We have been very busy enjoying our first full week of school!
In Reading Workshop, we've been reading Joy Cowley's
Mrs. Wishy Washy for shared reading. We read it every day, each day examining a new reading technique: making predictions, learning vocabulary, retelling, using the pictures to help us read, searching for letter sounds, reading with fluency and expression, etc. Lastly, we wrote our own version of the story! Our read aloud stories this week have been our first emergent stories,
The Carrot Seed and
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! We We read these everyday as well, exercising similar skills as in shared reading, but also really learning about the story plot and character feelings. Soon each child will be borrowing an emergent storybook to bring home and "read" to you!
We also learned that readers re-read nonfiction texts to learn more; they connect pages while reading using transition words like "and then...", and share "WOW!" pages with partners.
In Writing Workshop, we reviewed what "Kindergarten Spelling" is, and we wrote about our hopes and dreams for the year. We also learned that we can be authors, just like the authors we love! Everyone was so excited to "look inside their hearts" for writing ideas! THANK YOU for helping to decorate their hearts! We can make illustrations and try to label them. Lastly, we became a club of authors, giving our club a name ("Kindergarten Writers!") and cheering on each others' amazing writing efforts.
In our handwriting lessons, we met Mat Man, who is made of big and little lines and curves. Mat Man helps us draw realistic looking people, breaking down a body into manageable shapes. Look for your child's before/after Mat Man work being sent home. Soon, we will use those same lines and curves to make letters!
In our phonics lessons, we used letter magnets to match letters to their spaces in the alphabet. We also created an alphabetized list of all of our names, which is so useful to have in the classroom.
We played a lot of math games while focusing on
attributes this week. We matched buttons and blocks by attributes and developed language on how to describe them. Everyone was comparing how the objects are the same and different. We also counted cubes in a jar and learned how to
record data by representing quantities with pictures, numbers and words.
Our social studies lessons focused on safety and making our classroom rules. We discussed bus safety and made a long list of rules for our classroom. Then we found out what those rules had in common, catagorized them, and made a much shorter (and more manageable!) list.
News & Notes:
- No School next Thursday, 9/21
- Open House Night 9/28
- Did your child lose a white cardigan? I have one here that should belong to someone in our class. Please let me know if it's yours.
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| Playing School during Choice Time |
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| Our name list |
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| Our finalized rule list |
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| First draft of student generated rules, with similar ideas sorted out by color |
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| Teamwork during Choice Time |
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| Artists! |
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| Imaginative Play! |
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| Sorting by attributes |
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| Re-reading non-fiction texts with a partner to learn more |
