September Citizen of the Month and weekly update

September Citizen of the Month-Lydia Johnson

Congrats to Lydia Johnson, our September Citizen of the Month!  Lydia was chosen by her classroom peers for exhibiting the 5 traits we hope to see in all of our students, faculty and staff at Beulah Ralph Elementary: kind, respectful, responsible, positive, problem solver. 

We have talked all year about what these 5 words mean and how to live them in our daily lives.  Each child then had a "ballot" with every child's name from our classroom on it.  They highlighted the friend who they thought deserved the award this month.  Lydia was a great first choice!  She was honored at an assembly on Thursday with the other Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade classrooms and winners.  Every classroom, K-5, will have a winner and assembly near the end of each month. The specialist teachers will also pick one GRADE level "Citizen of the Month" as well.  If your child is chosen you will be notified so that you can attend the assembly.  We keep the winner a secret from the students until their name is announced at the assembly.  

K-2 September Citizens of the Month

September Reading Logs

Please have your child turn in their September Reading Log on Monday.  An October Reading Log is in their Friday Folder this week.  We encourage you to read to/with your child for at least 15 minutes, Monday-Thursday and record it on their reading log. 

Scholastic Book Orders

Check your child's Friday Folder for Scholastic Book Orders.  You can order online with our classroom code or with the paper copy.  More information is in the folder.  They are due by next Friday. 

A look our our learning this week...

Fundations-we learned the name, letter sound and correct letter formation for the lowercase "a" and "g."  These were a bit trickier for everyone.  I encourage everyone to practice them at home, making sure your child says the verbal prompts while forming the letters.  You can find the verbal prompts in the weekly packets that come home in the Friday Folders.  

We have learned the following lowercase letters: t, b, f, n, m, i, u, c, o, a, g.  Please hold your child accountable for forming these letters correctly when writing, especially if they have one of these letters in their first name.  

Shared Reading-our new word wall word this week is "at."  We read the big book We Are and the silly poem Little Squirrel, both featuring the word "at."  Ask your child to tell you about our "high five" on the way out of our classroom door.  It is a fun way we practice reading our current word wall word.  Your child should be able to read, write and spell all of our word wall words: I, a, am, at.

Daily 5-ask your child to tell you about all of the different things they have to read in their book boxes during "Read to Self" time.  

Math-we began our unit on numbers and counting.  We are currently focusing on numbers 0-6.  We played several games to help us with these numbers: Roll & Color, Roll & Build and Color Caper.  Ask your child about these games.  By parent teacher conference time in November we expect Kindergartners to be able to count to at least 30 and write numbers to at least 10.  We work on this at school, but extra practice at home would be great as well! Check out the pictures of us playing Roll & Build!

                     

Writing Workshop-we continue to work on writing real stories about our lives. These can be simple things such as going on a walk with our family or big things like a vacation. Talk with your child each night about things they did that day that they could write about at school during writing workshop. We are working hard on labeling our pictures and trying to add words to tell our story.  

Friday Crafts-you might have noticed that every Friday we do a craft in our classroom.  It's a fun way to end the week!  Crafts help with so many things: creativity, following directions, fine motor skills through cutting, gluing and coloring.  Sometimes they will bring the crafts home that day and sometimes we decorate our room with them for a few weeks.  Today we read the books The Bumpy Little Pumpkin and The Ugly Pumpkin and made our own pumpkins!  We are getting excited for our field trip to the pumpkin patch in a couple of weeks!  

Enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend!

Mascot Elections

On October 3 our school will hold our Primary Election to reduce our four candidates for mascot down to two. The Bird Party will have the Owl vs. the Blue Jay, and the Mammal Party will have the Bengal vs. the Timberwolves. Once we get the candidates down to two, we will have our final election on November 7, the day before the presidential election. We chose this process so students would have an opportunity to learn more about the democratic process in a fun and enjoyable way. All students will have the opportunity to vote next week during the primary. We will have a separate “polling place” for each grade level. Fifth grade teachers, Mr. Woods and Dr. Majerus will help our fifth graders run each polling place. When students come into the polling place, we will check their name off on a classroom list. They will then go to an iPad to vote once for each party. A fifth grader will be there to help if needed, but please emphasize to the students that how they vote is completely up to them. Also, please take the opportunity to talk with your child about how the primary mirrors the real election process in the U.S. I have attached a screen shot of what the students will see when they go to vote. Please review this with them as well. Thank you!

