This Week in Kindergarten Dear Kindergarten Families, Thank you so much for taking the time to attend our Back to School Night! I hope you were able to learn and gain a wealth of knowledge about Spangler Elementary, our PTA, and of course, our Kindergarten program! As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. My door is always open and I am here to help in any way that I can! Featured above in this week's news is each student's rainbow fish! Students chose different colors and also included one shimmering scale. Our rainbow fish will be posted in the classroom to remind us how important it is to share, especially in Kindergarten, where we share EVERYTHING. We have been having a whale of a time ;)! Please read below for more information about what we have been up to in our classroom! UPDATE: IF YOU HAVE NOT DONE SO ALREADY, PLEASE SEND ME AN EMAIL WITH YOUR CHILD'S NAME IN THE HEADLINE ASAP SO THAT I CAN INCLUDE YOU ON OUR EMAIL LIST. THANK YOU! :) Reading/Language Arts This week, the Kindergarteners focused on the very important social skill of sharing. We read aloud The Rainbow Fish, the story of a beautiful fish who refuses to share his many shimmering scales. As a result of not sharing, the Rainbow Fish loses all of its friends. Rainbow Fish seeks out advice from a wise octopus, who suggests for him to give away his shimmering scales to each of his friends. Even though it was really hard for Rainbow Fish to share, he felt happy and his friends felt happy after Rainbow Fish shared its scales. We learned that sometimes it isn't easy to share, but we must learn to be kind and to treat others the way that we would like to be treated. The Kindergarteners then shared out stories about a time when they shared with someone else or a time when someone else shared with them. Many of them mentioned sharing their books, toys, school supplies, and even ice cream with their friends and family members. It was very sweet to hear all of their examples of sharing! Colors Unit! The Kindergarteners have also started our unit on colors. Students are completing many activities to help them identify, read, and write their color words, including tracing words using the same crayon color, creating their own color dictionary, and the favorite project of many: creating their own Jumbo 8 Crayon Box! The students had a wonderful time finding examples of each color in the classroom, including red linking cubes, orange buckets, yellow fish, green sharpeners, blue pillows, and purple lunch boxes. I encourage you to help them find examples of these colors at home! We will continue to work on our color words next week. Writing/Handwriting + Phonics The Kindergarteners have been doing a fabulous job with reviewing the letters of the alphabet. Beginning on August 17th, the students have been introduced to a letter a day. So far, we have done letters A-I. The students practiced tracing and properly forming each uppercase and lowercase letter, and then writing their own by following the correct steps. We have been learning many songs to help us remembering the sound that each letter makes (videos coming soon!). For now, I encourage you to help your child to continue to build their phonemic awareness by having them find things around the house that begin with each letter. The great thing about the program that we have been using is that it also allows students to work on their coloring and fine motor skills, while reviewing their shapes. The students have had lots of practice with cutting out circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles. We are also working on writing our names properly by having a capital letter at the beginning and then writing lowercase letters for the rest of the spelling of our name. August Journal: Every month, students will complete a journal to help with with their writing and formation of sentences. For the month of August, students complete the following sentences: My name is ________. My teacher is ________. (I love their drawings of me--simply adorable and precious!). And then students had two blank pages to write sentences about themselves and to draw pictures that go along with them. We will be getting a new one soon in September. Math How many boys and girls are in our class? The students had so much fun drawing a small self portrait, being as detailed as possible. Then we graphed to see how many boys and girls we have in our Kindergarten class. At the time, we had 10 boys and 11 girls. We then reviewed the math terms of more or less, and how many more to make them both equal amounts. This week, we started our Singapore Math program, which has allowed students to use a variety of learning styles to achieve our math learning goals. The lessons include a quick and cute story at the beginning with pictures that challenge the students to look closely at the details to help them count and find groups of 2, 3, and 4. Students practiced counting and identifying what is the same and what is not the same or different in the pictures. We also had a few of our friends (student volunteers) act out the stories so that we can better understand and recall details from the story. The Kindergarteners also practiced writing their numbers nicely and neatly, always starting at the top and following through. Calendar The Kindergarteners are also practicing their counting skills during our daily calendar time. They are doing a wonderful job of learning the days of the week as well as how to spell the month of August. As the year progresses, students will be introduced to new math concepts during daily calendar, such as skip counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's, adding and subtraction strategies, and doing math number talks. Students will also practice counting up to 100 both forwards and backwards. | Reminders & Updates Next Week:
Volunteers in the Classroom: Thank you to those of you who have indicated that you would like to volunteer in the classroom. I will be in contact with you soon to discuss ways that you can help and to schedule days and times with you. Thank you for your patience! RECAP: 08/13/15 - 08/21/15 Due to the busy beginning of the school year, I was unable to take or post as many pictures from the first week and two days as I would have liked. I will be posting those pictures here, under the RECAP section. Usually the RECAP section will be used to share other news, such as school events, birthdays celebrated in the classroom, Star of the Week pictures, etc. Please let me know if you have any questions about this. Gingerbread Man & 5th Grade Buddies On Monday, August 17th, our class read the story of The Gingerbread Man. Then, we had so much fun making our very own gingerbread man! Students took turns and worked in small groups to decorate the different parts of our new gingerbread friend. Unfortunately, after school, the gingerbread man ran away! We spent a few minutes each day of last week looking for him, and in the process, the students took a tour of the school. They were able to see the office, the library, the computer lab, the learning center, as well as the hallways for the upper grades. Students also learned whee we should line up when there is a fire drill. After looking in so many places and finding a number of clues, we finally found the gingerbread man on that Friday, August 21st. Guess where he was? He was in the classroom of our fifth grade buddies with Ms. Goodner in P11! We will be doing projects and activities with our fifth grade buddies throughout the school year. The students were so excited when we finally found our gingerbread man. Once we brought him back to our classroom, the students all insisted that we cut off his legs first so that he couldn't run away again :). Last week, the students also completed a variety of activities, including making gingerbread man puppets, painting and decorating a gingerbread paper doll, and creating a book about the gingerbread man. The Kindergarteners also completed a sequencing activity, where they had to put six scenes of the gingerbread man story events in order. In math, the students each received a small gingerbread cookie (Gingerman Pepperidge Farm brand). Students were instructed to only take one bite. Then we graphed the bites that were taken to see how many people bit the head, the arms, the body, or the legs. It was a sweet way to do our math, counting and graphing practice! Recess In addition to the play structure, monkey bars, climbing wall, and school bus, each week we have introduced new toys and things to play with. Towards the end of last week, the Kindergarteners were introduced to the tricycles (we call them bikes for the kids). They learned the rules and procedures, such as how to line up and how to go around the designated track at an appropriate pace in order to maintain the safety of all students. This week, students were introduced to the wagons and the stompers. The Kindergarteners had a wonderful time pulling each other and taking turns riding in the wagon, while also getting a good work out! Free Choice As mentioned at Back to School Night, at the end of every day, the Kindergarteners will have 25-30 minutes of Free Choice time. During this time, students may participate in fun activities, such as playing with shape blocks, completing ABC and number puzzles, building with linking cubes, drawing or doing arts and crafts. Free Choice time is also a time for students to finish up any work that they did not complete during the day. This provides students with plenty of time to complete their work. Occasionally, if students have not completed all of their classwork during class time or Free Choice time, their work will be sent home to complete. Please let me know if you have any questions about this. Thank You! Thank you so much for all of your support and open communication. We have only been in school for 12 days, and already I have learned so much. I am enjoying getting to know your children--they are a very sweet, lovable bunch who are so excited to learn! I can't help but smile when I hear them sing their little hearts out or when I see them making new friends and really taking the concept of sharing to the next level. I am truly blessed to be their teacher this year. I would also like to take this opportunity to once again thank all of the parents and families who have donated supplies and other items on our wish list to make sure that our classroom has everything that we need for the students to succeed! Thank you, thank you, thank you for your kindness, generosity, and thoughtfulness! We are still hoping for the following donations:
Warm wishes, Mrs. Lorenzana |
11 Comments
|
Mrs. LorenzanaKindergarten Teacher at Spangler Elementary Archives
June 2016
Categories |