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! 

Friday, September 23, 2016

Wow! Can you believe we just finished Week 3 of Kindergarten?

We have been having the BEST time EVER in Kindergarten this year!! I am loving getting to know each child's unique personality, watching new friendships form, leaders emerge, shy students coming out of shells and spending my days with your kids. This is a high-energy, high-curiosity group of Weckies and they are AWESOME!!

Thank you to everyone who came to Curriculum Night. We were excited by the great turn out and hope you enjoyed learning all about what we will be teaching your child this year at Dublin! Notes from Curriculum Night have been sent out electronically (like the classroom sign up) and in paper form, the little Remind 101 card as well as our Classroom Routines (on day 1). Thank you to everyone who has signed up for Remind 101. If you have not done so yet, you can simply send a text to 81010 and text the message @weckie and you'll be all set! We do use this handy service frequently in Kindergarten so you will want to make sure you are signed up to get reminders and news from our classroom.

Reader's Workshop
We have excitedly launched our Reader's Workshop over the course of the past two weeks. We began by talking about stamina, how long we can do something and have built our classroom stamina for independent reading from 3 minutes all the way to 8 minutes today. This includes reading text, finding letters we know in our books, examining the pictures, etc. We have learned how to be "Respectful Readers" and how to "Get Ready to Read"! We have spent time reading books about reading like: Read All About It, A Bear Ate It!, Wild About Books, The Best Place to Read and more to come! We are eager to be readers! The kids were excited to get their first sight word book as we focused on the word: see. Each week in Workshop we will focus on a new word, teaching many basic sight words. We read a book about the sight word, write a poem and do several hands on activities throughout the week to re-emphasize the sounds and spelling of the word. We will probably keep our familiar books from home at school a couple more weeks.

Writer's Workshop
We have also launched our Writer's Workshop this week! Daily we work on letter formation on white boards with dry erase markers after lunch. Now we are working on our launch unit with the motto: Think, Draw, Write! The kids are thinking about a story they want to tell on paper (typically a true story), drawing a picture and then if able, writing a letter or a few words about the picture. Over the course of the unit we will talk about Writing Stamina, talk about different kinds of writing paper and tools, talk about Writer Respect and how to stretch out our stories across more pages! This group of kids is very excited about telling their stories - it's wonderful in our room during Writer's Workshop!

Math Workshop
We have launched our Math Workshop this week with lots of COUNTING activities, books, games, songs, raps and more!! We have been reading books about counting, practiced counting objects, built puzzles that involve counting numbers and more. The first unit took us on a Number Walk through Dublin where we recorded the numbers we found all around Dublin - it was great! We even made it all the way up to fifth grade to find numbers and visited our secretaries in the office for more numbers. Next week a Math Homelink packet will come home. I know there is GREAT debate about homework in schools and what the research says and I'll be honest, I'm very torn! This being said, when HomeLinks come home please know that they are optional. They will reinforce the lessons we have done in school and can make for some fun family games at home. You can send them back with descriptions of what you did in each activity and I'm glad to read through, make comments and compliments, etc. but they are not mandatory or required to be completed.

Important Date:


It's PICTURE DAY on Monday and we have the very first time slot!! Our picture time is 9:15am. If you plan to order, please complete your order form and make sure to send it with your child first thing on Monday morning. Thank you so much :-).

More fun in 204...

Friday, September 9, 2016

Hello Weckie Families!!

 What a most AWESOME first week of Kindergarten we have been having! Sticking to our teamwork theme of Dublin, Team 204, is just the best! We have been learning so much this week and spending a lot of time getting to know each other. Loads of new friendships have been forming and it their smiles are contagious.

 The first week of Kindergarten brings out many emotions and one of those is: EXHAUSTION!! I have been asked all day long: when are we going home? And I have been told: I'm tired. I have probably heard those statements two dozen times a day.. and this is NORMAL and this is GOOD!! We expect this to be a huge shift for many, away from their nap time, and into a classroom for the day! Please know that as the days and weeks go on, it gets easier and suddenly it's more like: WOW, that was a fast day! or Are you sure it's time to go already? We'll get there... it just takes time!