Here are the bird party videos we have watched at school that tell us more about each mascot.  Feel free to watch and enjoy at home with your families. When Dr. Majerus sends us the mammal party videos I will post them as well.

Owls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt1U0J559Ec

Blue Jays: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K10ElJEEo5I

A busy week full of information

It has been a super busy week, full of learning and fun!  Your child's Friday Folder is the fullest it has ever been, please take time to look through it closely this weekend.  There are several papers on the "return to school" side that need filled out and returned ASAP...one of the most important ones telling you about our class field trip coming up!! Check out the folder for more information!!

A look at our week

Fundations-We learned the letter name, letter sound and correct letter formation for lowercase c, o. We continued to learn how some letters are called vowels and some are called consonants.  Look for the Fundations packet in your Friday Folder to see how to reinforce our learning at home.  

  

Shared Reading-We continued to learn about the word "am."  This week we read the big book We Are, which had "am" on most of the pages.  On Friday, we added this book to our book boxes to read during "Read to Self" time now that we are experts.  Next week we will focus on the word "at."  So far this year we have learned the following words: I, a, am.  Your child should be able to read, write and spell all 3 words.  Please have them show you at home!  

Daily 5-We began going to 2 rotations of Daily 5 this week.  They work at one activity for 15 minutes and then switch to their 2nd activity for another 15 minutes.  Check out the pictures below of some kiddos working during Daily 5 time. 

Madison and Bradlen working at name magnet station

Kiran and Trevor working at rhyme puzzle station

Ty, Grace and Ember working at handwriting station

Jude and Kenzi working at book box station

Lydia and Kolten working at Kindergarten friends station where they are practicing writing their friends names. 

Max and Zara working at name handwriting station

Math-We have completed our unit on shapes.  Check out your child's Friday Folder to see which 3-D shapes they know and which ones they still need to practice.  Please practice these at home with them.  Next week we will begin a unit on numbers (counting, identifying, writing, etc.) We will begin with 0-5 and work our way up to 20.  We will also tie in patterning.  By the end of Kindergarten students should be able to count to 100 and write/identify numbers to 31. These would also be great things to work on at home.  

Writing-We continued to learn about where writers get ideas and charted topics we could write about.  We are learning how to add words to our stories.  We may not know how to spell many words, and that's ok!  Good writers say the word slowly and write down the sounds they hear.  If they are trying to spell the word "park", they might write "pk" or "prk" and both are great!  They are phonetically spelling, which is what we want.  When your child asks you how to spell something I encourage you to say "let's say it slowly and write the sounds we hear."  

Lunch with the principal

Once a month, one child from every classroom will be chosen to eat lunch with the principal. This is a special treat for all!  Jude was chosen from our class for the month of September.  He was able to eat lunch in one of the conferences rooms on Thursday with Dr. Majerus and 4 other kindergartners from the other classrooms.  They had a great time!  Way to go Jude!  

Sorry this picture is sideways, it will not let me rotate it no matter what I try!

Nurse Kristen

Our school nurse is Kristen Lynn and she would like to share her e-mail address with you in case you have medical issues you need to talk with her about.  klynn@cpsk12.org  You can email her directly instead of going through the office or your classroom teacher.  

Don't forget that students do not have school on Monday.  Teachers will be attending Professional Development sessions that day.  We will see them on Tuesday morning in the school gym for our morning meeting.  Don't forget to have them wear their Beulah shirts that day!  Have a great weekend!  

Monday Morning Meetings

Check out these cuties in their Beulah Ralph t-shirts today and waiting for our whole school Monday Morning Meeting!  We encourage all students to wear their school shirts on Monday's.  It looks so neat when everyone in the school is showing school spirit on the same day!  If you would like another order form, please let me know!  There will be more t-shirt orders once we have chosen a mascot in November.

