February 5th Family Letter

February 5, 2016

Dear families,       

          This week we welcomed February with a new approach to calendar.  This month, each child will complete his or her own individual calendar board each day.  This allows for greater student participation now that they are all familiar with our calendar routines, and it helps children continue to build on their excitement as the 100^th day of school approaches.  All of the children did a good job using the 100s chart each day to figure out how many more days until our 100^th day celebration. 

          This week we learned about Groundhog’s Day.  About half of the class was hoping for six more weeks of winter, and the other half was hoping for an early spring.  All of the children did a wonderful job writing about why they were wishing for either winter or spring.  On Groundhog’s Day, we watched a video clip of Punxsutawney Phil proclaiming that we would have an early spring.  It certainly seemed as though that would be the case…  We had several beautiful days of outdoor recess!  Friday’s snowstorm, however, seems to have cast a shadow of doubt on Phil’s reliability. 

          During the week, I enjoyed reading with children individually.  It was a pleasure to be able to show each child what a “just right” book looked like in the fall compared to what a “just right” book looks like now.  Children noticed that they are reading longer texts, using more strategies when reading, and that they are more independent.  Seeing their faces light up with pride is sure to be one of the best memories from the year. 

          In math, we were busy comparing numbers and adding quantities to twelve.  We played two new games.  To play “top it,” partners flipped over cards and decided which card displayed the larger number.  That partner won both cards during that round.  Many children had played “War” at home, so this was a familiar game, and the children had a blast playing both at math time and during their arrival work time.  To play “roll and record,” children rolled two dice, found their sum, and recorded the addition equation on a graph.  Many children were working on the addition strategy of “counting all.”  To use this strategy, kids counted all of the dots on both dice.  Moving forward, we will help children progress to the “counting on” strategy, in which children touch and say the larger quantity and then touch each dot on the other di while counting up (e.g. “5…6, 7, 8” instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).  Both of these games are simple and fun to play at home!

          Next week is a quadruple exciting week.  We have Chinese New Year on Monday.  Wednesday is an early release day; only morning monkeys will come to kindergarten in 113.  Then, we will celebrate the 100^th Day of School on Wednesday and Thursday.  We will celebrate Valentine’s Day on Friday.  Please be on the look out for notes about all of the special days!  Thank you, in advance, for helping to make all of these celebrations fun and meaningful for the kids.  It is sure to be a great week!

          Best wishes,

          Meg keene and Andrea McCarthy

Books We Read:

·       Double Trouble Groundhog Day, by Bethany Roberts

·       Groundhog’s Special Secret, by Iiris Hiskey Amo

·       Chinese New Year, by Lola Schaefer

·       Bringing in the New Year, by Grace Lin

Handwriting Without Tears

·       Review of Numbers and Letters on Whiteboards

·       Emphasis of “Start at the Top!”

Lively Letters

·       Listening for the middle vowel sound in CVC words (e.g. sun, cat, dog)

Sight Words:

·       Review: in, is, it, go, so, no, we, he, see, the, am, an, can, and, like, my, a, I

Math Lessons

·       4-12 Top It with Number Cards

·       4-13 Number Grid (100s Chart)

·       5-2 Roll and Record Addition

·       5-3 10 Bears on the Bus

January 29th Family Letter

January 29, 2016

Dear Families,

          This week we read and compared several snowy day stories.  In The Snowy Day and Snow Day!, characters prepared to go outside, adventured through the snow, and returned home to warm up.  Children used these books to make text-to-self connections and as launching points for writing their own mini-books called “My Snowy Day.”  We made text-to-text connections between those two stories and A Silly Snowy Day, in which a turtle snuck out of his home instead of hibernating with her mom and dad.  Children are becoming more confident in comparing characters, setting, problem, solution, and beginning, middle, ending events among stories.  Comparing texts helps readers make more accurate predictions, better understand character motivations and feelings, and, perhaps most importantly, enjoy the stories more deeply. 

          Mrs. Robertson, who works with out Guidance Counselor, visited our room to lead a Second Step lesson this week.  The lesson helped the kindergartners think through how and when they could offer help to a friend.  Later in the week, we read The Biggest Snowman Ever, in which two mice use teamwork to win a snowman building competition.  The children then used teamwork in pairs to make their own puffy paint, which they used to individually paint their own snowmen.  The children did a terrific job negotiating who would be the glue partner and who would be the shaving cream partner to make the paint.  If you would like to make the paint at home, simply mix equal parts liquid glue and shaving cream. 

          In math, the children expanded on their work from last week to use small components to build a larger whole.  Last week, they explored this concept with pattern blocks and shapes.  This week, they use d unifix cubes to build towers of a given number out of two colors.  This was challenging for the kids at first because they are far more familiar with using the unifix cubes to build patterns.  We worked on “keeping the two color teams together” (instead of making patterns), using the same two colors the whole time, and making sure our towers were all the same height.  The purpose of building the number towers in this way is to deepen the children’s number sense by exploring ways that the number can be broken apart and built.  We worked on identifying all of the possible combinations to make the given numbers; kids were able to keep track by “building a staircase.”  We also practiced naming and writing the equations that matched the various towers. 

          Enjoy your weekend,

          Meg Keene and Andrea McCarthy

Books We Read:

·       The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats

·       Snow Day!, by Barbara M. Joosse

·       A Silly Snowy Day, by Michael Coleman

·       The Biggest Snowman Ever, by Steven Kroll

Handwriting Without Tears

·       New Letters: G, Q, S

Sight Words:

·       New Words: in, is, it

·       Review: go, so, no, we, he, see, the, am, an, can, and, like, my, a, I

Math Lessons

·       4-8 Building Numbers

·       4-9 Comparing Weight

·       4-10 Comparing Capacity

·       4-11 Counting by 10s 

January 22, 2016

Dear Families,

          This week we learned about community helpers.  We connected community helpers, who help our communities, to Martin Luther King Jr., who helped our world to be a better place.  The children had a tremendous amount of background knowledge about community helpers; several children know community helpers or even have them in their family!  We read non-fiction books about firefighters, police officers, and mail carriers.  We also watched a short video about community helpers, goods, and services.  The children labeled pictures of police officers or firefighters and added captions to their pictures. 

