Thursday, April 6, 2017

Mothersingers

This morning grades K-2 had the opportunity to listen to the Columbia Mothersingers.  They are a darling group of ladies from the Columbia area who go around and sing to all of the schools every spring!  This group has been around for 70 years! Every year they have a different program theme; this years was patriotic and all about our wonderful country, America! It is such a fun thing that the kids look forward to every year!  I think the Kindergartners enjoyed their first experience! 






Monday, April 3, 2017

Golden Broom Award-April

Whoo-hoo!!
Our class won the
GOLDEN BROOM AWARD
once again!

This means that the janitors thought we did the best job cleaning up our classroom and lunch table spots the week before spring break!

Way to Go!

Friday, March 24, 2017

Wonderful Writers!

We can't WAIT for you to see the videos your kiddos made this week to share about their informational writing topic!
They are SO EXCITED!

But first....let's see how the rest of the week went...

Fundations: after spring break we will begin our final unit of Fundations.  Please check out the detailed packet in your child's Friday Folder.  I encourage you to use the packet with your child at home to extend what we are learning in the classroom.  

Shared Reading: we read the big books Polly Gets Out and The Boy Who Cried "Wolf!" this week.  They had our new word wall words, he and she, in them.  We also learned a great lesson from The Boy Who Cried "Wolf", ask your kiddo to share the lesson with you.  

New spelling words after spring break
Week of April 3rd-7th
to
do

Math: we continued our work with decomposing numbers.  We worked in groups this week to find all the possible ways to make numbers 1-10.  Check out our posters we made to hang in the classroom and the work your child did this week in their Friday Folder.  

Now the fun and exciting part...
Writing!!!
Since the beginning of February we have worked on how to write non-fiction/informational stories.  These are different from narratives because they are "teaching" books.  We have learned how non-fiction books have headings, labels and real facts in them. We will soon be wrapping up this unit and wanted to do a fun project to show we are experts.

Please view last week's blog post to see how this 2 week project started and how we got to where we are today....

To continue last week's work, this week we did the following:
Monday-finished up writing books on each child's individual topic (this was day 3 of writing)

Tuesday-worked on memorizing the story we wrote with a buddy













Wednesday-Mrs. Fitch (media specialist) and Mrs Eastman (district tech. support) helped us record our memorized stories in front of a green screen




Thursday-as a class we viewed everyone's final project

Friday-sent these projects home for you to view!!!!! Please check their "take home folder" tonight for the written portion that goes along with the video!!! So exciting!!!! We hope you love them as much as we do!!! It was so much fun incorporating all of the technology and higher level thinking skills into our writing time.  


Happy Spring Break!!!

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

March Citizen of the Month

Congratulations to Mason!
He was chosen by his peers as 
March Citizen of the Month!

We are so proud of you!

   

K-2 winners for the month of March

Monday, March 20, 2017

Legos!!

Last week we were FINALLY the winners of the Lego Tub!
(the kids have been waiting very patiently for their name to be drawn each week at Morning Meeting)

Feel free to stop by school and check out their creations in the display case across from the tech lab/next to the gym. They will be on display until Friday.
                                     
                                                








Today at the Monday Morning Meeting we celebrated March birthday's by singing to them! 
Happy Birthday to Kiran, Zephyr and Emma!

Friday, March 17, 2017

St. Patrick's Day!

We had some sneaky leprechauns come into our room overnight and boy oh boy did they leave a HUGE mess!

BUT in their hurry to leave, they left behind their bucket of gold!  
Lucky for us!!







Peek at our week

A few reminders:
*spring pictures are on Monday-only students who return their package order form will have their picture taken

*we are continuing to collect pennies (or any monetary donation) for the Missouri Department of Conservation to help the Monarch Butterflies-thank you to those who have donated so far!

*Scholastic Book Orders are in the Friday Folder, they are due NEXT FRIDAY, March 24th.  You can order online at www.scholastic.com with classroom code FN4GP or return the paper forms with a check to Scholastic Book Clubs.  You only need one check, even if ordering from multiple forms.  CASH NOT ACCEPTED.
Grace and her family donated an entire milk jug full of pennies-WOW!!

A look at our learning...

Fundations: check out the fundations handout in your child's Friday Folder this week and work on it at home.  This will help with their spelling, reading and fluency skills.  Fluency is a BIG part of what we are working on in their reading groups.  

Shared Reading: this week we read the Big Book Bananas Sometimes and the poems Fast as a cheetah and The leprechaun song.  They featured our word wall words of the week: look, as.

Next week's spelling words: 
she
he

Math: this week we finished our Bunk Beds and Apple Boxes unit that focused on decomposing numbers.  Decomposing numbers is the process of separating numbers into their components.  Example:  10 can be made the following ways 0+10, 1+9, 2+8, 3+7, 4+6, 5+5.  You can see some of their Apple Boxes work in their Friday Folder today.  

Writing: it has been such an EXCITING week in our classroom during writing workshop this week!  Over the last 5 weeks Miss Nemechek and I have chosen what non-fiction topics the class would learn about (penguins and butterflies) and front-loaded the children with information via books and video clips.  Then they took the information they learned and wrote their own "fact books" on those topics.  This week, however, the KIDS chose what topic they wanted to research.  Each child could choose a different topic.  Ask your child what topic they are researching.  
On Monday, they researched their topics on PebbleGo.  PebbleGo is a digital database for the earliest of readers.  They took notes on what they learned while listening to PebbleGo.  
On Tuesday, they looked through/read books that Mrs. Fitch pulled for them from the library on their topic and took more notes.





















On Wednesday, we recorded the kids talking to the ipad telling us everything they have learned on their topic.
On Thursday and Friday, they used their notes and were able to listen to their videos from Wednesday to help them start writing their own fact book on their topic.



We will continue this on Monday.  Next Tuesday, they will work on memorizing their fact book. 
Next Wednesday, we will record them presenting what they learned in front of a green screen. The final products will be sent to you hopefully before spring break!  

Miss Nemechek, Mrs. Fitch (media specialist) and Mrs. Eastman (district technology specialist) have been helping me with this.  We have been amazed at how smooth it has been to incorporate all of this technology and higher level thinking into our kindergartens writing time! They are doing an amazing job and we are all so excited to share their final products with you soon!