Monday, December 19th

Phew has it been busy and fun in Kindergarten lately!! There's lot to catch you up on so sit back and enjoy!

Winter Weather
As you know the weather has changed drastically in the last few weeks. Please make sure that your child is bringing their outdoor weather clothes daily to school - a winter jacket, snow pants (please check them for holes), boots, warm socks, hat, gloves/mittens and anything else they may need to stay warm. It is important to label these items (I know this is tricky), because we are losing things left and right! We ask that your child bring their winter gear home daily because often times it is soaked and needs to be dried overnight at home. Please check daily to make sure. We have had a few snow pants come back on the second day already pretty stinky because they've sat wet in backpacks overnight. The school district policy is that we are outdoors unless the windchill is below 0 OR the precipitation falling is too heavy or too wet for the kids to be outside. This past week we had several indoor recess days due to the cold wind chills.

Book Fair
This was a record breaking year for the Book Fair!! Our Media Center sold over $10,000 worth of books!! Thank you to the many generous families who helped donate money to our classroom for books - you should see the pile of new books I was able to shop for at the Book Fair. Your generosity is appreciate and noticed! As a result of the Book Fair being in the Media Center the last two weeks, students have not been able to check out books to take home. Today we finally returned our books and your Weckie should come home today with a book as long as they turned in their book. Remember, next Friday we have no school, so these books are not due back officially until January 6, however the Library Tub is always in our classroom and available for book returns any day.


Winter Holiday Party
In place of the traditional holiday party, I like to do it a little different in Kindergarten! You should have received a note home last week explaining that we will be doing a Polar Express party. The kids are pretty hyped up to be going on the Polar Express and I have been pretty vague! The room will be transformed into a train and yours' truly will be our conductor! We are looking for a few parents to help during the party. Our Super Mom Maria French has been through this one before and has volunteered to handle all of the tokens the kids receive along the way on the party but we need help with the following jobs:

-2 Hot Cocoa Makers - this job needs a little explaining but if you can bring and help make hot cocoa and serve it for our train ride, you're on :-)
-1 Reindeer Food Mom - We have all the supplies, you'll just help run the station
-1 Cookie Mom - please bring 30 cookies (we have 25 kids) and help serve them at the party

If you are able to do one of these jobs, please email me ASAP at JenniferPhillips@wlcsd.org. Our Party will follow the school sing along. The Sing Along begins at 2:00pm in the Cafeteria and then our train ride will begin from our room at 2:30pm approximately. Please remember your child can wear their pajamas to school on Thursday to help set the mood for our party :-).


Reader's Workshop
We have been BUSY in workshop doing all sorts of great things!! First and foremost, we LOVE partner reading! We have been taking time to get to know our partner's better and learning how to have good conversations. What can we talk about? We share our favorite parts in books, a part that made us laugh, a part that reminds us of something we have done before (making connections), or a part that surprised us. It has been fun to pop in and listen to the conversations the kids are having about their books!

Slowly but surely we are launching our guided reading groups! Look for a bright colored baggie to begin appearing home with your child in the next few weeks with activities and books to share at home! More info to come - they are pretty self explanatory early on as we learn this new routine.

Sight Words include: see, the, a, is, I, it, like, can, to, go, me

Writer's Workshop
We continue to move along in our Writing Wizard unit and it has been awesome to see more of our kids taking risks and writing during workshop time! Many have got the drawing part down and can label their illustrations. The Wizard's role helps model how to stretch out words and write sentences which is what I'm seeing happening more and more in my writing conferences with the kids! This is great! Typically around the middle of January we will start a writing folder at home as well. We ask that you take some time 2-3 nights a week and write with your child. You'll want them to do the writing but you can be that knowledgeable other that coaches and guides them to stretch out words and listen for the sounds as they construct sentences.

This week we also set goals in workshop! This was a big deal! We talked about what a goal was and why it should be challenging! Here's what we have so far...

