Goodbye August, Hello September

A look at our learning this week...

Fundations: we learned the name, sound and correct letter formation for the lowercase letters t, f, b.  Use the following prompts at home to help your child form their letters correctly:

t-down, across (we don't add the tail)

f-over, down, across

b-down, up around.

Check your child's Friday Folder for next week's letters and how to continue their learning at home.

Shared Reading: we read two poems this week: "Hello Class" and "Beginning on Paper."  Both are poems about our names and continue to help us learn our friends names.  Ask your child's to recite the poems to you, many have them memorized.

During Shared Reading I am modeling how readers point to the words when they read and keep their eyes on the words that we are pointing to.  They are practicing by following along with my pointer and tracking the words with their eyes.

Daily 5 workstations: this week we began Daily 5 workstations.  This is a time when students will rotate through centers with a partner.  I like to call them workstations, rather than centers, because it reinforces that they are working and learning and not just playing.  During this time they will work on literacy activities to reinforce reading and writing skills learned in the classroom.  Right now the workstations are pretty simple: building letters with pattern blocks, playing Starfall on the computer, tracing our friends names on whiteboards, matching our friends names to their picture at pocketchart, etc. but they will get more difficult as the year goes on and tie in with our daily learning.  

We had two goals this week at Daily 5 time: 

1) Stay at your workstation

2) Use a whisper voice

Ask your child what Daily 5 workstation they went to this week.

We will eventually work our way up to going to 2-3 Daily 5 workstations a day.  Once routines are in place and the children can work independently I will start pulling reading groups and teaching the students how to read during this time.  My goal is typically to start teaching reading groups in October.  It takes us until then in Kindergarten to make sure the children can work at their workstations without my support and help, that way I can teach reading groups uninterrupted.  

Math: we continued to work on counting and numbers this week, but also spent several days talking about our birthdays, which is math!  We now have a birthday board in our room that shows when every child's birthday is.  We talked about what month has the most birthdays, the least, who the oldest/youngest is, etc.
Check your child's Friday Folder for math worksheets you can do as a family to help extend the learning at home. 

Writing Workshop: before we get into real writing, we focus on drawing the pictures.  Pictures are such an important part of a story!  Many children come to Kindergarten drawing stick people or spider people (you know, the circle for the head and stick arms and legs coming out of the head 😊).  This week we learned how to draw people with basic shapes: triangles, circles, rectangles, etc.  We also learned how to add a setting to our picture and to make sure our characters are "grounded" in our story and not floating in space.  This means we need to add grass or a floor or something under our feet when drawing and not just draw in the middle of the paper.  This also means we add detail behind our main character: sun, flowers, house, pets, etc.  

Ask your child to show you their writing journal they are bringing home today with their drawings in it! 

Kindness: one big thing we are working on in our classroom is kindness, especially with tone of voice when speaking to our friends.  We are working on not using sharp tones or whiny tones with our friends.  We are learning to use phrases such as: "Can you please move out of my line spot?" or "Can I please use that toy?" or "I had that toy first" and things like that. When I notice them using unkind tones we stop and try it again in a different way.  Any help at home with this would be greatly appreciated! 

Check out our new Wobble Chairs!

Thanks to Donors Choose and everyone who donated!

We are excited to use them to help us focus and be the best learners we can be!

Happy College Colors Day!

A busy Tuesday!

Tuesday's are a busy day for us.  It's the day that our classroom gets to use the little front playground during recess; other days we use the big playground in back. 

Twice a month (every other Tuesday) from 9:00-9:30 we have a counselor lesson with either Mrs. Harris or Mrs. Davison.  Today Mrs. Davison taught us about the "8 Never Nevers."

Tuesday is also our library check-out day.  Every Tuesday at 11:30 we go to the library to hear Mrs. Fitch read us a story and then we are allowed to check out one book to bring home for the week.  Please check your child's Take Home Folder for a detailed note about this.  We ask that the book is kept in your child's backpack at all times, unless they are reading it.  They will keep the book until the following Tuesday and at that time they will be allowed to check out a new one if they returned theirs from the week prior.

Golden Broom Award

Our class won the "Golden Broom" award at the Monday Morning Meeting this morning! It was announced in front of the entire school! The custodial staff picks 2 classrooms a week (a K-2 winner & 3-5 winner) based on which classroom they thought did the best job cleaning up and taking care of their classroom and bathroom the week before!  This means they thought our classroom was the cleanest out of all of the K-2 classrooms last week!  We get to display the "Golden Broom" in our classroom all week! Way to go!

First full week of school...done!

We survived our first full week of Kindergarten and they did AMAZING!  This is a wonderful group of children and I can already tell that it is going to be an awesome year!

A look at our learning this week...

Fundations: this is a 30 minute time of daily instruction where we learn our letters, letter sounds, correct letter formation and eventually spelling.  Please see the handout in your child's Friday Folder to read more about this and how you can help reinforce this learning at home.  Fundations handouts (extra practice) will come home weekly in the Friday Folder and I hope you use them at home as well.  

Shared Reading: we have learned the poem Friends by Jill Eggleston.  We have read this poem every day this week and shared ways that friends share, friends care and how to be good friends to others.  Ask your child to recite the poem to you, many have it memorized. 

Math: please check your child's Friday Folder for a letter about our math program and worksheets to extend learning at home. Every week math worksheets will come home in the Friday Folder with ideas and activities for you to extend the learning beyond the classroom.  I hope you will utilize these each week. 

