illustrations and also uses a lot of silly or nonsense words. We pretended to be Dr. Seuss one day after reading, There's a Wocket in my Pocket. We came up with our own silly creatures that rhymed with pocket and then created them. During the middle of March we became meteorologist! We discussed what a meteorologist does, what they study and why they are important. We then became meteorologist and studied the different types of clouds, how they are formed and what they make. We also talked about wind and the good things wind does and the bad things wind does. We ended that unit by filling our our own weather book! Last week we studied the habitat of the prairie or grassland. Over the next couple of weeks we will be studying the rainforest, the desert and the ocean. This is such a fun unit for us because we get to learn about many different types of animals, plants and weather patterns.

I hope to be better at keeping you up to date until the end of school! Thank you for all you are doing with your child to help them become better readers, writers and learners!

Important dates:

Tuesday, May 7: Elementary Spring Concert. (9-10 a.m.)