Thank you to everyone for your generosity in donating so many fabulous school supplies. Our stash has been restocked above and beyond what I have ever had in past years... you are AMAZING!! We use it all and need it all!




Typically our Friday Newsletter will have info about: Reader's Workshop, Writer's Workshop, Language Workshop, Math Workshop, Science and Social Studies. Right now we have been doing a bunch of get to know you activities, stories about going to school and our emotions, learning about teamwork and learning about sharing. Kindergarten is such a fun place! Workshops will begin in the next few weeks and I'll be telling you all about them as we launch!


A couple of important reminders:
1. Birthday Books - as soon as they are done, please send them in! I see many still in green folders and want to make sure everyone has one when their birthday's come around.
2. Favorite Books - please make sure to send in your child's bag of 5 favorite books so we can use them next week to launch our Reader's Workshop. Thank you to everyone who has done so already! You ROCK!

Tonight is the PTA sponsored Pizza Picnic out on the playground. While it's too late to order pizza, feel free to pack a picnic dinner and come join us on the playground! I would love to see you all there from 5-7pm.

Last but not least, our Kindergarten Curriculum Night is on Wednesday, September 14th beginning at 6:30pm in the old gym/cafeteria. Please come with out your child and learn all about the wonders of Kindergarten! We will be doing several important things in the classroom as well, so I do request that everyone attend!

Here's a few fun shots from our first week in Kindergarten... Happy Friday! :-) Mrs. Weckstein

Wednesday, August 30th

YES!!! If you are seeing this blog it means that you have read my letter home for your child and you and have followed up with the classroom blog! I will use this throughout the year for newsletters, photos, etc. and ask you to follow along on our journey through Kindergarten!

More to come soon :-). Jen Weckstein

Friday, May 6th

Wooooosh!! It's been such a long time since I have posted on the Blog!! We have been having the most jam-packed, fun-tastic, crazy, busy days in Kindergarten in the last month!! I apologize for not communicating earlier besides an email here and there!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for ALL of the love this week for Teacher Appreciation Week!! The cards, pictures, chocolate, crafts, cookies, chocolate, emails, school supplies and CHOCOLATE have just been awesome! It truly is a blessing for me to get to spend my days with 19 of the smartest, most curious little Kindergarten kids at Dublin. I love this bunch so much and cannot believe we are running out of time together!

Reader's Workshop:  Our big focus the last two months has been on retelling the events of a story. This is a major comprehension skill that our kiddoes will want to continue to get better as as they grow up reading! We have talked about how every story needs a beginning, middle, ending, a setting and characters. We have spent a lot of time using "Chicken Little" as our mentor text and used it to have a great discussion about the problem and solution. Our Sight Word list has grown as well to include the following words: a, am, are, be, can, go, have, has, is, it, I like, look, me, not, of, on, see, to, this, the, wind, we, will, you, your. These are all words we want our kiddoes to be able to read, write and spell correctly!

Writer's Workshop: We recently finished up our Close Reading Unit using the mentor text "Bear Snores On" and used that informational fiction unit to spring us onto our non-fiction writing unit! We have been doing close readings and research on dolphins the last two weeks! Be sure to ask your child what they have learned about this sea creature! Soon we will move into individual animal reports, a favorite in Kindergarten!  Thank you for continuing to send the writing folders back and forth with your child each week! Take a moment to look back at how far they have come in their writing and you'll simply be shocked!

Math Workshop: Unit 6 Home Links are coming home today! Make sure to wrap up unit 5 and get those sent back soon! We have been working a great deal on skip counting: counting by 2's, 5's and 10's. We have also been spending a ton of time lately on number scrolls! Be sure to ask your mathematician to tell you how high they have gotten their scroll to be already!

A special thank you to all of the parents who helped chaperone our field trip to the Health Exploration Stations - we had a wonderful day!!

And last but not least....

