Goodbye February, Hello March

 Whew!  February was a blur! Between holidays, birthdays (lots and lots of birthdays), snow days and everything in between, it was crazy!  I will be ready for routine and structure during the month of March!  This week was used to catch up on lessons from the hectic last two weeks.  I enjoyed meeting with all of you this week during parent-teacher conferences!

A look at our learning...

Fundations: as I mentioned to most of you during conferences, we are really working on "tapping out" (sounding out) 3 letter words.  Your children know their letter names and sounds and now it's time to really apply that to our reading and writing.  They are often really good at tapping out each individual sound, but sometimes have a more difficult time blending the sounds together to read the word.  The more they practice, the more natural this will become and you will begin to see their reading and writing skills improve.  I strongly encourage you to refer to the Fundations parent packets that come home every Friday and do the suggested activities throughout the week.  From here on out, it will typically be a list of words for them to tap out and read to you and tap out and spell on paper for you.

Spelling Words: the kiddos are doing great on their weekly spell check.  I continue to remind them that it is ok if they miss a word, no one will be upset, it just tells us that we need to practice that one more at home and school!  Everyone makes mistakes, it's how we learn!

Next weeks spelling words:

are

love

Math: we will continue to work on those tricky teen numbers!  It is typical, and I see it every year, for kiddos to have trouble with the teens.  It will come in time and I promise they will know them by the end of Kindergarten.

This week, we had a lot of fun learning about balancing, weight and capacity!  We used equal arm balances and objects from around the classroom to learn about how some things weigh more than others, how to know if weight is equal and that even though something might be bigger/smaller in size, that doesn't always mean it weighs the most/least!  You can check their Seesaw for some of their work as well.  

Social Studies: thank you for filling out the google survey about your families.  Over the next few weeks, we will be learning about families, traditions, similarities and differences.  I look forward to getting to know more about your kiddos and your families!

Writing Workshop: as mentioned above with Fundations, we are really working on making our writing legible.  This means, spelling our word wall words correctly at all times and "tapping out" or sounding out unknown words.  We are working on writing the sounds we hear to form a word and not just writing down random letters.  They know their sounds, so it's time to see that in their writing.  They work hard every day at writing and I hope you enjoyed seeing the progress they have made in their writing with the work they brought home in their take home folder on Friday.  If you haven't checked their take home folder yet, please do so as it is very full. Ask them to read a couple pieces of their writing to you.  Let them see how proud you are of their hard work!  We will clean out writing folders like this every so often.  

Special visitor: on Tuesday we had a special visitor, Monica Naylor, who is Beulah Ralph's daughter.  She has visited the Kindergarten classrooms at Beulah Ralph ever since our school opened.  She likes to tell them a story about when her mother was younger.  This year our visit was on Zoom.  A copy of the story she read came home with your child on Tuesday.  I hope you enjoyed talking with your child about our schools namesake.  She was a truly special lady and we are lucky to attend a school named in her honor. 

100th day of school:  we had so much fun sharing our 100th day collections this week!  It is neat to see how 100 can look so different!  We are excited to celebrate our 100th day of school on Thursday!  (technically it's Wednesday, but we are celebrating when in-seat on Thursday).  Don't forget, we are dressing up on that day as if we are 100 years old!  I can't wait to see their outfits!

We enjoyed the beautiful weather and playing outside this week!  Hopefully winter is over and spring is on the way!

Play time with our friends is the best time!

Happy Valentine's Day!

 A look at our learning...

It was a short week, but a busy one!!

Fundations: this week we began learning about silent e.  We also like to call him the "bossy e."  We are learning that when words have an e on the end, it is silent and tells the first vowel to say it's name (long vowel sound) rather than the sounds we learned in Fundations (short vowel sound.)

We practiced tapping out 3 letter CVC words and then added an e to turn it into a CVCe word.

For example:

mad------made

hop------hope

pin------pine

This is a very new concept and one we will continue to learn about during 3rd trimester.  Please read the parent information packet in your child's take home folder to help at home.

