Word Works in Kindergarten

Daily our class talks about words: hearing, reading and spelling them. Each student has a personal dictionary in their seat pocket which we have been working in since August. These dictionaries include enrichment words which each child has chosen to illustrate as examples of each letter sound. So far we have added words that begin with s, r, t, m, p, n, and a. Our focus letter this week is c. Next week we will work with words that begin with b and d. We use letter sounds to help us read and write words.

Today we started to talk about words that rhyme with at, such as cat and rat. We are practicing reading and spelling words that are part of this word family. We began with the word ending "at," and added letters to build new words. Tomorrow we will begin Our Word Family books where we will record on the first page the words that rhyme with at. Over the next few weeks, we will work on additional pages for other word families, such as the "ad" and "am" families. Seeing and hearing the patterns in words help the children to better understand how words are made.

We are discussing how words go together to make up sentences. We count how many words are in sentences and how many sounds are in words. This is especially helpful to young writers as they begin to put their thoughts down on paper in Writers' Workshop.

In Readers' Workshop we are learning strategies to use when encountering a "tricky word" in a sentence. We are practicing sounding out words, checking the pictures for clues, and thinking about what word would make sense in this story.

All of these activities are working together to build strong readers and writers. What great progress each child is making!

Learning About Pets

Mrs. Kiernan and I are excited to have our students read our blog this week. We hope that they will have  a chance to read it every week, as it contains the news about what we are doing in class and has photos of our classroom activities.

Starting last week we began learning about pets. We have been talking about which animals would make good pets and which ones would not be good pets. We have read and recited The Animal Store, by Rachel Field as well as graphed our favorite pets. Our visit to Animal House Pet Shop on Friday, was both fun and informative. We were shown a wide variety of pets, both common and exotic. A class favorite was the rabbits. We enjoyed watching them hop around in our circle, and we even got to pet them.
This Friday, each student will select a pet that they wish to study. The children will be in groups of between two and four students. The groups will read books, talk to friends and adults, and even use the internet to learn more about the pets they have chosen to study. We will want to find out about the physical characteristics of the pets, what they eat, what they need to live and be healthy, and why they could make a good pet. We will share our information with our classmates by making teaching posters using a variety of art materials.
The choices of pets available to be studied and researched are: dogs, cats, parrots, fish, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, and snakes. Students, be ready to tell me on Friday which pet you want to study.

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.

Opening Days of Kindergarten

Mrs. Kiernan and I are enjoying getting to know our new class, and the children are busy settling in. They are eagerly learning our kindergarten routines and the new expectations of their new class. What a joy it is to observe them exploring our classroom and enjoying so many of our activities. The children are making new friends and becoming reaquainted with old friends. Everyone is settling in nicely, including the teachers, and looking forward to a great year in kindergarten. We are off to to terrific start.
This is the time of year when the teachers are getting to know the children socially and academically through both observation and informal assessment. This will help us with our planning for the upcoming weeks and months. Once we know the various levels of the children, we will be able to help them reinforce these levels and then move on to learn new skills and concepts.
Kindergarten is a great year of fun, learning, and growth of all!