During our non-fiction read alouds, we focused on the concept that non-fiction books teach us information.  Before reading, we thought about what we already knew; while we read we repeatedly thought to ourselves “I knew that,” “I didn’t know that,” or “I thought I knew something, and now I have to change my thinking.”  We recorded new learning as a class, and we celebrated our thinking. 

On Friday we headed up to the computer lab to have a turn with Raz-Kids.  The children practiced reading just-right non-fiction books online and enjoyed earning points towards the “star zone.”  Please consider visiting https://www.kidsa-z.com/main/Login to help your child access Raz-Kids at home.  When you visit the site, you can find our class by entering mkeeneam or mkeenepm in the teacher username bar.  Your child’s password is his/her initials.  Raz-Kids is a terrific tool for helping children to make progress in reading, and the children are welcome to record the Raz-Kids texts in their reading logs. 

This week the children worked with pattern blocks in partners.  They used shapes to build hexagons in six different ways.  The goals were for the children to learn that they can use small shapes to build a bigger shape, and that they can break a bigger shape down into smaller shapes.  Children were interested that they could use trapezoids, blue rhombuses, and triangles to build the hexagon, but that they could not use the tan rhombuses or squares. 

Next week we will have workboard and guided reading.  We will focus many activities around Ezra Jack Keats, The Snowy Day.  Enjoy the new snow this weekend!

Take care,

Meg Keene and Andrea McCarthy

Books We Read:

·       A Very Busy Firehouse, by Alyse Sweeney

·       Police Officers on the Go!, by Alyse Sweeney

·       We Need Mail Carriers

Lively Letters:

·       Tracking / Tapping and Sliding Sounds – words with “King E”

Handwriting Without Tears

·       New Letters: G, Q

Sight Words:

·       Review: go, so, no, we, he, see, the, am, an, can, and, like, my, a, I

January 15, 2016

Dear Families,

          We had a good week in room 113!  We have been busy with lots of math learning.  The children enjoyed playing “Quick Looks” with tens-frames.  To play this game, each child used a tens frame and counters to build images that they saw for less than three seconds.  After each round, children talked about what groupings they saw to help them know how to build the number.  For example, when the children saw this tens-frames image, some children saw two groups of four, others saw two squares, and others saw a filled in tens frame with two spaces in the middle.  This kind of activity and discussion helps the children develop their understanding of how numbers can be composed and decomposed (build or taken apart), which develops a strong foundation for number combinations.  In math this week, children also made number lines from 0 to 9 with tens frames, practiced graphing as a whole class and individually, and used calculators to type large numbers with the numerals 0-9. 

This week, we used Jan Brett’s The Mitten as a launching pad for our literacy centers.  In this story, winter animals huddle together in one lost, squishy mitten until a little mouse makes a bear sneeze, and all of the animals go flying.  In Reading Response, the children wrote about what animals they would like to share the mitten with.  We challenged the children to expand on their thinking by including a “because” phrase.  We have been working on this orally and in writing.  At art center, the children made symmetrical puffy paint mittens.  Our poem this week was about colorful mittens.

          This week we also learned about Martin Luther King, Jr.  We read a non-fiction book and a Scholastic News, each focusing on Dr. King’s beliefs that all people should have access to equal rights no matter what they look like.  From there, the children thought about ways that they could make the world a better place.  We listened to the song “With My Own Two Hands,” and the children stamped hearts with their own two hands.  All of the children wrote about ways that they can make the world a better place.  My hope is that the kindergarteners took away the lesson that Dr. King made the world a better place by helping to make it more fair, and that the kindergarteners can make the world a better place too. 

          Next week is a short week.  Everyone will be home on Monday for MLK Day.  On Tuesday, children will be home while teachers have a full day of professional development.  We’ll look forward to seeing the children on Wednesday.  Next week, as we study community helpers, we will continue to learn about people who make the world a better place. 

          Best wishes,

          Meg Keene and Andrea McCarthy

Books We Read:

·       The Mitten, by Jan Brett

·       The Hat, by Jan Brett

·       The Jacket I Wear in the Snow, by Shirley Neitzel

·       Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, by Rebecca Rissman

Lively Letters:

·       Tracking / Tapping and Sliding Sounds – words with “King E”

Handwriting Without Tears

·       Introducing Curved Letters: C and O

Sight Words:

·       New: go, so, no

·       Review: we, he, see, the, am, an, can, and, like, my, a, I

Kindergarten is in full swing in Room 113!

The children are busy making new friends and learning about our classroom routines and procedures.  Our theme for the month is "friendship."

We are working on hearing chunks of sounds in words.  Children are practicing syllabication (clapping the beats in words) and rhyming.  These skills prepare children to listen for and work with individual sounds in words to spell and decode ("sound out").

In Handwriting Without Tears, we are learning about uppercase letters.  Children have used wooden sticks to build the letters E, F, D, P, R, B in teams.  We are working on pencil grip and have begun our handwriting books.

In Lively Letters, we have been introduced to the partner lowercase letters b and p, t and d, v and f.  We will continue to work with these songs to solidify the connection between the graphemes (letter shape) and sounds.

In math, we have begun Section 1 of Everyday Math 4.  The children have been exploring materials, looking for numbers in their environment, and practicing counting.