Homecoming Happenings

What a fun week in the Spirit Lake School! We had fun dressing up everyday, cheering with all the athletes Friday morning during our assembly and watching the parade!

 

 

Kindergarteners doing a cheer!

Ready to watch the parade!

     

  

GO INDIANS!

Homecoming Week

Next week is Homecoming! This year it is an Olympic theme. It is so much fun to dress up for these days, I hope you choose to participate!

Monday: Pajama Day

Tuesday: Red, White and Blue Day

Wednesday: Jersey Day

Thursday: Hat Day

Friday: Red and Black Day (GO INDIANS!)

There will be a parade on Friday afternoon we will go an watch. It will be an exciting week for our school!!

All About Me

This week we have been busy working on our read to self stamina, math by myself stamina and writing stamina! Can you tell what our word of the week has been? We are doing a great job of getting to work quickly and quietly everyday! This has resulted in lots of great learning!!

During our Writer’s Workshop time we have really been building our muscles by working the ENTIRE time without stopping. We made it to 13 minutes this week! Your children are great story tellers. I love this part of the day because I get to see their imagination on paper. We have practiced, practiced, practiced and this Writing chart we made helps us remember what our job is everyday.

 

 

I helped a little, but for the most part the kids came up with these great ideas for making writer’s workshop a success!

 

 

 

 

In math this week we have been using pattern blocks to make designs, count, and pattern.  We have also talked about the attributes of different shapes and used smaller shapes to create new ones! Here are some examples of our work:

 

Our Discovery theme this week is All About Me! On Tuesday we read, Chrysanthemum, and talked about how our names are absolutely perfect! We practiced making our absolutely perfect names with play-doh and dotters. We also counted the letters in our name.

 

Using the dotters

 

Play Doh Names

  

Wednesday we read, I Like Me, and talked about the different things we each like to do. Then we made a picture of us using shapes! Here we are with our circle heads, triangle bodies and rectangle arms and legs. They did such a great job!

       

Today we practiced graphing!! We made our faces and added our own hair color and eyes. Then we graphed who had what color hair in our class. Here was our graph:

 

 

We had the most brown hair and the least black hair. They did a great job adding detail and making their face and hair look like them!

 

 

The week has gone fast and we have had another fantastic week! Enjoy your weekend and Go Hawks!

First Week Wrap Up

Our Language Arts time has been going so well! We have already met three friends from Letters Alive: Amos Alligator, Brodie Bear and Celine Cow. It’s been fun to meet these animals, see where they live, learn their sounds and practice writing their letters. We will continue to review these animals and their sounds while we meet more friends this week.             

We have been spending lots of time practicing Read to Self. On Friday we were able to sit still and read quietly for 3 minutes without interruption! They have gotten so good at going to get their book boxes quickly and quietly, finding a spot to sit and getting right to reading. Here we are doing a GREAT job!

                              

During math we are learning how to work by ourselves quietly too. We have been learning about the attributes of different objects and sorting them. We have also practiced some addition story problems and number writing!

We met someone new on Friday, his name is Pete the Cat! Pete the Cat loves his white shoes and he is helping us learn our color words. Have your child sing this song for you and retell Pete’s story.  

http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/feature/petethecat/

We made our own Pete the Cat. It took us a long time but everyone did awesome work. It was good practice for using our scissors and glue.

Two very important people came to our room and introduced themselves this week: Mrs. Thompson and Mr. Boeve.  Mrs. Thompson is our school counselor. She comes to our classroom every other week to teach us Guidance. This week she played a name game with us to help us get to know our classmates better.

Mr. Boeve is our school principal. He told us his most important job is making sure all of the kids are safe and taken care of everyday. He also talked to us about the importance of being a bucket filler and how happy it makes him to see kids with full buckets!

         

Here are some ways the kids came up with to be a bucket filler at school and home!

                      

  I push someone on the swing. –Philip                         I hold a friends hand. –Reese

 

               

 I let friends play with me. –Cooper                             I share my tractors. –Terrence

WE ARE BUCKET FILLERS!

Letter Aa, Math and Writing!

We had a full day today with all of our friends together for the first time! We started our morning by learning our first Letters Alive friend, Amos Alligator. We practiced the sound letter “Aa” makes and also practiced writing letter “Aa.” After that, we looked at what friends in our class have letter “Aa” in their name.

We listened to the story, The Kissing Hand, and talked about the different ways to read it. We came up with 1. Reading the words and 2. Reading the pictures! There is one more way that we can read a book, but we will learn about that tomorrow.

 

 

This book reminded us that it’s okay to leave mom and dad to come to school. If we ever feel sad, we can put our hand to our cheek and remember that our moms and dads love us!

 

 

 

During math time today, we practiced what it looks like to do “Math by Yourself.” This is a choice the kids will be able to pick from later in the year, after lots of practice. Today we worked on playing quietly by ourselves with our teddy bears. We counted, sorted and put them into patterns!

    

Here we are being illustrators of our school book! What great coloring everyone did!

Today was our first day of Writer’s Workshop. I showed the kids how to think of something really special to us that we want to tell a story about. Then I drew the picture and told a story while I did it. We talked about how important it is to be quiet during this time so we can all work hard and focus on our ideas. Then it was their turn! Our room was silent for 15 minutes as these little guys told a story through their pictures. I was so impressed with what they did. Here are some examples:

 

Jace likes to ride his bike on the bike path with his mom.

 

 

 

 

 

Abi is going to sign up for soccer with her sister Bre and she can’t wait to play!

 

 

 

 

JD: The dragon monster is attacking the people.

 

 

We learned so much today!! I could not be happier with how well they listened and worked…can’t wait for another day tomorrow