Day 9 in Kindergarten

This morning after Morning Meeting I introduced Writer's Workshop.  We read the book The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin and discussed that authors tell and write stories about these that they know a lot about.  Grace Lin wrote a book about Chinese Vegetables because she would plant them with her mother.  I shared a story about having chicken soup on Monday nights with my Nonnie when I was little.  We will continue to use authors as mentors and tell our own stories in preparation of writing them in our writing and drawing books in coming weeks!

This afternoon in Reader's Workshop we talked about a BIG Kindergarten word: stamina.  And talked about how stamina is doing anything for along period of time without getting too tired or giving up.  We practiced finding one book, a comfy spot and reading quietly for 2 minutes.  We did this successfully and colored in two minutes on our chart.  Tomorrow we will try for four minutes!



We also traveled to England in our next National Geographic Are We There Yet? video.  Today we got to see Big Ben and the London Bridge!  We also visited Ms. Beth in the library.  We will visit the Library every Tuesday.  Students got to check out a book from the library and I gave them the choice of bringing the book home or keeping it in our classroom.  If the book came home please help to remind your child to bring the book back to school by next Tuesday.

Happy Monday!

We were excited to be back in school after the weekend.  This morning we learned that the letter t is a sky letter.  It starts up at the sky line goes down to the grass line and crosses on the plane line.  Everyone had a turn to come up to the white board and practice writing a lower case t. 

Today during Math we talked about the importance of organizing objects when we count them.  We lined up a group of bears and remembered to use our finger to touch each one when we are counting. We also listened to a counting song the "Number Rock" that helps us count to 20!

On Friday I read the book The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza and I re-read it again today.  We discussed how readers re-read books and that every time you read a book you will probably learn or notice something new. This time many kindergartners joined in with the reading.  After reading the book we painted our own pizzas and added toppings!

Kindergarten Day 6

We has a busy morning this morning.  We practiced for our welcome ceremony tomorrow (8:10 in the gym/lunch room) and kindergarteners are excited to receive a flower from the fifth graders!  At the end of the school year kindergarten will return the favor and give fifth graders a flower at a moving on ceremony.  After that we had music with Mrs. Hurley snack and Ms. Mellencamp came to read us a book A Bus Called Heaven.  It will be a book we revisit to deepen our discussion on community and working together as a team.

After lunch we had our first "Reader's Workshop."  I did a first read of the book Noisy Nora by Rosemary Wells and then students chose a spot to quietly read a book of their choosing.  After reading for a little bit we gathered again on the rug and shared out some of the things that we noticed in the books we read.  We then got to play inside and ended the day outside with a second recess.

   

A Busy Wednesday!

Today was a busy, sunny Wednesday in Kindergarten!  We talked about "Why do we come to school?" and some things students shared where: to learn new things every day, to make new friends, to learn letters, to learn to read, to play and from this list of things we began thinking of some rules we need to have in our classroom to make sure that we are able to do all of these things.  We will continue working on creating our rules together as a classroom community and will share them when the list is complete!

This morning we also had our first fire drill.  We talked about how the noise may be loud and it's okay to cover your ears, we need to be silent as we exit the building and to be sure we stay in a line.  When it was time for the drill Kindergarten students did an excellent job!  Because our morning was cut a little short by the fire drill we had time to play and explore after lunch and then had Art with our Art teacher Mrs. Hawkes.

Our First Full Day of Kindergarten!

Today was our first full day of Kindergarten!  This morning we read the book What do You do with an Idea? and discussed how we all have wonderful ideas to share and that our ideas can make the world a better place.  We connected this to a short video from the Kid President.  He gave us a "Pep Talk" asking us to think about what we can do to make the world more awesome and better for each other.

Before we went to play and explore, we discussed that sometimes in Kindergarten we will play with toys that come from store and sometimes we can use our ideas to build things out of supplies that we may have normally recycled or thrown away.  Today we used cardboard tubes, straws and hole punches to create!  Some things we created were a rocket ship and musical instruments.  We also did a little bit of math having time to explore with the math tools we will use this year.

This afternoon we talked a bit about where we live and watched the first of our "National Geographic Kids: Are We There Yet?" videos.  This is a great series where children are narrating as they travel to different parts of the world.  The videos are short and are in three part series for each country. Today we visited ancient pyramids in Mexico and we put a tack on our wall map to show us where Mexico is!  We also visited Ms. Beth in the library and got to choose a book to check out.  Books will remain in our classroom for this week and once we get the routines down will be able to come home to share.

Day 3 of Kindergarten!

Happy Friday!  What a wonderful first (short) week of Kindergarten!  We started our day with a new CP Smith ritual, a whole school community meeting.  We will gather every Friday from 8:10-8:30 in the gym so if you are able to join us please do!  We watched a video slideshow and learned our three school values: Safe, Responsible and Respectful.

We read two books today Pete the Cat Wheels on the Bus and Lacey Walker Non-Stop Talker and learned how to put books back in our classroom library bins by matching the colored stickers on the book to the basket it came from.  Some Kindergarten friends enjoyed visiting our school garden at recess and even picked some raspberries.  After recess we discussed visiting the garden next week and maybe picking some of our many fresh tomatoes.  We also had music again with Mrs. Hurley!  Have a wonderful long weekend!

Day 2 of Kindergarten

Today was a wonderful second day in Kindergarten.  We finished reading Interrupting Chicken which we all found to be quite silly, played outside and had our first music class with Mrs. Hurley. Tomorrow morning we will gather for our first community meeting as a whole school!