March 4, 2016

Happy Friday Weckie Families!

What a fun and busy last few weeks we have been having in Kindergarten!! We celebrated the 100th day of school, we completed the igloo building, we celebrated like 102 Dalmatians and we even kicked of March is Reading Month with Green Eggs and Ham for breakfast in honor of Dr. Seuss and his birthday!! Phew!  Please be sure to follow us on Twitter to see pics along the way!! Our user name is @WeAreTheWeckies .

Reader's Workshop
In Workshop we have been busy!! We have continued to add on new sight words to our list. The list now includes the following words: a, am, are, be, by can, go, have, I, in, is, it, like, me, not, of, on, see, to, the, you. Please make sure to continue to review these words with your reader at home. We have spent time in Mini-Lessons learning to look for patterns in sentences, learning to look for sight words and then we have started building our strategies for tricky words!  We are learning to break words apart into a beginning, middle and ending sound before we put them all together. It ties in beautifully with what we are learning to do in Writer's Workshop!

Please see the Dublin Times for info on the March is Reading Month incentive program Dublin is participating in with the SkyZone locations around Metro Detroit. For five books read with your child in the month of March, you simply need to print and sign the form, return it to school, and your child will receive a voucher for a free 30 minute jump session!

Also, if you are interested in volunteering to be a Mystery Reader in March for our class, please email me ASAP! I'm gradually replying to emails and booking in the dates/times for this fun activity.

Writer's Workshop
In Writer's Workshop we have begun a new unit on "How-To's". The objective of this unit is to become a teacher and explain sequential steps for an activity. How to sharpen a pencil, how to clean a playroom, how to build a sandcastle, how to brush your teeth, etc. If you're ever looking for something for your child to write about in their home writing folder, a how-to would be perfect practice for them to tie in their writing in school to their writing at home! We are learning to use transition words like: first, then, next, last, second, third, etc. Then we add sequential illustrations to match each step of the directions.

Please make sure your child's writing folder is returned each week. Sadly I only receive about half of the folders back on Mondays and would like to see all participating in this extension activity!

Math Workshop
In Math Workshop we have been doing all sorts of things! We have been working with double-tens frames to help practice our "teens". We have been working on filling in hundreds grids that have some of the numbers there for us already and then completing them. We have been practicing counting by 2s, 5s and 10s. Also just this week we created a tally chart and bar graph of our favorite colors in Kindergarten. It was cool to see everyone work together to gather our data. Please make sure you are working on Unit 4 home links! I have had a few parents ask for prior unit homelinks and those will come home on Friday - I just needed to make new copies :-).

Upcoming Important Dates:
Monday, March 7: Book Fair Preview - no shopping (9:30am) and Spring Pictures (11am)
Tuesday, March 8: Book Fair Shopping (2:40-3:10pm)
Thursday, March 10: Dublin Family Literacy Night 6:30-8pm and Book Fair will be open throughout :-)

Friday, January 22nd

Greetings from the Tundra!!
Not only does the weather feel like the Arctic, but we have the giant igloo taking shape in our classroom!! Thank you to everyone who has been collecting milk jugs, and yes, we need MORE milk jugs!! We can really use any kind of gallon jug that is shaped like a milk jug.

Please click the link below to see our progress!
Igloo Building

This past week we also took a great field trip to the Marquis Theatre!  A special thanks to the parents who accompanied us on this field trip. We enjoyed watching the musical production of Snow White. Our kids were shocked to see that the cast was mostly children just like them! Be sure to check out this link to see more about upcoming shows at the Marquis Theatre in Northville.

Reader's Workshop
Upon returning from Winter Break I have been working on several different reading and writing assessments with our kids! It has been so eye opening for me to see all of the growth our students are making in reading and writing. Specifically I have been looking at: reading fluency, engagement in texts, comprehension of texts, written letter formation, rhyming, segmenting, phonemic blending and sight word recognition. As a result, new reading partnerships have been established based on ability and new reading groups will begin on Monday! If your child's book bag has not yet been turned in, please make sure that it is here on Monday. This is the best and safest way to make sure books get home and back to school responsibly!