Math Workshop
In Math we have been doing all sorts of great work focused around numbers. We have added daily number writing practice into our routine as we continue to build our knowledge of numbers and number sense. We have been working in our number writing journals at Math Stations and are up to the number 7. As a whole group we have actually written all of our numbers on the whiteboards up to 100 a couple of times over the course of a week! Math Stations have focused on counting objects, counting successive numbers as well as learning some of the Everyday Math games. We have mastered: Top It, Spinning Numbers and the Number Grid Game.

Social Studies

Our Social Studies unit right now is all about children and our different cultures. This ties in nicely in December as we have been exposing our Kindergarten kids to many different holidays celebrated in December: Hanukkah, Christmas/Los Posadas and Kwanzaa. We have been reading books, watching short videos and even got to taste latkes and spin a dreidel! Last week we talked about the tradition of the gingerbread men. While the kids were convinced my fear of them running away was foolish - you'll never believe what happened?? We lost our gingerbread men! They bolted right out of the oven!

The latkes were a hit with the kids!! Everyone enjoyed the potato pancakes and cleaned the tray empty!

Then it was on to making gingerbread men cookies! We couldn't wait to eat them!

They looked awesome and smelled wonderful!

We went to the staff  lounge to get our cookies and they were gone!!
So we ran to find Mr. Drewno in the office and he was STUNNED!

We even checked all of the surveillance cameras throughout the school to see if we could track them down!

We'll keep you posted! Be sure to follow us on Twitter for any breaking news updates! (@wearetheweckies)

Important Dates/Info
Please remember Winter Break begins at 4pm this Thursday, December 22nd and school resumes again on Wednesday, Jaunary 4th. Please have a wonderful holiday with your families, be safe and stay warm!

Wednesday, November 23rd

Hello Weckie Parents!

What an awesome couple of weeks we have been having! As you will read below we have been learning loads and having fun along the way too. We had a great time on our first Field Trip on Friday to the Outdoor Center. We spent time with Mrs. Lacey and Mrs. Devooght, two of the teachers there, learning all about animals and animal adaptations. We explored during hands on activities, made bird feeders for home (coming home today), went on a bird watch hike, made animal shelters and more! We thoroughly enjoyed our time there and the balmy fall air helped. We had the best weather! Thank you to Mrs. French and Mrs. Roosen for helping to chaperone our trip. Below you will find a video recap of our trip :-). 



Story Teller Action
You may have heard some exciting news!! Mrs. Kimberly Blaine, storyteller from the Walled Lake Public Library is going to be joining us now weekly on Monday afternoon for a storytelling session. Our first gathering was right before the election and she taught us all about being patriotic, voting and we learned so much! She's enthusiastic and excited to work with us this year. Welcome Mrs. Blaine!

Shamrocks at Dublin!

You may have heard about our Shamrocks at Dublin! Every school is required to have a PBIS Team that is responsible for a behavior system put in place at the school. At Dublin we are focused on four traits: responsible, resilient, respectful and integrity. Children can be caught doing great things and earn shamrocks throughout Dublin by any adult on staff. Shamrocks are deposited into a mailbox at four corners in our hallway and then Mr. Drewno picks one shamrock from each grade level to read aloud on the P.A. on Friday's. The rest of the shamrocks are displayed proudly on each grade level's board. Our goal is for every child to earn a shamrock before Winter Break in December! Here are just some shamrocks that were earned lately in our classroom. Way to be great leaders, Weckies!

 
Reader's Workshop
Currently in Reader's Workshop we have been focusing on Buddy Reading. When learning to read with a friend, we have to make sure we first understand how reading independently looks and how it is different from buddy reading. Once students were paired up with this temporary buddy, we had to pick a spot for them to read together around the room. Then we spent time learning how to sit: Elbow to Elbow, Knee to Knee (EEKK) with their buddy. This ensures that both kids are ready to read together and the book is placed properly in the middle of both children. We have done several fish-bowl demonstrations where we have gathered around a model group to watch how the buddies interact and prepare to read. We have also done the same with groups that are already reading to make sure that they are following the same guidelines when reading. Besides reading with a buddy, we have begun talking about what you and your buddy can do after you finish a book: discuss it! Readers' have decided that they can: talk about their favorite part of a book, talk about a funny or a sad part, share any connections that they may have, or tell their partner something that they learned in the book. Buddy Reading is definitely a highlight of Reader's Workshop and such a valuable time in the workshop.

