May 12, 2014 We had an awesome 2 weeks with the creepy crawlies! I definitely think we earned the title of Junior Entomologists. If your child hasn't sung the Insect Song for you, be sure to ask for a demonstration. There are moves to go with it. You'll learn about an insect's body, it's legs, antennaes, and eyes. We learned some more specific facts about bumblebees, ladybugs, and butterflies. To continue our studies of life cycles, ask your child about the stages in the life of a butterfly and of the ladybug. If he/she doesn't include them, ask them to tell you what the following things are: larva, pupa, chrysallis, and even molting. Our insect studies really came alive with the 2 experiences we had last week. The Insect Zoo from ISU came to visit on Wednesday. Our visiting entomologist brought some bugs for us to get up close and personal with. Your child had the opportunity to cuddle with mealworms (the larva stage), darkwing beetles (adults), millipedes, and hissing cockroaches. Some of us admired these critters from a little farther back in our chair and others let them crawl right up their arm. Ask your child which one he/she was. On Thursday, we dodged the looming rain long enough to participate in the Insectology program at McFarland Park. Thank you so much to Charlie Good, Domingo Flores-Cruz, Angie Tscherter, Patrick Clem, Pam Jensen, Matt Farmer, and Ashley Buck for being our parent volunteers. Be sure to have your child tell you about the Lacewing and Praying Mantis game and the Insect Hunt. We took our first trip to Noah's Garden last week. We have been adopted by Mrs. Hamilton's Class. These big buddies will walk us through the gardening process since this is our first year to participate. We walked over to the garden on Wednesday morning and picked the rocks out of our raised bed. We raked it and got it all level and ready for planting. On Friday of this week, we will walk over with our plants and seeds and get everything in place. We will have a row of cucumbers, a row of tomatoes, a row of peppers and a row of carrots. The tomato and pepper plants we are transplanting are the ones we started from seed in our classroom! It's an exciting time! This week, we will begin studying all kinds of animals: a few from the farm and a few from the zoo. We will talk about the life cycle of these mammals, their habitats (both natural and man-made), what they eat, and some interesting facts about each. Be sure to check daily with your child about which animal we studied. We will take all of this knowledge with us to the zoo a week from Thursday, May 22nd. April 28, 2014 April showers bring May flowers! Sounds like we have a few soggy days ahead, but we'll try to keep our focus on those May flowers. The marigold flowers, tomatoes, and peppers we planted almost a month ago are doing great. We record their growth once a week in our observation journal. It's been fun to see our seeds sprout and continue to grow into thriving plants. The week after Mother's Day, we will transplant them into Noah's Garden. Based on our studies of seeds and plants, the kids have had some amazing discoveries about cycles. We tapped right into that with a mini-unit on eggs. Our focus was on chicken eggs, but with it being the week before Easter, we tied in a few Easter eggs as well. It's been a couple weeks now, but hopefully your child can still share with you the life cycle of a chicken. You could ask some questions about roosting, a hatchling, an egg tooth, and even how long it takes for the egg to hatch. Last week, the kids spent their 3 days with Ms. Kellar, one of our preschool teachers while I did Kindergarten Screening with the 4-5 year olds. I think she was amazed at how far the kids have come in both their learning and independence. I certainly missed my class and I am very much looking forward to being back with them this week. Continuing with the concepts of cycles and change, we will spend the next 2 weeks learning about insects. This will lead us right up to our field trip to McFarland Park on May 8th. Our program scheduled with the naturalists is called Insectology. We should have some good background knowledge to take with us by then. We had a very cool little teaser of the learning ahead the week before Screening. Hunter's special Big Cheese guest was his grandpa who is an entomologist. He introduced us to some of the basics and even brought some hissing cockroaches for us to cuddle. Yikes! I will get the May calendar out by the middle of the week. Be sure to check the website on Wednesday for the new calendar and a new math story to try with your kids. April 1, 2014 I think Mother Nature pulled off the greatest April Fools joke of all! We have been trying hard in kindergarten to talk about Spring, but it gets a little confusing with 70 one day and 30 the next! After finishing up our unit on Habitats, we have spent the last couple weeks talking about Seeds and Plants. Our kindergarten classes get the exciting opportunity to be a part of Noah's Garden. This is a project started by the Multi-age classes. The garden is located on the East side of Memorial Lutheran church. Our class will have our own raised bed to plant, tend to, and harvest. We have begun this journey by planting seeds in our classroom. Ask your child what 3 things we planted together last week in the big tray. We will take some of these seedlings and plant them in the garden sometime in May. We have been learning about what is inside a seed, what a seed needs to grow, and the life cycle of a plant. Some other good questions to ask your child would be: What 3 things did you find inside the lima bean seed? What things