We Are Reading Every Day!

Ava reads from the morning message. The class has
found words they can read and have circled them. 

Kia, Brianna, and Sophia choose five "just right" books for their
Reading Baggies. We book shop once a week.The children read privately,
with partners, and with the teachers from books that are on their reading levels.

Each day the class is introduced to a new facet of reading. Stories of high interest are read to the class by the teachers using story books, big books, poems, songs, and our daily class news. The children are encouraged to participate by acting out the stories, by storytelling, and by reading along with the teacher. The children are learning to decode new words by looking at the letter sounds, by studying the pictures for clues, and by thinking about what words would make sense in this story.

We have started a Word Wall with ten high frequency words that we have been learning to read and spell. Soon we will add more words to our study of high frequency words. In a few weeks we will begin our study of word families. These are words that rhyme and that follow a standard spelling pattern, such as cat, hat, and bat. These words will be recorded in our special Word Families books. This study will continue all year and will include about forty different word families.

We are also beginning a Book of Poems. Copies of poems and songs that we have read several times will be placed in these books to be reviewed and enjoyed through out the year.

Yes, we are class full of readers! It is fun to learn to read!

Color Day in Kindergarten

Rainbow of Color Graph

Ava and Briana share their favorite color work.

What fun it was for the children to be invited to wear their favorite color to school last Thursday. We were a rainbow of colorful shirts, shorts, and dresses. In math we made a life-sized graph of our favorite colors and then recorded this information on a paper graph which now decorates our bulletin board. We traced and cut out paper dolls to look like us using people colors for our skin. We dressed them to look like us  with our favorite colored clothes. These are now placed around our color graph for the beginning of our unit on "Our Favorite Things" in social studies.

In science we talked about that for our eyes to see colors, there needs to be light. We are discussing what color eyes each of us have and will look in mirrors to study the part of our eyes along with their colors. We will make a second graph of our eye colors to accompany our favorite color graph.

In Spanish we are learning to sing Los Colores with Ms Diaz-LeRoy. In Mrs. Rowe's art class we discussed that if we have the primary colors of red, yellow, blue, black and white, this will allow us to create all the other colors of the palette.

Many of you may have noticed our renditions of Harold and the Purple Crayon hanging up in our classroom.  Coming soon will be an another favorite, Brown Bear Brown Bear. This rythmic pattern book reinforces the color words using a story we can all read to each other.

Science in Kindergarten

 Brianna, Jaiden, Fiona, and Sasa at the My Body table.

 Sophia, Mariana, and Franco explore Earth Science.

 Jake, Brianna, and Kia with magnets, motion, sink and float at the Physical Science table.

Noah, Lili, Duran, and Nicholas explore Life Science.

Science is taught in our classroom class daily, and is also expanded weekly in the kindergarten common area. Our homeroom science is part or our classroom environment. We have been exploring fruits along with "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." Mrs. Kiernan has served a wide variety of fruits for us to enjoy as part of our morning snacks. We have a fruit learning center which includes puzzles, games, and activities. Science in our homeroom involves a learning center, classroom lessons, and activities and is often integrated with reading, writing, and math. The center is changed about once a month. Following our fruit unit, we will move into learning about which animals would make good pets.

The science activities in the kindergarten common area are held every Thursday afternoon. The kindergarten teachers set up three to four science stations for the children to explore. Parent volunteers are especially helpful and valuable when assisting the children with these science activities. Each class rotates to the K hallway for a half hour slot. Last Thursday was our first opportunity to participate in these lessons. Our opening science lesson was on the topic, "What is science?" Before moving to the hallway, the children brainstormed in their homeroom what they thought was studied in science. They had only a few ideas. When we proceeded to the hallway, the children found four tables representing the four areas of science: life, physical, Earth, and the human body. Each table contained hands-on materials to explore that were related to each table's theme. The children all had papers on clipboards for recording one item from each table. The children drew the pictures and the parent helpers printed the labels on the recording sheets. These papers have been saved and will be placed in each child's science journal.

We love exploring and learning about science!

What Is a Marble Jar?

In our classroom Mrs. Kiernan and I are encouraging the children to make good choices and to be more responsible for their actions and behavior. To promote a positive atmosphere here at school, we are watching and listening to the children, hoping to catch them "doing the right thing." Besides verbally acknowledging positive behavior, the students are asked to take  marble out of the "Marbles to Earn" jar and place it in a second jar which is labeled "Do the Right Thing." This is a great honor and the children eagerly add new marbles to the jar. These compliments can be earned as whole class, as a small group, or by individuals.
The teachers are looking for good manners, kindness to classmates, cooperation with peers and teachers, positive attitudes, being good role models, etc. Only grown-ups can pass out marbles.
Each Friday we will be counting the marbles our class has earned, incorporating math into the activity. I dumped out all our earned marbles into a pile and starting pointing to each marble as I counted. Many children thought I was doing a good counting job until one student suggested a better strategy. Sophia thought that if I moved each marble as I counted, I would be sure to have the correct count. We talked about using this counting strategy instead of simply pointing to the objects to be counted. Later in the school year, we will learn other counting strategies.

For the first seven days of school, our class earned a total of 53 marbles. What a great job, class! We are off to to a terrific start.