While students have been reading independently and with buddies, I have been working on the DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) with your child. This valuable assessment is giving me information about your child as a reader: their engagement, their oral reading fluency (ability to notice patterns in text, ability to read, ability to notice miscues and correct them) as well as their reading comprehension. When we put it all together, we can figure out what just-right books look like for your child as well as begin instruction right at your child's level. I hope to have these tests done this week and begin to form guided reading groups next week! More info to come :-).

Word Wall Words: a, go, is, it, I, see, the, to, like

This week's sight word poem (you can even practice this at home with your kiddo!)

 

Writer's Workshop
In Writer's Workshop we have begun wrapping up our Launch Unit and have moved onto a unit we like to call, "Writing Wizard". During our Writing Wizard, one child who volunteers will be selected to come do a shared writing piece with Mrs. Weckstein on the easel - large chart paper. The rest of the kids are asked to watch and assist as needed. We demonstrate how writers' begin with a sentence with a capital letter, use finger spaces, stretch out the sounds in tricky words and end the sentence with proper punctuation. When students return to their seats, they are asked to try out something that they saw the Writing Wizard do on the easel. For instance, Gavin wrote about something he likes. Everyone was encouraged to model Gavin and write a sentence about something that they like. This is a great way to get EVERY child writing and learning about sentence structure.

Math Workshop
In Math Workshop we have been doing all sorts of fun things. Most recently we have been learning about tens frames and double tens frames. We have been learning how this tool can help us count and make ten or double ten (twenty). We have practiced making numbers with counters on the tens frame and have learned how to use a tens frame to write a simple addition number model for 10. We have worked with partners to make ten and we have done some whole group activities up on the interactive whiteboard!

We have also been spending time with shapes and patterns. We have been reviewing the properties of shapes and talking about the similarities and differences. Learners have been working on making patterns with shapes using pattern blocks on the big screen and with manipulatives. We did a shape scavenger hunt for circles and for rectangles from newspaper ads and magazines. It was pretty eye opening for the kids to see that we are virtually surrounded by shapes ALL of the time!

Lastly we have been working on our sorting skills: size, shape, color, material, etc. It's been fun to see how different mathematicians can sort the same items differently! We had some great discussions about our sorting activities.
 

Science
In Science we have been finishing up our unit on the five senses! We stopped along the way to do some Pumpkin Science which was super fun! We mad observations of two very different pumpkins, guessed and measured the weight, circumference and height. We also guessed the number of pumpkin seeds and were shocked to see how many hundreds were in the pumpkins! Most kids guessed on average, about 50 pumpkin seeds. The two pumpkins each had over 600 seeds!

We also did our Listening Experiment last week where we took a Listening Walk. Scientists had to use their ears to pay attention to all of the sounds we heard while walking the perimeter of the school outside. It was surprising to the kids how when you stop and listen, you are constantly surrounded by noise! We heard passing cars, buses stopping, squeaky brakes on a van, the sound of our feet on the pavement, grass, woodchips, dried leaves, gravel, etc. and more! Our list of sounds we heard was ginormous!    

Important Dates/Information:
Wednesday, November 23- December 2, 2016  Student Council is asking all Dublin families to donate one pair of new pajamas that are for children and are flame resistant. Our PJ's go to Open Door in White Lake and are matched with a book from Scholastic before being passed out to families in need of winter clothes. Thank you for your support and generosity. The Pajama Drive will run until December 2nd.

Thursday, November 24 and Friday, November 25th: NO SCHOOL Please have a wonderful and restful Thanksgiving holiday with your family! We have so much to be thankful for on this day, and every day!  

 THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR CHILDREN WITH ME EACH AND EVERY DAY. THEY MOTIVATE AND INSPIRE ME TO BE MY BEST AND GIVE ALL CHILDREN AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN AND GROW DAILY. Mrs. W. :-)

 

Friday, October 21st

Hello Weckie Families!
 It has been another fantastic few weeks in Kindergarten! Thank you to everyone who has sent in shoe boxes - we are good! We have been so busy lately - friendships have formed, routines are well established and we have launched all of our different workshops. We might be a big class, but we are a great group of kids!

