Happy New Year

Happy new year everyone!  The last few months of 2014 were jam packed with learning!  To give you a little glimpse at our activities I will be adding pictures after this post. WARNING:  THERE ARE LOTS OF PICTURES!

Phonics:  We learned about compound words (two little words put together to make one big word, ex: rain + bow=rainbow). We also learned about onset and rime (the first sound of a word and the last part of the word, ex: bat /b/ /at/)  The children have been working hard on listening to the sounds that make up a word and are becoming quite good at naming the vowel sounds they hear. When we return to school we will be focusing on the digraph /ch/ as in chocolate and Charlie, alliteration (words that start with the same sound) and of course letters and sight words.  Please practice reading and writing sight words at home and ask your child to look for them when reading books.

Reading:  Our narrative unit included a close read (reading closely and using evidence to answer questions) of the book The Gingerbread Boy.  I must say, I have never seen the class more excited about learning about reading than during this unit!  We learned new vocabulary words such as strut, dare, and thresh.  The children enjoyed acting out the words and they were able to better understand how the author used those words to tell the story.  We also compared and contrasted various gingerbread themed books and learned how to use a venn diagram graphic organizer, practiced retelling, sequencing and learned to use a story map.  The highlight of the unit was when Beldotti Bakery donated gingerbread cookies for the entire kindergarten grade level and the children had the opportunity to decorate them! They had a blast!! This week we will be doing another close reading of Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats….now if we could just get some snow so that we can REALLY make some text-to-self connections.

Writing:  During this time we learned about time cue words (first, next, then and last) and how these words can help us tell and write a story.  We also learned about adding details to our illustrations and our writing to make our stories more interesting.  We will continue to work on these skills as well as beginning sentences with a capital letter, spacing, proper letter formation, and punctuation.  Please practice these skills at home.

Math:  Our math block has included work with graphing, counting from a given number other than 1, counting by 10s, recognizing and writing teen numbers, subtraction and addition.  In the next few weeks we will be focusing on subtraction number sentences and activities, analyzing data found on graphs, comparing numbers, composing and decomposing numbers as well as measurement.

Science/Social Studies:  It was all about worms after our study about pumpkins!  We had some class pets for a few weeks that we were able to observe and learn about.  Many of the children were very excited about taking them out of the dirt containers and holding them or (like me) watching them wiggle around on the tables.  The excitement and buzz in the classroom was really a joy! We finished 2014 with a unit of studies on holidays.  We learned about Chanukah, Christmas and Las Posadas.  We were lucky enough to have Mrs. Biehl (former Toquam Social Worker) and Ms. Poris (Alex's mom) come to our classroom and teach us about Chanukah.  We listened to stories, made Chanukah crafts and enjoyed the delicious traditional treats of Latkes and applesauce.  For Christmas we learned about some of the celebrated traditions such as decorating Christmas trees, Santa Claus and his elves, and of course making gifts and cards for our family. Las Posadas helped us learn about Poinsettias and how Christmas is celebrated in MExico and many latin cultures.  I think they especially liked the music ;)

Our parent conferences went very smoothly and I am glad that many of you took the time out of your hectic schedules to meet with me and discuss your beautiful children!  I look forward to reaching out to you for class volunteers very soon :)

2015 started off with great news!  Our Donors Choose project for a listening center went live for funding and in less than 24 hours it was completely funded!! Our new materials will be arriving within a few weeks and I will be posting pictures of the children using them soon.  Please be on the lookout for future classroom projects :)

 I hope you all enjoyed your holidays and I'm looking forward to working with you and your children in the new year.  NOW….are you ready for pictures?????