Sight word envelopes came home last week filled with cards of our current words. Please use these cards!! Many of our kids have said they took them home but have not used them. In order for your child to be able to spell, read and write 80% of our sight words by the end of the year, daily practice at school and at home is essential. The current list includes the words: a, be, can, go, have, I, is, it, like, me, see, the, to, you. With adult supervision, you can also check out Harry Kindergarten on Youtube for great sight word songs we have been practicing at school!

Writer's Workshop
We are working on completing our Personal Narrative Writing Unit! At the conclusion, every child will have their own short personal narrative story. Look for a packet of writing to come home with your child in the next week! You will see many written pieces in the drafting stage and many that have made it to the published stage of writing. Be sure to celebrate each piece with your child or encourage them at home to finish up something that they haven't completed yet!

Writing Folders will begin to come home next week! Each Monday your child will bring home their writing folder. Please make sure they spend time throughout the week with an adult drafting 2-3 written pieces! Ideas can be tricky sometimes, so you may want to encourage them to think of places they like to go, foods they like to eat, toys they like to play with, etc. Some strategies that work well at school for helping them to write words include:

-Drawing lines on the page in a marker for each word they want to write (for example, if they want to say: The dog is brown. You could write on their paper _____ _____ __ ________. Roughly estimating the length of the line for each word.
-Incorporating sight words from our list that our kids should already be able to spell fluently
-Saying words slowly so that kids can stretch out the sounds in the word (and it's okay if the spelling isn't perfect when they do it this way, in fact, it's better!)
-Breaking words apart to hear the sounds with them (for example, cat = /c/ + /a/ + /t/), so you help them hear the sounds and they record the corresponding sound

Math Workshop
We have been busy, busy, busy in Math as of late! Unit 3 Homelinks have gone home and we are moving along nicely! There has been lots of great work done lately around tens-frames. I have included a few pictures below to show you what they look like and how they help us to add numbers up to 10.

We have also explored using number lines to add two numbers as well as counters in groups! Both are great strategies when first learning how to add. This would be something neat you could do at home with your kiddo... adding cereal boxes, adding snacks, adding vegetables on your plate, etc. Math is all around us!

We have also been working on learning about shapes! Shape names we are learning include: square, triangle, circle, oval, rectangle, parallelogram, trapezoid, pentagon and hexagon! We have been practicing drawing shapes with tracers. We have been graphing shapes and we have been counting the sides and corners of shapes. You can point out shapes everywhere at home and see what your kiddo notices! The homelink from Unit 2 did this and this would be something to keep exploring with your children!

Our mathematicians have been diligently working on hundreds grids and learning how to fill them in with different numbers missing in the grid!  It's fun to see how aware they are now of number patterns when written in a grid and how fluently they are able to count orally!

Last but not least, we have begun our work with money! We have spent time with the penny and even read a book all about pennies! We are learning to count pennies and determine if we have enough money to buy different things all with values under ten cents! Please get the pennies out at home and help your child explore with this coin value too!

Science:
This week we took a look at Mr. Maple in his winter season. We described the weather in winter and then we went outside and visited our friend. We noticed that all of his leaves had fallen down and many could be seen under the thin layer of snow! Scientists observed that the branches on Mr. Maple had in fact grown and the new sprouts were red! We then found buds on the tips of every single branch! We are excited to see what will happen to the sprouts and buds this spring!


Upcoming Important Dates:
Wednesday, January 27: Quarter 2 Report Cards Available on Skyward (Please let me know if you need help logging on to skyward. A paper copy will not be coming home this marking period or for the rest of the school year).

Sunday, February 27: PTA 6th Annual Crop Day - come support an awesome PTA day of scrapbooking or doing a craft of your choice... All three meals, snacks and contests with prizes make this a must attend day at Dublin. Besides, you'll get to see me! :-) Please keep an eye in the Dublin Times for more info.