What an incredible last couple of weeks we have been having in Kindergarten! These kids amaze me daily with all they are learning, are capable of doing and the amount of energy they have, even first thing in the morning! It has been so rewarding to watch friendships form, routines mastered and the group come together like a big family. It was wonderful to see so many of you at our pumpkin sale last night and we even had one lucky winner in our class, guessing the correct number of candy in one of the jars... Congrats Ellen!
Reader's Workshop
In Workshop we have been learning all about books! How to be a book lover (picking a book, holding it correctly, turning the pages carefully and how to put the book away). We have learned about Reading "Elbow" Partners and how we can turn and talk or lean and tell our partners something in a classroom discussion about books! We have talked about the parts of a book (front cover, title, illustrator, title page, picture, words and back cover) and soon we will be moving onto learning about the jobs of authors and illustrators.
Each week we make our own familiar book... these are our high frequency sight word books. So far we have the following four sight words: a, see, the, is. These are words your child is expected to know - both being able to read them and write them. The list will continue to grow as the year goes on and I will continue to update you here, on the blog, of our sight word list. We incorporate these words daily into our Reader's Workshop (familiar book and poem), Writer's Workshop, Literacy Stations and Handwriting Practice. You'll want to be sure to continue to practice these words at home with your child. Next week they will bring home their first familiar book, "I See". Please spend time with them reading this book, helping them point to the words, and use their eyes to use the pictures to help them read. Keep these books in a safe place as a new one will come home every week.
Writer's Workshop
In Writer's Workshop we have been learning to write stories through the use of pictures. While all of our kids are comfortable drawing pictures, we have been focusing on: adding details to the pictures, adding arrows with labels, and even putting words down on the line. Only about 5 of our 21 are putting written words down right now and that is okay! I am modeling with them daily and writing the words on their paper for them. As we move into November, I'll start passing the pen off to your child, encouraging them to try writing. Strings of letters, first letters of words, even just a few sight words are all developmental at this point in the year. As we continue to write daily, this will become more and more comfortable for all writers.
Math Workshop
Math Workshop is such a fun part of our Kindergarten day. These past couple weeks we have zoomed in on a few different things... counting to 20, writing our numbers to 10, learning to use different math tools (counting blocks, pattern blocks, base-ten cubes, etc.) and how to create tally charts. In Math Stations we have explored making numbers with play-dough, practiced reading numbers orally, practiced writing our numbers in a number book, made shapes on geo-boards and made patterns with counters. Math is a fun time! Please make sure all unit 1 home links are returned next week. Unit 2 home links will be coming home soon!
Science
One of our science units in Kindergarten is learning about the seasons and in particular, trees! We have a Maple tree in the bus loop area at Dublin that we have adopted named Mr. Maple. Throughout the year in K we will be checking in on Mr. Maple to see how he changes through the seasons. This past week we went out to check on Mr. Maple and see how he looks in Autumn (which was way different than how he looked in Summer). We talked about his parts, about the change in the leaves and why some had fallen on the ground. We made a maple tree project in the room that will be a part of a book your child will receive at the end of the year, showing the four seasons of our maple tree.
Have a fabulous, Fall weekend... stay warm!! :-) Mrs. W.
