Fire Prevention Week 2022

A look at our learning...

Fire Prevention Week: this week was Fire Prevention week and we had fun learning about all things firefighters, firetrucks and fire safety.  On Thursday, we enjoyed a visit from the Columbia Fire Department, Station 7.  We learned about their job, fire suits, equipment and more!  They encouraged the students to learn their home address in case of emergency and two ways out of their house in case of a fire.  Please take the time to talk about these things with your children if you haven't.  They are experts at knowing what to do and where to go in case of a fire at school, but many were unsure what to do or where to go at home. We have fire drills once a month at school. 

We did a fire truck craft afterwards!

Fundations: this week we learned the letter name, sound and correct formation for lowercase s and d.  We discussed how b and d look similar, but b is a sky line letter and goes down first when we write it and d is a plane line letter and goes over first when we write it.  It is common for Kindergarteners to confuse b and d and is nothing to worry about at this point.  Reversals should be corrected by the end of FIRST grade, so they still have time.  

Please use these verbal prompts when helping your child form their letters:

d-over, around, up, down (or we learned we can also say "c turns into a d" because if they can write a c, they can turn it into a d)

s-over, around, curve

Shared Reading: we read the poem "I am me" that featured our new spelling word "am."  We also read a book about firefighters.  

Shared Reading is an interactive reading experience that occurs when students join in or share the reading of an enlarged text (big book) or poem.  Students observe their teacher modeling expert reading behaviors such as reading with expression and fluency. They see how print works, get the feel of reading and begin to perceive themselves as readers.  After practicing the above mentioned poems and books for the entire week, and becoming "experts" with those texts, they add their own smaller copy to their book box and poetry folder for independent reading.  

Next week's spelling word:

at

Writing Workshop: we are working on "3 Star Coloring."  This means we 1) stay in the lines 2) use colors that make sense 3) fill in the white space.  In Kindergarten we take our time, do our best and don't scribble. 

We continue to work on drawing people using shapes, not sticks, adding detail to our people and a background/setting to our pictures.  Pictures ARE stories at this point in the year.  Before a child can WRITE a story with words, they must be able to DRAW and tell a story VERBALLY.  Soon we will move to labeling our pictures with beginning sounds or words.

Math: this week we worked on identifying and ordering numbers to 10 (they brought home a cute pumpkin patch poem and craft earlier this week that helped with this), pocket problems (verbal story problems and they use counters/objects to figure out the answer) and shapes (circle, square, rectangle, triangle).  

Spreading Kindness: this week our class started a Boo Basket to spread kindness around the school.  We secretly dropped off a basket of goodies to Mrs. Pennington's 4th grade class (cosmic brownies, Halloween pencils and rings for the students and some chocolate and a drink for the teacher).  They don't know who it came from, but it had a note to spread the kindness and surprise another class.  We hope it will make its way around the school throughout the month. 

Field Trip: what a fun and beautiful day at Peach Tree Farms and Bethel Park for their first field trip!  Check out our class Facebook page for even more photos! 

Fun at school this week