Writing Workshop: we are learning how to write our names on our paper before beginning our work (any paper, not just writing).  We are also learning how to do 3 Star Coloring.  Check out your child's take home folder to see how they did with this!

Crafts: every Friday is a craft day to make something beautiful for our classroom or to bring home. We usually spend about 30 minutes to an hour on this. Crafts provide many learning opportunities: creativity, following directions, listening skills, perseverance, fine motor skills, cooperation, etc. Here are a few of the crafts we have made (at the beginning of the year we do a few more and not just on Friday's):

      

Mosiac names to celebrate how special our names are. 
 We read the book Chrysanthemum with this craft.

Timberwolves-our school mascot!

Click the video below to see more pictures from our week!

Have a great weekend!

Learning about our friends

We are so blessed to have a diverse community of learners at Beulah Ralph Elementary.  Yesterday our friend Bakr was absent for the holiday of Eid, which is at the end of Ramadan.  Our friends were very curious about why he was gone and this special time for his family.  Today we read a book, colored and watched the following video to learn a little more about their special day.  Mrs. Smith's 1st grade class joined us as their friends, Hamza and Remeen, also celebrate Eid.  We learned that it is very similar to Christmas, which many others celebrate.  Bakr even shared cupcakes with our class as a special treat!  

What a fun day full of new learning experiences!  Thanks for sharing with us, Bakr!

video we watched-click here

Tuesday Tidbits

Don't forget...

to send in a family picture in a frame for your child's cubbie.  No bigger than 4x6 and the width of the frame can't exceed 8 inches or it won't fit.  The picture can be vertical or horizontal.  It is so nice to see our families pictures throughout the day.

Self Portraits

Today we read the book All the Colors of the Earth

This book celebrates the colors of children and the colors of love—not black or white or yellow or red, but roaring brown, whispering gold, tinkling pink, and more. We have such a beautiful classroom filled with many colors and even more love!  After the story, each child chose a color of construction paper that they thought matched their skin and drew and colored a self portrait.  These will hang in our classroom until the end of the year to make our classroom even more beautiful!

Positive Notes

This week I introduced the "Positive Note."  Every day I choose one child who has followed the 5 BEU expectations all day long: Kind, Respectful, Responsible, Positive, Problem-Solver.  I write that child a special note that is read aloud to the class at the end of the day. They also get to take it home to share with their family.  Of course there is always more than one student that I could choose, but I only choose one each day to make it extra special and motivating.

Check out Nico holding today's "Positive Note."

Way to go, Nico!

A glimpse into our days

A glimpse into our days at school...

(click on photos to enlarge or save)

Every Friday I will update you, via this blog, as to what we have been learning that week.  This is my digital newsletter, rather than sending home paper copies that typically get mis-placed or lost. This way, you can access the information at any time and any place.  

The past two days were mostly spent getting to know one another and learning classroom and school routines and expectations.  Here are some of the big ones they learned to help with your conversations at home.

Bathroom: we are fortunate to have a bathroom in our classroom.  They can use the bathroom at any point during the day EXCEPT during carpet time.  Carpet time is when I am typically teaching a lesson.  I don't want them to miss the lesson while in the bathroom.  Of course I will make exceptions on a case by case basis.  If we aren't at the carpet, they don't even have to ask to go.  They can just get up and go!  We have talked about flushing the toilet after we potty and washing our hands with soap and water.  

Water Bottles:  the same rules above apply for drinks from their water bottles.  We will keep the water bottles on the bottom part of their cubbie.  They can get up and get a drink at any point in time, without asking permission, EXCEPT during carpet time.  If they forget to bring a water bottle, I have Dixie Cups by the sink they can use.  

Hallway & Secret Walker: when we walk in the hallway we want safe and quiet bodies so that we don't interrupt other students learning.  We are learning to walk in a straight line, in our line order spot, with "bubbles and tails" (this means voices off and hands behind their back).  We are also learning to keep our eyes forward when walking so we don't run into the person in front of us and we see when the line is moving.  This is a tricky one!  

Every morning I will put a name stick out of my class name jar.  Only I know whose name is on the stick.  All day long I'm watching that child in particular to see if they are quiet in the hall.  If they are successful I will share their name at the end of the day with the class and we will cheer for them and they earn a "Secret Walker" certificate to bring home!  If the name chosen has difficulty in the hallway, I don't announce their name (because that can be sad or embarrassing) but just say we didn't have a winner that day and we will try again tomorrow. 

We had our first winner today!  Way to go Heaven!  

Today we listened to The Kissing Hand story for a second time and worked on retelling the story from memory.  We also made a Chester the Raccoon puppet to bring home!  Ask your child to tell you the story this weekend while using their puppet!

Today we also listened to the story David Goes To School! by David Shannon.  We noticed that David had a difficult time making good choices at school.  We helped David learn about good choices and poor choices by sorting the following pictures together.  Ask your child to tell you about 3 good choices and 3 poor choices.  

Of course we can't end our day without playing during center time!  This is one of their favorite times of the day!

Monday Morning Meeting: every Monday we will meet as a whole school in the gym at arrival time, rather than in our classrooms.  Dr. Majerus and Mr. Woods lead us in a Monday Morning meeting with announcements for the week, celebrations, etc.  Please remind your child on Monday Mornings to go straight to the gym.  They don't go to the room to drop off backpacks or anything.  

This is also our spirit day!  We encourage all students to wear BEU gear every Monday.  Order forms are in today's Friday Folder!  You can fill those out and put on the "return to school" side of their folder.  It looks so neat when everyone is wearing their spirit wear!

Have a great weekend!