Mascot Election

Check out this video that Mr. Imler made that explains how we will select our school mascot.  The kiddos saw this at school last Monday during our morning meeting in the gym.  Today during the morning meeting they learned about the bird party (Owls and Blue Jays).  Next week they will learn about the mammal party (Timberwolves and Bengals). Please start discussing with your child which animal they will choose from each party on October 10th!  So much fun!

Weekly behavior checklist and notes from our week

Weekly behavior checklist

This week we started weekly behavior checklists in Kindergarten.  1st-5th has been sending them home on Friday's for a few weeks now, but it takes a little longer for Kindergartners to learn routines and expectations which is why we started later.  Please check your email to see more information on this.  If you did not receive an email, check your junk folder first and then contact me if it is not there.  We will want to make sure we have your correct email address on file.  It is very important that you take time every Friday to look at your child's checklist and go over it with them once they get home.  

Who is Beulah Ralph?

On Wednesday, Kindergarten was fortunate to have Monica Naylor, Beulah Ralph's only child, visit our classroom.  Monica told us a story about how Beulah Ralph loved to play school/teacher as a young child.  Her friends got tired of playing school with her because Beulah always wanted to be the teacher.  One day she had the idea to use the chickens on her family farm as "students" in her play school.  The children enjoyed this funny, true story about our school namesake.  We even have a book to keep in our class that Monica made that tells us this story.  We can read it over and over anytime we wish!  The kids really enjoyed learning about our schools namesake and what a special lady she was!  

A peek at our learning this week...

Fundations-we learned the names/sounds/correct letter formation for the letters u and i.  We learned that they are called vowels and all words must have at least one vowel to be a real word.  Please check your child's Friday Folder to help reinforce what we learned about these letters at home.  

Shared Reading-We are learning the word "am" to add to our word wall.  So far we have learned the words "I" and "a", as well as our friends names.  We read the big book I am a community worker every day to help us learn the word "am."  On Friday we received a small copy of the book to keep in our individual book boxes that we read from daily at "Read to Self" time.  We went through and highlighted the word "am" on every page.  We continue to work on pointing to words when we read and making sure our mouth is saying the words we are pointing to.  

Daily 5-Every day your child goes to Daily 5 (see earlier blog post that explains what this is). So far we have only gone to one Daily 5 choice each day.  Next week we will start going to 2 Daily 5 choices.  Ask your child about what Daily 5 choices they went to this week. (pocketchart, Starfall on computers, lacing letters, classroom library are just a few)

Math-After spending 2 weeks learning 2-D shapes, we are now focusing on 3-D shapes.  Next Friday I will do a quick check on the following shapes: cone, cube, sphere, cylinder, pyramid, rectangular prism, triangular prism.  Please practice these shapes at home to reinforce our learning at school.  

Writing Workshop-After spending a few weeks learning how to draw people (characters) and backgrounds (setting) in pictures, we are now getting ready to write words.  We have been learning where writers get ideas for their stories.  In Kindergarten we write true stories about things we do in our life.  On Sunday nights, talk to your child about the fun things they did over the weekend and remind them that those would be good topics to write stories about that week!  We read the following books that helped us get ideas on good writing topics: Rocket Writes a Story and Max's Words.

Specials- During specials our class has had a difficult time modeling the same behaviors they do in our regular classroom.  Their teachers report they are having a hard time being respectful listeners when the teacher is talking.  Any extra reinforcement at home would be appreciated by their specialists teachers.  Specifically working on having a bubble in their mouth when a teacher is talking, hands to self, raising their hand to speak and not shouting out.  They do a wonderful job of those things in our classroom, so I know they can do it during specials as well!  

Have a great weekend!  

Winner, winner!!

And the winner of the Golden Cone Award is.....

OUR KINDERGARTEN CLASS!!! 