Spelling words:  due to the unexpected short week this week, we did not take a spelling test today.  We will continue to practice the words an & on next week and test next Friday.  Please continue to practice all word wall words at home. 

Math: we continue to work on identifying teen numbers.  We also worked on shapes and showing various ways to make a shape.  For example: you can make a hexagon with 2 trapezoids or 6 triangles or 1 rhombus, 1 trapezoid, 1 triangle, etc.  

Writing Workshop: to help us work on adding more detail to our stories and making them longer, we are using this Story Hand.  The heart reminds us we write about things we love, the thumb reminds us to include the characters in our writing, the pointer finger reminds us to include the setting of our story and the other 3 fingers remind us to tell 3 details.  

Science: we learned about the sun this week.  Ask your child to tell you a few facts or cool pieces of information they learned about the sun. 

Makerspace: on Thursday we did another Makerspace activity with Mrs. Fitch.  We listened to the sweet book Somebody loves you Mr. Hatch by Eileen Spinelli and learned how to make pop-up cards.  Your child brought home their pop-up card on Thursday.

Check out the class Facebook page to see more photos from our Valentine Party!

6 more weeks of winter

We had fun learning about Groundhog's Day and seeing the actual Punxsutawney Phil on the livestream on Tuesday.  Sadly, Phil saw his shadow, so 6 more weeks of winter! 

A look at our learning...

Fundations: this week we finished reviewing the correct letter formation for all uppercase letters.  I say reviewing because we go through uppercase letters very quickly, as we expect students to come into Kindergarten already knowing how to write uppercase letters.  They now know how to correctly form all uppercase and lowercase letters.  At parent teacher conferences I will share with you what letters your child forms correctly and which ones still need practice. 

Please check your child's take home folder for the Fundations parent hand out and ways to support their learning at home. 

Writing Worksthop: we have new writing paper!  We have moved from the singled lined paper, that you saw when we were doing online school, to paper that has Fundations lines and MANY more lines.  This is to encourage proper letter formation, as mentioned above with Fundations, and telling more detail.  Ask your child to tell you about their new writing paper!

Check out the friends below using nice, 2 finger word spaces in their writing. 

Math: this week we worked on quickly identifying numbers on a 10 frame.  We are working on strategies to help us quickly identify how many without having to count by 1's.  Things such as "well I know the top row is filled in, so that's 5, plus 2 more on the bottom means I can count on like 5, 6, 7" Or "I know there are 10 spots on a 10 frame, if one spot is missing, that means there are 9."  Getting away from counting by 1's and looking for clues, patterns, etc. when counting is our focus.  

We also worked on finding different ways to make the same shape. See pictures below.

This week we have also really started working on identifying numbers in the teens.  We are learning that numbers in the teens start with a 1, even 11 and 12.  Teen numbers are often tricky for kinders, but they will get it!  We are singing this song everyday to help us.  

Word Wall Words: our new words this week were you & me.  Check your child's take home folder for their weekly spell check.  Please practice any they missed and look for letters that may need practice when it comes to forming correctly or proper line placement.  

Next week's word wall words will be:

an & on

Library: on Tuesday we had library time with Mrs. Fitch.  She read us a fun Valentine's Day book via Zoom and then came to our room to help us check out books through destiny.  Library time will be every other Tuesday, so our next class time will be on Tuesday, February 16th.  Your students can keep their current books until then OR if they finish early they can return to school and you can reserve books on destiny at home like you have been doing.  They must return their books to reserve new ones.  This will be our routine for the rest of the school year.  

On Friday, Mrs. Canepa (one of our Media Specialists) visited our room and we did another Breakout Room!  We love to challenge our brains with these fun activities!  Our class received high praises for how quickly they were able to solve clues and breakout!  

We had fun dressing up for Super Bowl Spirit Week

Go Chiefs!

Friday Craft: "Bee Mine" Valentine bees

Having fun at center time!