Kinder-Whale Tales Dear Kinder-Whale Families, I hope you are having a marvelous three day weekend so far! This weekly news post will be the second to last post for this school year! I am amazed and still can't believe how quickly the year has gone by. On one hand, it feels like just yesterday when I was meeting all of the Kinder-Whales for the very first time, teaching a few of them how to hold their pencils and how to properly use scissors! On the other hand, these Kinder-Whales have grown and learned so much in such a short time. I can't believe that we have almost been in school for 180 days --our Kinder-Whales are first graders in training! We have officially finished up our testing for the school year. This past week, we also wrapped up our pushes and pulls unit and practiced subtraction and learned how to tell time. Featured above in this week's news is one of the projects that the students enjoyed doing. We read a story called, If the Dinosaurs Came Back, by Bernard Most. The story provides different scenarios that could happen if the dinosaurs came back. For instance, people could go skiing on a dinosaur covered in snow or climb a dinosaur instead of a mountain. People could also hitch a ride on a dinosaur instead of on a boat. Dinosaurs could help firefighters put out fires and help kids reach the kites that get stuck in trees. We used illustrations from the book to discuss pop art, background, and foreground, and noticed that all of the backgrounds were black and white; the only things that had color were the different dinosaurs. The students brainstormed ideas for what they could do as their background (i.e. school, park, city, construction site, library, the beach, etc.). Then the students carefully outlined their backgrounds using a black sharpie. Once they finished their background, the students cut out shapes to create their dinosaur. The students practiced discussing what their dinosaur was doing in their picture using the sentence frame, If the dinosaurs came back... SEAL: Pushes and Pulls Marble Runs To wrap up our SEAL unit on pushes and pulls, the students worked as a team to create a marble run using household and classroom items. Students got to choose from toilet paper rolls, popsicle sticks, linking cubes, paper plates, plastic cups, and tape to create a marble run -- an "obstacle course" for their marble. They did an amazing job! Again, a huge THANK YOU goes out to Mr. Russell (Norah's dad) for volunteering your time in the classroom and helping the students to create their marble runs! They had a blast creating and testing out their team creation! We even had some marble run races against each other, all for fun, of course! Please scroll below to watch all of the students having fun testing out their marble runs! Towards the end of the week, the students also tried out the marble runs created by the other tables. Master Minus Sign The Kinder-Whales have done an amazing job with adding fluently up to 5 and working and decomposing numbers up to 10. This week, we met Master Minus Sign, who has helped us with our subtraction! Unlike Princess Plus Sign who is very generous, Master Minus Sign is very greedy. He likes to take away things from others to keep for himself! The students learned that when we hear the words minus, subtract, difference, less, fewer, more than, fewer than, etc., then that means we use Master Minus Sign! We had a lot of fun coming up with word problems by imagining what Master Minus Sign would take away if he came into our classroom. The students came up with subtraction word problems such as, "Master Minus Sign came into Room 8 and he saw our lunch cards! He saw that 10 people were going to get hot lunch. He said, "I like to take away!" and then he took away 3 lunch cards. How many lunch cards are left? 7!" We repeated the same process with jackets, pencils, books, etc. and had fun letting our imaginations run wild! :) After introducing Master Minus Sign, the students worked at their desks to write subtraction problems, using Master Minus Sign. What Time Is It? As a part of our daily calendar, the students have learned how to tell time to the hour. They learned that the little hand tells the hour, while the big hand tells the minutes. When the big hand is at the 12, we say __'o clock. The students have had extensive practice with that. Towards the end of last week, we started to practice telling time to the half hour. The students learned that when the big hand is at the 6, we say __ thirty (i.e. two thirty). We also discussed how it can be 8 'o clock in the morning or 8 'o clock at night. For morning, we say AM (ante meridian or before noon) and for afternoon or night, we say PM (post meridian or after noon). To help us remember, we say A before P and morning comes before night. The Kinder-Whales were told that they will learn more about how to tell time when they are in first grade :). They were super excited to use the little yellow clocks, which have the markings for the five minute increments. Many of the students were even able to tell time to the five minute increments using the little blue tick marks! | Reminders & Updates Next Week:
When the students arrive, they will come into the classroom and will unpack any belongings that they may have brought with them. Our class will walk to Starlite Park no later than 9:15am. Please be sure to put sunscreen on your child and pack them a hat! Parents and families are encouraged to meet us at the park (if you are not helping out). We will need some parents to help out with barbecuing [thank you to Mr. M. (Ahmed's dad) for volunteering to BBQ], preparing food such as cutting watermelon for the students to enjoy, transporting food and/or toys/items from Mrs. Singleton's classroom to the park, and running some games/activities, such as face painting, running a bubbles station, monitoring students while they are playing with sand buckets, pool noodle badminton, etc. We will also need one or two parents to come a little earlier to hide some "jewels" in the sand for the students to dig up. Because we are not sure how many parents are available to help out from all of the TK/Kindergarten classes, we will delegate the roles/tasks in the morning in Mrs. Singleton's room (Room 1). Please arrive between 8:30am-8:45am for more directions -- thank you so much for your help! We really appreciate it! We hope to be able to serve an early lunch at 10:30 for the students and then we will walk back to school between 11:30-11:45 to say our farewells and be dismissed by 12:15pm! SEAL Summer Bridge: For those of you attending Summer School with the SEAL Summer Bridge Program, an important packet was sent home with information about the schedule, your summer school teachers, and the room number. Please let me know if you have any questions! We look forward to starting off the summer with you! RECAP: Milpitas Library: Read for the Win Mrs. Karen, a librarian from the Milpitas Library, came to speak with our students about their summer reading program, called Read for the Win. All the students have to do is read a lot of books over the summer, and record the title of their book plus color in the stars to rate the books that they read, and they will be able to select a book for free from the library! She also shared about some fun events that will be held at the library from June - July, including a puppet show, a reptile show, etc. Please be sure to take a look at the pamphlet that went home to find out when the events are occurring and save the dates! The Straight Line Wonder This past week, we also worked on another art project to help the students with their fine motor skills. First, we read a book called The Straight Line Wonder by Mem Fox. In the book, there were three straight lines who were the best of friends. One day, one of the straight lines decides that he doesn't want to be a straight line anymore. So he jumps, twirls in whirls, makes spirals, etc. The other straight lines keep telling him to stop because people will stare. Towards the end of the story, a movie director sees the line twirling and whirling and asks him to be the star of his new movie. After that, all of the lines were moving, making swirls, etc. For our art project, the students were instructed to use their pencil to draw one line -- students were told NOT to lift up their pencil until they were done with their loooooong line. Then, the students used color pencils to meticulously color in the spaces created by all of the lines, edges, loops, swirls, whirls, etc. Their projects were so colorful and turned out to look so beautiful! Some students are still working on their project, so below are pictures of the students who finished. The Little Red Hen While I was out on Tuesday, Mrs. M. read aloud a The Little Red Hen retold by Brenda Parkes and Judith Smith. During the first read aloud, the students focused on the setting, characters, problem and solution in the story. During the second read aloud, the students focused on the events in the story and answered questions about what happened first, next, and last. After reading the first story of the Little Red Hen, the students turned and had a collaborative conversation with a partner to discuss who was their favorite character and why. Then the students wrote a sentence about why their favorite character was the Hen, Dog, Cat, Pig, or Duck. After choosing their favorite character, the students wrote sentences about the other characters. They did a fantastic job! The Kinder-Whales also practiced retelling the story in the correct sequence of events. Throughout the rest of the week, we read other versions of the story, such as The Little Yellow Chicken by Joy Cowley, Little Red Hen (Golden Super Shape Classic Book) by Lyn Calder, and The Little Red Hen by Byron Barton. To wrap up the day, the students enjoyed taking turns and acting out the story of the Little Red Hen! Spirit Week: Tuesday Favorite Character from a Book/Show/Movie On Tuesday, the students dressed up as their favorite character from a book/show/movie! I was out for SEAL training on Tuesday, so my wonderful instructional assistant took a few photos of the students -- THANK YOU, MRS. NANCY! The students look awesome and/or lovely! Spirit Week: Wednesday Crazy Hat and Crazy Sock Day On Wednesday, the students wore crazy hats and/or crazy socks! I LOVED it, especially the ones that were homemade! You all are so creative :). Take a look at some of the crazy hats and some of their hilarious/adorable socks! Spirit Day: Thursday College Day! On Thursday, the students dressed up in college gear! Our classroom was representing the Fresno State Bulldogs and Oklahoma State! We also represented the University of San Francisco - my alma mater! Go Dons! :) Spirit Day: Friday Culture Day! On Friday, we ended the week with Culture Day! Students wore traditional attire to represent Malaysia, China, India, Argentina, and Vietnam! Students also wore red, white, and blue to represent USA :). They looked adorable! Thank You! Thank you so much for taking the time to read through the weekly news! I will keep this thank you short and sweet and save my longer thank you for the final weekly news of the year! Please remember to leave a quick comment to indicate that you have received the weekly news. Thank you for EVERYTHING! Sincerely, Mrs. Lorenzana |
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CONVERSATION OF THE WEEK: At the beginning of the week, I asked students to ask their mom what her favorite color is and what are a few of her favorite things... I asked them to keep it a secret so that it could be a surprise for Mother's Day... and then this is what happens:
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Mrs. LorenzanaKindergarten Teacher at Spangler Elementary Archives
June 2016
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