These past two weeks our Work Stations have launched and the kids are doing a super job rotating in small groups through various literacy, science, math and creative play stations! Thanks to our Stations Mom's for helping us keep on task and learn at each stop along the way.

Creating sight words out of playdough for letter ID and fine motor skills!

Writing at the Writing Station

Pocket Chart helps reinforce sight word recognition and book familiarity.

Exploring with pattern blocks at the Math Station.

 
Reader's Workshop:
Reader's Workshop has been awesome these past two weeks! We have added onto our sight word list: a, is, the, see are the current words on our Sight Word Wall. What does this mean? It means we have used this word of the week in our reading (sight word mini-books), our writing (shared writing with the class and poem of the week) and that we should be able to spell these words! By the end of the year we will have generated a list of about 35-40 sight words we would like your child to know automatically - how to find them in text, how to write them and how to spell them correctly. We collected shoe boxes to create a special reading book box for our sight word books. We will be decorating these boxes and then keeping them in a safe place at home to store the sight word books each week when a new one comes home. We keep a book at school about 4-5 weeks before it comes home for your child's box. Once in the box, we ask you to read them daily at home as well with your child and let them demonstrate their skills of identifying the sight word.

Pocket Chart with this week's sight word book.

Learning to be readers means learning the parts of a book!

We have spent time in mini-lessons talking about "Just-Right" books. What does this look like in K? This means we have found a book with a cover that interests us, and have looked inside to make sure the text inside is also something we are interested in reading/learning about. We have talked about our interests and how our interests can attract us to some books and make us not want to read other books. We have also spent time in Mini-Lessons talking about different ways to read books! We have introduced our first reading strategy of the year: Eagle Eye: Using your eyes to look at the picture on a page to help us figure out the new word. This is a common strategy many new readers will use. The second way we can read a book is to tell a story you already know. This works great with the books we brought from home in our Book Drawers as most of these are books we love and know very well!

Writer's Workshop:
Mrs. Weckstein was one PROUD teacher this week during our literacy station rotation.... Guess what happened? Writer's took a risk and attempted writing STORIES! That's right! We have gotten so good at thinking and talking about stories we want to tell, we have even gotten really good at drawing stories, so why not add words? The challenge was for each child to take a risk- try to write a word or more! The verdict is in: WE HAVE WRITER'S! The challenge has typically been to get kid's to write... well we met and exceeded that goal!

Learning to write can be tricky and often times scary. We begin the year by reviewing and reviewing our alphabet both lower and upper case. Gradually as the kids are ready we add on the letter sounds. You can review these at home with your child at this great link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTeUONxZYAs Where you can sing along with Dr. Jean's "Alphardy". Once students are confident in the sounds letters make, the writing process comes along naturally for most! Stretching out words like bubble gum to hear the sound is one strategy I use with the kids when I confer to help them hear the parts of a word. PLEASE do NOT worry about spelling just yet - for now, we simply want the phonetic spelling (pumpkin = pmpkn). Over the year we will learn about vowels and their sounds and how to add them into the words.

Student of the Day gets to help create a sentence about themselves in our Morning Calendar Routine.

Mini-Lessons these last two weeks have focused on characters and setting in our writing. Every story has characters (people, animals, things) and the story has to take place somewhere (the setting). We have talked about where certain stories would take place (such as if your story is about farm animals, the background or setting should be a farm). We have talked about how characters can show emotions (facial features) and how characters must wear clothes (funny, but true!)

Math Workshop:
In Math Workshop we have been doing all sorts of great things! Our biggie has been practicing our numbers - singing them in songs, counting aloud orally and learning to write our numbers up to 50 have all been lessons these last two weeks almost daily!  We have done number math stations as well as whole group activities with our numbers.

We have also been working with shapes and continuing to make shape patterns with tangrams and on our calendar each day with our Star of the Day! At this point in Kindergarten it is important for your child to be able to recognize the following shapes: circle, oval, square, rectangle and triangle. 