Every Monday at the school-wide morning meeting in the gym, one K-2 class and one 3-5 class is chosen to receive the Golden Cone award by the playground/lunch supervisors and Dr. Majerus and Mr. Woods.  They pick the class that did the best job the previous week at lining up when recess is over, picking up the balls, jump ropes, hula hoops, etc. and by showing exemplar behavior in the lunchroom while eating.  The winning class then has the "fast pass" for the week and is the first one to head into lunch from recess to eat.  Therefore getting longer to eat!  We take the Golden Cone out to recess with us and sit it on our line- up spot to signify we are the winners for the week and get to go in first.  Way to go! 

There is also a Golden Broom award chosen by the janitors on the classrooms that keep their room the cleanest, but we haven't won that award yet.  What can we say, Kindergarten is messy!! haha!!

Daily Positive Note

This week I am starting a daily positive note.  Each month I pick a special notepad (this month it is a notepad that looks like a box of crayons) and write each child's name on a page.  At the end of every day I will pick one child from the notepad who exhibited wonderful behavior that day.  I will then write them a short note, read it in front of the class and we will all cheer for them.  They will bring the note home with them that day.  Then at the end of the month every child will have received at least one positive note before we start over the next month. Our first Positive Note recipient was Kenzi for being a kind friend and helper.

Writing Workshop

The last week and a half we have been working on drawing, which is an important part of writing.  We have learned how to use different shapes to help us draw people (characters).  We have also talked about the setting of a story.  How our writing/drawings need to have a background/setting to help with the story.  To finish up this learning every child was able to choose a character card today to glue onto a piece of blank paper.  They then had to create a setting around the character card that would make sense.  We have talked about how people don't float in the air, so we need to make sure they are on the ground.  However some characters might float (butterflies, fish, etc.)  Check out some of the work below!  You can see your own child's work in their take home folder that came home today.  

Tomorrow is Library book check-out day....please make sure your child has their book in their backpack so they can get a new one.  Library check-out day is every Tuesday.  

A look at our week

It may have been a short week due to Labor Day on Monday, but so much learning has occurred!

Our canvases that we started at Kindergarten registration back in March and finished once school started are finally hung in the Kindergarten hallway!  Every Kindergartener's handprint is on these canvases and will be an awesome reminder of the first Kindergarten class to ever go through Beulah Ralph Elementary!  

We continue to practice the Pledge of Allegiance and get better every day!  Just working on those big, hard words and figuring out which hand is supposed to go over our heart.  

 Math

During Math time we continued to learn about 2-D shapes. Next week we will focus on 3-D shapes.  Please look in your child's Friday Folder to see which 2-D shapes they know and which ones they still need to practice. Above Lydia, Kenzi and Emma show off their pattern block puzzles that they completed with 2-D shapes.

Morning Work

 Learning our shapes and working on our fine motor skills with play-dough

More fine motor skills and cognitive skills through puzzles

Fine motor and cognitive skills by using colored popsicle sticks and matching them to the colors and layouts on their boards.

Learning our letters by building them with snap cubes.  Another great fine motor skills activity!

A few more things from our week:

*Learning how to draw people using various shapes during writing workshop

*We added another word to our word wall.  The word "I."  Just like "a", we learned that "I" can be a letter or a word.  We also learned that when "I" is a word by itself, it must be an uppercase "I"  

*During Shared Reading we read the big book What I Like and the poem I am me.  Both had the word "I" in it on every page or every line of the poem

Don't forget to send in a 4x6 family photo in a small frame to add to your child's cubby! We love the ones sent in so far!  It helps bring a little bit of "home" to the classroom!  

Have a great weekend!  Keep reading and filling out your child's September reading log!

A look at our daily schedule...

Another great week is in the books!  While we continue to focus on building routines and expectations, we have also begun the academic side of Kindergarten.  Our daily schedule is listed in the rainbow colored flip book you received from me at "Meet the Teacher" night, but I wanted to take some time to explain the various parts of the day mentioned.  

We begin our day by unpacking our backpacks and going to our assigned tables for morning work until 8:25. This past week they have been working from morning tubs.  The tubs rotate daily. This week we had the following tubs:  building uppercase letters with snap cubes, building lowercase letters with snap cubes, making shapes with play-dough, copying patterns with popsicle sticks and puzzles.  These tubs work on various things: fine motor skills, letter knowledge, shapes, patterns.  The tubs will change to match new skills we are focusing on in the classroom.  As we get more into our academics there might also be days where they work from tubs and days where they do a handwriting worksheet to reinforce what we are learning during Fundations time or math fact worksheets later in the year when we learn those.  Ask your child what morning tub they worked on this week!  

