It's been a busy few weeks!  This morning we enjoyed some "milder" temperatures in the woods.  Fingers crossed that the snow will be melted soon!  I read a book while in the woods And then it's spring and we made connections to how very brown everything is right now (at least the parts we can see) and know that rain and warmer weather will bring grass and flowers soon.

Yesterday I hung paper in the hopes of creating a spring inspired mural.  We have been learning about worms and will move on to reading about how plants grow and later about insects.  As we are studying these topics it is my hope that students will add pictures/paintings and facts to a mural which right now is just a large piece of brown paper.  Look for changes over the coming weeks.

Yesterday we read a poem about Spring: Spring is Here!

Spring is Here!

Spring is here. 

Spring is here. 

Goodbye, snow 

Flowers grow. 

Birds and bees

Leaves on trees. 

Hello, spring. 

Hello, spring. 

We talked about what we notice about poems and some things that are similar between many poems:

• sometimes poems rhyme 
• they can kind of sound like songs 
• sometimes lines repeat 
• they have different punctuation like commas, apostrophes, dashes and periods

Today we started learning about worms.  We read Wiggling Worms at Work.  Some facts we learned were that worms do not have eyes, ears or noses and have very little brains.  They rely on vibrations to hear people or predators.

Part, Part, Whole

This morning we enjoyed some time in the woods and were thankful that it was a little bit warmer!  This afternoon in Math, we worked more with number bonds and using the language part, part, whole.   I introduced my "part part whole" machine and we told number stories: 3 dogs are standing, two are sitting how many dogs are there altogether?  We dropped in 3 pom poms for one part and two for the other and then counted the whole.

I Like Myself

This morning we listened to the book I like Myself  and talked about things that we like.  Students then worked on using appropriate skin and hair color to draw self portraits.  Next they wrote a sentence using the starter: I like...we taped the sentence over their names so that you can lift the flap and guess whose portrait it is!

First Day of Spring!

While we are thankful that the sun is shining, we hope that warmer weather is on  the way!  It was a busy day.  Mrs Guilmette visited for Guidance and talked about how to stay healthy and take care of our bodies.  Kindergarten has been working with Ms. Nikki to learn a dance which will be performed at a special Dance assembly this Friday morning at 10:15.  In Math we continue to work with number bonds and today students helped draw shapes on the number bonds to represent math stories.  We used the language parts and whole to discuss the numbers coming all together.

Maple Sugaring Trip!

We didn't let the cold stop us from enjoying our trip to Rock Point School to visit their sugarhouse and sugar bush!  Thank you to those family members that joined us.  We learned how to tap a tree, saw the evaparator in action, heard a story about the Abenaki people and enjoyed a treat of maple syrup and ice cream - YUM!

A Snowy March

It's hard to believe that spring is 5 days away!  We have, however, had fun sledding and playing in the snow.  Today I introduced number bonds in math using hula hoops.  We will be learning composition (putting together) and decomposition (taking apart) using the number bond model so that students build conceptual understanding of the relationship between parts and wholes.  We had one student stand in one hula hoop and two in another.  Then they walked to the third hula hoop and stood all together.  We recorded this in a number bond and wrote an addition sentence 1+2=3.

Busy Monday

It was a busy Monday in Kindergarten!  We are almost through all of the lower case letters and have been focusing a lot on sight words.  We played a matching game as a whole group and then students will work at our Word Work station to read and match sight words.  Parents often ask which sight words we focus on in K and here are the first two lists we use:

A beautiful morning in the woods!

We had a beautiful morning in the woods.  However, we took a poll and most Kindergartners are looking forward to warm, sunny weather.  After the woods we took some more outside time to "paint" in the snow and then came in for a shared reading of Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do You Hear?  Kindergarten helped out with the reading by holding sight word and punctuation mark cards and holding it up when we read that word. 

This afternoon we had a lockdown drill and overall Kindergarten did a good job staying still and quiet.  After our lock down we played a Math Game (similar to "War") where Kindergarten worked to beat me by flipping over numbers that were greater than mine!  We also practiced tally marks to keep score.

   

A fun and snowy Wednesday!

Happy March!  It has been a busy couple days back after Winter Break!  This morning we played a fun word game.  We imagined that we were packing for a trip to California and had to decide to bring something with us that started with the same initial sound as California.  We set chairs up to be like a bus and once students completed the sentence "I'm going to California and I'm taking a _____"  they got to get on the bus.  Some things we packed were: cats, cookies, cakes and cameras!

It is also one of my favorite times of year when I am meeting with all students 2-3 times a week in small reading groups.  It is so exciting to see how excited and proud they are to read!