Science Workshop:
Our young Scientists have been BUSY! We have done two different activities that have put our five senses to work. We did a station rotation where the kids got to work with each of their senses. There was a sight station: observations of different shells, rocks, coins, rubber snake, etc. There was a sound station: wind-chimes, bubble wrap, plastic bag, noise maker, etc. There was a touch station: fuzzy stuffed animal, wood letter, sand paper, etc. There was a smell station: spices, cinnamon sticks, chocolate bar, etc. And lastly there was a taste station: marshmallows, graham crackers, M and M's and crunchy onion straws! It was fun to watch the kids explore with their senses and find things their senses liked or did not like!

Testing our senses at the "Smell" station!

Using our sense of sight at this station.

The next Science lesson took us outside to look at the fall leaves on our trees! We visited our friend Mr. Maple to check in on his fall colors and then went over to see the trees on the playground. We each got to pick one leaf to take back to the classroom to do an observation. We talked about the colors, the shapes, any holes, bumps, tears, etc. in the surface of the leaf.

 

Observation of a leaf in Science Journal

 Additionally in Science we did a button sort. Everyone got about 15-20 buttons and had time to figure out how they would sort them (by color, size, texture, shape, button holes, etc.). We incorporated the book, The Button Box by Margarette S. Reid to learn about sorting objects. We LOVED playing with the buttons!

Important Dates/Info:
Friday, October 28th - Spirit Wear Day at Dublin! Show your college rival spirit - wear your green/white or maize/blue! We are asking every child who participates donate 25 cents toward a cause to benefit WLCSD alum who was tragically injured in a motorcycle accident. Mr. Tsurui is only 21 years old. There will also be a raffle at lunch where students can buy raffle tickets to win MSU or U of M swag. Tickets will be sold at lunch later this week for 50 cents a ticket, or three for $1.00.

Friday, October 28th: Scholastic Book Order DUE :-)

Monday, October 31st: Halloween Party in Costumes - starting approximately 11:00am. Please remember this is also a half day of school! You'll want to send your child's costume to school in a bag as we have Art before our Halloween Party!

 

Friday, October 7, 2016

Hello Weckie Families and Happy Friday!!  

I am convinced I have the BEST JOB EVER... we are having SO much fun in Kindergarten!! We have been super busy and there is lots to tell!!  Thank you to everyone who sent back the Bright Smiles Dental forms back the next day - we are still waiting to hear if we could win the pizza party! Our kids were STUNNED when the Tooth Fairy's Assistant (as we called her) came in to our room for a visit... it was pretty great!! I'm guessing we will know more next week!

If it was not enough fun to see the Tooth Fairy this week, well on the same day we had our Fire Safety Assembly! We got to spend a good 45 minutes with two firemen from the White Lake Fire Department. As a grade level we did work learning how to be safe around a campfire and what to do at home if we had a fire. We learned about stop, drop and roll. We learned about safe ways to check for fire outside of our bedroom (back of hand). We even learned about the importance of smoke detectors in our homes. If your detectors at home are not working, please let us know or contact the White Lake FD and we would be glad to help you fix this problem at home! We want everyone to be safe.

 In the midst of our busy days, we stopped to celebrate Johnny Appleseed's Birthday.... 26 different apples made for some awesome applesauce! We have some wonderful little chefs in our class. Thank you for sending in so many apples at the last minute.













Halloween has been a BIG topic of late.. now that we know our plans, it's time to make a plan!! I will be setting up a Sign-Up Genius this weekend to get volunteers to help with our party. I have a parent already offering to take the lead and they will be in contact with everyone once we get interested names and numbers. The plan is for the kids to put their costumes on about 10:45am on Monday, October 31st and then we will have our class party from approximately 11:00am-11:45am. While it seems short, you will be surprised how much we can pack into 45 minutes of fun!

Reader's Workshop:
Wow do these kids have reading stamina! We introduced the concept of stamina several weeks ago as how long you can do something - and in this case, it's reading! We have been really focusing our attention on being respectful readers: get started right away, stay in one spot, read quietly, read the whole time. Now you might be thinking, my child can't read! Well let me tell you- they can! They can read the pictures, they can look for our two sight words: the/see, they can recall familiar words like: a/I. They are doing a great job during our independent reading time! They have gotten their stamina up to 11 minutes of quiet reading - which is HUGE in Kindergarten so early in the year. They are awesome!

