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!