May Madness

Language Arts: In the past two weeks we have learned about Ima Iguana and Ollie the Orangutan. They have helped us remember that these letters say two sounds. We have been working really hard on being able to sort the two sounds as well as read words with two sounds. One of our reading buddies, Flippy the Dolphin, reminds us to flip the sound in a word we don't know to try and figure it out. This has been much easier for us now that we are learning the vowels and both their sounds. Next week we will learn about letter U and the week after that is letter Y as a vowel. We will wrap up with a week of review and your little kindergartener will walk out the door ready for a summer vacation and excited to start first grade! 

Math: Addition and Subtraction facts to five have been our focus lately. One of the benchmarks your child needs to meet is easily identifying an addition or subtraction sentence within 5, and being able to say the answer without using manipulatives (fingers, counters, etc.) We have played many games of around the world, done flashcards everyday and worked on story problems within 5. We have also been reviewing all of the 3D shapes we need to know in kindergarten: sphere, cone, cylinder and cube. We learned how to draw each 3D shape and drew pictures of real life things that looked the same as each 3D shape. We ended the week by having a fun day creating, sorting ad identifying all these 3D shapes! We had four stations set up:

    1. Shape Building with marshmallows and toothpicks.

2. Candy Sorting

 3. Cut and Paste: 3D v 2D

    

4. Smartboard

Writer's Workshop: We spent every day this week working on writings of our OWN CHOICE!! I read some great books, letters and posters this week--all ideas generated by none other than your children! It is so fun to see what they come up with and how their writing has evolved over the past 9 months. I hope they are sharing their stories with you!

Discovery: We finished our study on the desert this past week. We started the week by making a Schema chart (things we think we already know). Here are some of our schemas:

-the desert is dry

-lots of sand 

-the desert is hot

-there are camels

-there are pyramids

-there are caxis (cactus) :)

After watching a video about the desert, we drew a picture and wrote down our new learning. Here are some of the things we learned:

-cacti have long roots to get water

-camels have long eyelashes to keep the sand out of their eyes

-many animals live there

-snakes blend in

-the cactus is very spiky

We also made our own saguaro cactus, a cactus that takes up to 150 years to get big and grow arms. It is the home to many desert animals while it is alive as well as when it is dead. We learned that the elf owl loves to make its home in the saguaro.

Our fun wrap up craft was a desert scene. We used colored chalk to make a background, then added cacti, animals, flowers and sand to make it come to life. They are so cool! We loved learning about the desert. For the next two weeks we will study our last habitat/environment: the ocean! 

Please remember that we have our spring music concert Tuesday, May 7 at 9:00 a.m.

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.)

Presidents

Last week we celebrated President’s day for the whole week! We learned about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and also talked about the role of the president. We had fun thinking about what we would do if we were the President of the United States.

      

After reading a non-fiction book about George Washington, we came up with facts together and then wrote our own.

 

                                           

We did the same thing for Abe!

 

 

We learned that Abe Lincoln is on the penny! We played a game flipping the coin and graphing heads and tails.

           

The flag is an important symbol in our country. We listened to the Star Spangled Banner and said the Pledge of Allegiance together. We learned what the stars and the stripes mean and how many there are on the flag.

This week we have been learning about SPACE! We are making Information books about space with all of the fun things we have learned! hey will be sent home next week so you can read about what your child has learned!

Valentine’s Day

 

    On Thursday we celebrated Valentine’s Day together by handing out our valentine’s, writing nice notes to each other, playing games and decorating treats. It was a fun way to end the week and we all got to take home A LOT of candy and A LOT of nice notes from our friends.

Enjoy these pictures from our fun day!

Sorting our candy hearts

      

Graphing our candy hearts

Decorating treats

                    

Our decorated Valentine Monster Bags (which turned out SO CUTE)

SILLY

Fairy Tales

We spent two fun weeks reading about Fairy Tales and doing many fun writing prompts and projects!

  

  Cinderella was the first Fairy Tale we read. After reading many different versions, we filled in this story chart to help us remember the important details in the story.

We imagined what it would be like to have our own fairy godmothers and came up with some fun ideas! If only they were real!

  

 

Jack and the Beanstalk was another Fairy Tale we read. The Giant left us a note and challenged us to find things around the room that were longer and shorter than his footprint. We had just practiced measuring in math so this challenge came at the right time! It was fun to watch the kids run around the room and measure different things with their linking cubes. The giants foot was 22 linking cubes long. The kids had to determine whether things were longer, shorter or the same based on that.

   

   

Here are our results!

We did a guided drawing to make our own castles. Then we got to use water colors to paint them!

 

We read The Princess and the Pea and The Princess and the Pizza! It was fun to compare the stories and see which one we liked best.

 

                               

We read many other Fairy Tales and enjoyed imagining and pretending. The Fairy Tale books are now a favorite in our room!