Mini-Lessons in Reader's Workshop the past two weeks have covered: partners (how to turn and talk, how to lean and tell, how to be a good partner), parts of a book (front cover, back cover, title, title page, author, illustrator, words and pictures) and finding words we know in texts (the sight words). Reader's have been doing testing with me individually so I can take inventory of your child's: letter identification (upper and lower case), letter sound, rhyming, chunking and sight word recognition. This will take a couple of weeks but provide valuable information about where I will go next in teaching our children ultimately to read and for some who can read, to read stronger!

On Friday, October 14th we will be doing a fun activity in Reader's Workshop and need your help! We need each child to bring in a good sized shoe box (children's shoes boxes might be a little small), adult size would be best. If you have one or a couple at home and would be able to start sending them in as early as Monday, that would be wonderful! Please make sure to put your child's name on one and if you are sending additional, you do not need to label these! Thank you in advance - more reminders will come as we get closer!
 

Writer's Workshop:
We have writers! Our Writing Workshop has taken off full speed as we work our way through our Launching Unit! Our Writers' have been using the following three steps: Think, Draw, Write! We have spent time talking about our thinking, practicing our drawing and even attempting some writing!

Every day we do handwriting practice on white boards after lunch. We accompany this time with songs like: the Letter Aerobics,  Letters and Sounds and Who Let the Letters' Out, all by Dr. Jean. These are great resources you can even find on youtube.com and watch with your kiddo at home too! (Please make sure a parent is present when using Youtube).

We've been applying this handwriting practice and letter sounds to our writing as we learn to do the third step, WRITE! We have been adding labels to our pictures - arrows with the first letter sound we see to match the picture. Little by little some of our writers' are even beginning to add words to their work - and it is WONDERFUL! It takes each child a different amount of time to learn to do this and that is totally developmental at this point in their young writing career.

Our Mini-Lessons the past two weeks have focused on: Writing Stamina (just like we read, we can do this when we focus on writing), Respectful Writing (getting started right away, staying in one spot, writing/drawing the whole time, Three Star Coloring (stay in the lines, make the white go away, use the right colors), adding details to stories, stretching out sounds in words and writing topics (we made a four square web with four topics we can write about (animals, events, places, things - a great tool for our writer's to return to when looking for a topic to write about).

We will be wrapping up this launching unit at the end of next week. Please look for a writing packet to come home with your child and instructions on how you can celebrate your little writer at home! We are very proud of the hard work our kids have been doing in Workshop.

Math Workshop:
Math Workshop is a highlight of our day! Our little mathematicians love to count, sort, describe and write numbers! We have been practicing writing our numbers daily, have been reviewing our numbers up to 100 orally (a goal for the end of K is for your child to be able to count to 100), reviewing our shapes and using them to make patterns, using a five-frame to count (and then a ten-frame because they were such experts with the fives), graphing our ages (most popular being age 5) and learning about our birthday months (most kids can sing the month song and tell you them all - just ask).

Math stations have been a popular way to start our mornings as we learn to work with: pattern blocks and tangrams, colored wooden beads for patterns, counters, unifix cubes, base-ten blocks and more! We are doing math all the time it seems!

Science:
Our little scientists are VERY excited to be scientists! Last week before the seasons changed we visited our new friend Mr. Maple. Mr. Maple is a tree planted at Dublin by a Kindergarten class of a few years ago. Throughout the year we will visit our friend and watch how he changes over the course of the four seasons. Our summer maple trees look great - each child made their own Mr. Maple to be a part of a book they will get at the end of the year.

Additionally we have launched our science this year learning about the five senses! See if your kiddo can name them all yet? We talked about what science was, what it means to be a scientist (their definitions were HILARIOUS) and what we will be learning about this year in science. Next week we will get our hands dirty with 5-Senses Stations as we learn to use our senses and explore why they are so important!

Important Dates/Info:
Wednesday, October 12th: No School - Yom Kippur Holiday
Friday, October 14th: ALL K's need a shoe box for school this day!