Happy Snow Day!

Happy Snow Day! Or I guess I should say "ice day." 

I hope you were able to stay home with your little ones today!

Enjoy the 4 day weekend if so!

A look at our learning this week...

Fundations: we have finished our review of uppercase letters.  Students should now be able to form ALL uppercase and lowercase letters correctly.  Please help hold them accountable for this when writing at home.  It is hard to break old habits, but so important they form their letters correctly.  

Shared Reading: this week we read the books Go In and Too Little, Too Big to help us with our new spelling words (in, it, if).  Both were super silly books and we shared lots of giggles.  Ask your child to tell you about the books.

Since we missed school today, the spelling test will be on Tuesday.  Due to this, I will not introduce new spelling words next week since it will already be a short week.  We will review the current spelling words next week and I encourage you to do the same at home.  

Daily 5: a new activity during pocketchart center.  The students have to "tap out" 3 letter words and find the picture that matches.  They are doing a great job so far!

Read to Self: a daily, 20 minute time where they read quietly to themselves. They re-read familiar poems, nursery rhymes and books we have learned during Shared Reading . They also read books from their guided reading groups, review their letters and sounds and word wall words and look at books from our classroom library.  A very calm, relaxing, quiet part of our day. 

Writing Workshop: we continue to work on adding more detail to our stories when writing.  This week I introduced the "Story Hand" to help with this.  They each have a chart they keep in their writing folder.  Their 5 fingers can help them remember what to include in their writing to add more detail.  

The heart in the middle of the hand reminds us that we write about true life things that are close to our heart.  

1-tell who is in the story (characters)

2-tell where the story takes place (setting) 

3, 4, 5-three details

A good kindergarten example might be something like the following:

I went to the movie theater with my mom and dad.  We saw Frozen 2.  We had popcorn.  We had soda.  

Math: the kiddos love this video that helps us get out our wiggles and count by 10's!

A reminder that by the end of 2nd trimester in mid February your child should be able to:

*count to at least 60 by 1's

*count to at least 60 by 10's

*know basic shapes (square, triangle, rectangle, circle, oval, hexagon, trapezoid, rhombus)

*begin to understand simple addition/subtraction

Below we are playing several different math games that help us with counting and basic addition.

Science: this week we started our weather unit.  We will be observing the weather, recording it in a weather log and learning basic weather terms and concepts during 2nd trimester.

That feeling when you try a school lunch for the first time!

Fun with friends!