We then listen to "Radio BEU", the morning announcements via our intercom system.  Dr. Majerus and 2 older students who auditioned at the beginning of the year make these announcements.  During this time we also say the Pledge of Allegiance as a whole school.  Once this is over we clean up our morning work and come to the carpet for calendar time.  Below I will explain the rest of our day.

Fundations: Students learn handwriting, letter formation and letter sounds.  As the year progresses we will use these skills to learn how to spell and read words.  Fundations is the name of the program we use to teach this; it is essentially spelling/phonics/word work (any of which term you might be familiar with).  

Shared Reading: This is an interactive reading activity where children join in on the reading of a big book (real book or one on the SMARTboard), poem or other text.  This week we learned the word "a."  We have learned that "a" can be a letter AND a word.  We read the big books Baby Animals and Little on the SMARTboard this week.  We became experts at reading from left to right, using our pointer finger when reading and being able to recognize and read the word "a" when we saw it in those books.  At the end of each week, when we have proven we are experts at these books, the children receive small copies to keep in their individual book boxes.  They will begin to re-read these familiar books at "Read to Self" time next week.  We also read the poem Color Song daily because it has the word "a" in it many times. Each child now has a copy in their poetry folders as well.  Next week we will learn about the word "I." 

Daily 5: This is a chance for the teacher to pull small reading groups and to provide reading instruction at each student's individual ability.  The students not meeting with the teacher will be practicing literacy skills with a partner or two at various centers. These centers might include listening to books on cd, literacy games or apps on the computers and ipads, rhyming games, using magnets to spell simple words, sorting activities at the pocketchart, etc.  These are just a few of the many things they will be doing and it changes throughout the year. The goal is to meet with every child, every day during this time.  While we have started Daily 5 in Kindergarten, reading groups don't typically begin until October or so.  

Read to Self Time:  This is a quiet time where students read independently from their book boxes.  They re-read the familiar books they have learned (like the ones mentioned above from Shared Reading), familiar poems in their poetry folders and eventually books from the guided reading groups that will begin in October.  They also have 2 "wish" books in their book boxes.  These are books from our classroom library that they might not be able to read the words, but can most definitely read the pictures and enjoy the story that way.  

Math: The teacher will provide math lessons to the whole group.  Students will then practice these skills through individual, partner and/or group work in the forms of games, paper/pencil activities and more.  This past week and for the next couple of weeks we are learning about 2-D and 3-D shapes.  

Writing Workshop:  The teacher will provide writing lessons that will guide the students as they make meaning in their illustrations and writing composition.  Their writing will evolve as does their knowledge of letters and letter sounds.  We encourage their "best guess" phonetic spelling of words.  For example:  if they are only writing a "c" for the word "cat", that is more than ok!  They will learn more as time goes on!  This week and next we are focusing on drawing, as that is an important part of writing.  We are learning how to use shapes to help us draw people, animals, etc.  Ask your child about their small writing notebooks and what shapes they used to draw a person this week!  

Centers: This is a free choice play time that is so important for Kindergarten age students. We have many free choice play centers in our room: kitchen, Legos, dollhouse, board games, car rug...these are just a few!  It allows the children an opportunity to engage in social play to learn cooperation, give and take, and sharing.  It also allows them time to use their wonderful imaginations!  Ask your child what center they went to this week!  

 Every other week our counselor, Ms. Harris, will visit our room for a 30 minute lesson.  This week we learned all about what a school counselor is with a little help from Mrs. Potato Head!  

Mr. Frerick's is one of our school aides.  He helps with supervision duties before/after school, playground/lunchroom supervision and in classrooms.  For the first few weeks of school he has been helping out in our classroom.  He will soon move on to help other classrooms, but we sure enjoy our time with him!  Kolten and Mr. Frerick's were twins this week!  

Have a great 3 day weekend!