does a seed need to grow? What grows first from the seed? What is the job of the roots? What is it called when the stem barely peeks through the dirt? What is the job of the stem? Why do we call Plant Life a cycle? Today, we planted some Grass Head Guys and Gals. Hmmm. Ask your child what this crazy project was about. We started an experiment to see what happens if a seed doesn't get all of those most important things like dirt, sun and water. It will be fun to observe/record how or if these seeds grow. In other learning, we have continued to reinforce the skills of word endings and controlling r's. We have added in the 3 sounds of letter y (/y/, long i, and long e). It is so much fun to see the kids grab onto these reading tools and use them to sound out words. Some are even able to apply these rules in their writing. Incredible for Kindergarten! In Math, we have been working on Odd and Even Numbers, tally marks, fact fluency, and more math stories. The math story we worked on this week is available under the math tab. It is the first one with division. It amazes me how quickly the kids are able to think through these advanced math stories. The best part is that they have no fear in trying to solve them. This is truly my most favorite part of the year. The kids are readers, writers, and mathematical thinkers. Their independence has grown so much and they are using those skills they will need in 1st grade. They really have made tremendous growth. Thank you for working with me in encouraging them to do their best. It really pays off! In the next few weeks, we will continue our unit on Spring with kites, eggs, and rain. Please remember that Kindergarten will look different for the week of April 21st. A note was sent home last week from Mrs. Goecke explaining the process of Screening Week this year. Please let me know if you have questions. Be sure to check out the new math story, our most recent calendar, and the reminder page. Have a wonderful weekend!
Friday, February 28th I can't believe another month has come and gone! With all of our crazy winter weather, report cards, and conferences, time really flew. Thank you to everyone who came to celebrate your child's learning during conferences last week and this week. For those of you who haven't yet seen the report card, I would encourage you to view that and even print it if you have access. I don't hand out a progress report of any kind at these conferences since report cards were just sent a couple weeks ago. Let me know if you have any questions after you see it. At the beginning of February, we finished up with all of our Winter theme activities. We ended with a short research unit on Polar Bears. This was really fun and the final project we did is hanging in the hall. They really are cute! Polar Bears and the Arctic made a smooth transition into our unit on Habitats. We have spent the last 2 weeks learning about our own habitat, animals that share our habitat, and the forest and pond habitats. Ask your child what 4 things a habitat needs to be considered a habitat (food, water, shelter, space). During this theme, we have reviewed what we learned about owls, frogs, and turtles earlier in the year. We've added some research on raccoons and beavers. Reading skills we are focused on right now include word endings (s, ing, ed), blends, silent e, and r controlled vowels (ar, or, er, ir, ur). We continue to practice word families and reading books at our just right level to build our fluency. In math, we try to do a math story a week. The stories I'm choosing right now are meant to encourage counting on or counting back with addition and subtraction. I'm also sneaking in a little multiplication to spur some skip counting. We continue to work on numbers to 100 and this week we were introduced to odd/even numbers and the greater than/less than sign (>, <). We will continue with habitats through this next week and then hopefully the weather will begin to be conducive to talking about signs of spring! We can always keep our fingers crossed. Friday, January 31st We have had a great month learning about all the different aspects of winter. We have been working hard on our writing. We have used some good thinking webs to help us get our ideas down in a complete sentence. Early this week, we wrote a fiction story about what we like to do on a Snow Day. We're finishing up this week with Polar Bears. We have spent the week researching these Arctic creatures. We will end our study with some nonfiction writing of Polar Bear facts. I can't wait to share your child's stories at conferences coming up at the end of February. Some Polar Bear questions to ask might be: What 3 things do they use their paws for? What are the babies called? Which animal are polar bears afraid of? Where to Polar Bears live? Coming up on Monday, pending any more weather cancellations, we will celebrate the 100th Day of School! It will be a day all about the number 100. Please check your child's folder for an important assignment to do over the weekend. In math, we have been working on the names and properties of 3D shapes. Ask your child if he/she can say the little rap we learned to remember the names of the sphere, cylinder, cube and cone. We do have a trip to the Public Library planned for next Tuesday. We get to visit the new Children's Area for the first time! This is the 3rd reschedule, so I'm hoping the snow stays away. Be sure to watch for information on report cards. They will be available for you to see on Power School beginning February 10th. The new snack calendar and a math story for you do to with your child have been updated. Please check those tabs.
