Monday!

This will be a short post! 

I left the class this morning at 9:00 (for a Seattle doctor's appointment), after hanging out awhile to make sure our substitute, Ms. Palmer, was good to go.  Actually she would've been good to go right from the start of the day but it was the first time for her to sub in my classroom and I wanted to help in any way I could!  After a long (but always interesting) sharing circle they continued on with Ms. Palmer reading some more bear books - the beautifully illustrated "Old Bear",  the traditional "Corduroy"  and then onto some activities connected to the books.

We will spend the rest of the week celebrating Chinese New Year which starts Thursday, February 3rd and lasts until the next full moon - about 15 days away.  I am encouraging all of my kindergartners to wear RED on Thursday for good luck!  We will also have a little celebration of Friday and I would love to have a couple of volunteers to help with centers!

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY!!!!!!!!!! 

Friday!!!!!!

Already?!?!

Today we were bears and ate porridge, prepared by Rowan's mom!   

Your little bears had a choice of adding bugs, bear berries and dirt to their porridge....

 

Thursday

 A whole lot of reading is going on around here!  It is so fun to see your children excited about reading!  During guided reading we are learning to:

• Focus attention
• Categorize and classify
• Make predictions
• Discuss the text
• Understand punctuation
• Compare and contrast

 We are also  working on phonemic awareness, phoneme isolation and phonics!


During shared reading we are discovering; the identity of the main character in a story, the setting of a story, the problem the characters have in a story, and how they solve the problem.  I have a classroom of children who LOVE books.


Speaking of books, we continue reading our Goldilocks and the Three Bears books.  Today our favorite was "The 3 Bears and Goldilocks".  This book was more from the bear's perspective!

For math we continue to introduce new work tubs.  The one this week uses real pennies - which I realize are a bit tempting.  If you find some in pockets please ask your little darlings to return them - we are working on being good citizens, along with our math skills!  This game has us recognizing pennies and nickels by name and value, counting quantities to 20, exploring counting strategies and comparing quantities.


Did I mention that when Max's father found out that we couldn't have popcorn with our movie (really a book on DVD) last week because the popcorn popper pooped out on us, he bought the classroom a brand new one!!!!!  Your children were really good sports about it!  We will try it out tomorrow.  THANK YOU BRAD and WENDY!!!!!!!!


For Health we heard a song about "Clean Cowboy" and talked about germs, etc., and for Social Studies I read a book "Why Should I Listen?".  We visit that idea throughout the day...

Wild continued.....We had a visit today from my son's (Drew) dog, Milo, who is a very sweet-tempered guy......

Wednesday!

We made some more bugs for our hallway bulletin board,,,we wanted it to look good tonight!  Our room will not be open for Open House but you are welcome to come on by and take a look at the other classrooms and shop at the Book Fair!

We had some 7th grade helpers today......the kindergartners loved reading to them, and coloring  and coloring and painting with them!

 

Tuesday!

We love wild!

 

Monday!

Another happy (loud), fun day!  It's great to see your children walk in the room with smiles on their faces ready to see their friends and start the day.  It's a boisterous crowd and I love it!

We started on Letter "B" projects (some involving beans, some using clipboards - which is an easy sell to kindergartners), and began the reading of many "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" books.  I have quite a stack to allow us to compare and contrast the stories.  Of course, these kindergartners like the weirdest ones the best!  My favorite was "Me and You", a very interesting, beautifully illustrated book that you had to pay attention to, the kindergartners was "Goldilocks and the Three Martians".

The happy tones carried into lunch time...

and throughout the entire day!

 

Friday!

Starting off this post with a photo of the best kindergarten class EVER.....and I will try to add more later - it was a great week!

Thursday!

What a busy day!  Only had time to snap a quick picture at the end of the day - minus one student who had to leave a few minutes early.  We just got back from the WONDERFUL fourth-grade concert.  It was LONG and your amazing children sat through the whole thing!

 

Wednesday!

A wonderful day.....the sun came out, we read many great books, (our favorite "A Visitor for Bear"), Mr. Adair gave us candy, and we spent some time with our reading buddies...

Tuesday!

A fun day with these fabulous kindergartners!  We are working on our "social skills" (ahhhh, a never-ending and often amusing task to teach), and are reading and doing activities from the book "My Mouth is a Volcano!"  It has some great ideas to help us to wait for our turn to talk.....almost impossible, sometimes, but we are getting there!

We continue to discuss main characters, and settings of the books we read.  Today we talked about how in most stories, the main character has a problem and has to figure out what to do to solve it.  I shared that in order to understand what happens in the story, readers need to learn what the problem is and how the main character will solve it.  We read "Bear Wants More".  Ask your child  what the problem was in that book!

We love to read.  Read and Relax time is our 20 minute break to read books to ourselves.  Everyone grabs a pile and settles into a good spot and reads!  I am encouraging all to pick a couple of "little reader" books along with the picture books.  I have also started guided reading groups.  Everyone is a reader in this room!

Our favorite afternoon activities....building with boxes, working at the writing center, computers and playing with Polydrons!