Monday, January 13th We're finally getting back into our routine after that long break. I hope everyone is planning on trying to attend the Family Reading Night tomorrow night that is being put on by the PTA. This is a fun way to enjoy some good stories together as a family. It's fun to walk away with some different books to read at home, too, through the Book Swap. We've spent most of our time since break talking about winter. Last Thursday, we had a naturalist from Story County Conservation come to teach us about birds. Among many other facts, Heather shared with us which birds stay around Nevada in the winter and which migrate. We learned so many things about a birds' feathers, their feet, the nests they make, and the eggs they lay. Some good questions to ask your child would be: What are 3 things a bird uses it's feathers for? What was the dance you learned for the turkey? for the eagle? the heron? What was the biggest egg you saw? the smallest? We have been doing some bird projects as a follow-up. We did some non-fiction writing last week and some fun fiction writing this morning. We will spend the next couple weeks talking about winter. We will bring is skills such as naming words, describing words, and action words. We will practice the "quiet e" sound at the end of words, practice real & nonsense words, and continue with counting using ten frames. We're thankful for outside recess and warmer temperatures. Keep your fingers crossed they are both here to stay for awhile! Monday, January 6th What a crazy time of year! This is definitely been an extra-long holiday break. I am getting anxious to get back to school. I miss the kids and we have so much to catch up on...what they got for Christmas, if they traveled over break, who they got to see...and that's all before we can start getting down to business again. When we come back, we have a new friend joining our class. Her name is Hannah. I know everyone will make her feel welcome. The plan is to have our Christmas celebration, as much as we can, on the day we finally get back to school. The next day, we'll take it slow and easy to figure out our routines again. Then, we'll be back on track and be able to put it in full gear. We'll spend the next few weeks talking about winter: the weather, fun things to do, using our five senses, etc. I will let you know the specific reading and math skills when we get back into it. It is that time of year again to do the DIBELS test on all our kindergarten kids to evaluate their progress in those pre-reading skills. Mrs. Cave will begin testing on Thursday, January 9th. During this time, we will not be doing that JRR part of our afternoon. We should be able to resume with our JRR groups on January 21st. I hope everyone had a terrific Christmas and that your New Year is off to a great start. I'm looking forward to getting back to kindergarten!
Monday, December 2nd The kids have been busy with Ms. E. these last couple weeks. She is doing her full-time teaching through the end of this week. She has had some awesome lessons on short & long vowels, digraphs (th, sh, ch), the teen numbers, and reading number words. She's finding that Kindergarten is a very active place with lots of time slots to fill! Ms. E. will transition out of her teaching role next week and her last day with us will be Dec. 12th. It has been a great experience for all of us. We will spend the month of December surrounded in Christmas fun. There will be lots of learning going on, but we'll use the reindeer, elves, candy canes, and cookies we're so excited about to help us with that learning. Beginning today, your child may have a new JRR teacher. We did some switching around to better meet every child's reading needs. We will re-evaluate at least once a month and make changes as needed. Ask your child if they switched to a different room today. Please check your child's folder every day. Before Thanksgiving break I put a very important note about our upcoming Christmas Party. We will decorate and fill Holiday Bags in place of a gift exchange. There was a green note in folders to explain all the details. Please let me know if you have questions. And...watch folders in the next few days for the bag to come home to be decorated. Details will come later. I'm looking forward to sharing this exciting season with your little one. There's nothing like the excitement and wonder in those little eyes to put the Christmas spirit in all of us!
Tuesday, November 12th Wow! It's been a while since I updated our website. I got a little caught up with preparing for conferences and helping Ms. E get settled in. Thank you to everyone who attended conferences last week. There are some great successes for you to celebrate with your child! With the exception of monsters during Halloween week, we have continued with our unit on the season of fall. Yesterday and today were a little more like winter than fall, but we're going with the calendar anyway. We have changed our focus a bit to animals and what they are busy doing in the fall. Last week was the squirrels and the nuts they are collecting, birds and the nests they are leaving, and this week will be frogs/turtles. We will have a naturalist from Story County Conservation here on Wednesday along with a couple critters to bring our learning to life! Be sure to ask your child what these critters were and what they learned about each one. We are really getting good with all the letters of the alphabet, hearing beginning sounds, and clapping syllables. The last couple weeks we have moved into listening for ending sounds and stretching out each sound in words. Watch for activities coming home that you can use to practice these new skills at home. We will soon move onto those tough vowel sounds. Be sure to ask your child what he/she is working on with their JRR teacher. In math, we are working on learning basic facts to five, problem solving, and adding one more to any number.
The little taste of winter we just had brings the need for a couple reminders about how we dress for the weather. When there is snow on the ground, we have to have snow pants AND boots in order to leave the black top area on the playground. If we wear snow boots to school, we MUST have shoes to put on in the classroom. Those without shoes to change into will not be allowed in the snow, even with snow boots. This is that time of year you will need to be sure your child can be independent with the shoes they wear to school. Please let me know if you have any questions. After Wednesday, be sure to check the Math Story of the Week tab to see what problem solving activity we did together. See if you child can show you how he/she solved it. Next week, Ms. E will begin her full-time teaching. We will be discussing activities planned and your child's progress every day. I will use this time to work with individual kids in their reading, counting, etc.