Friday, January 31st

 Hello Weckie Families!

 I can't believe it is already the end of January... this month has FLOWN by in Kindergarten! We are now headed into a really busy time of year, so make sure to check all of the important dates below. The same dates were also sent out in an email earlier this week. Additionally, if you are not already following us on the REMIND app, please do so! This will help keep you on schedule with all of our fun :-).  Please click on the link below to join our class:

https://www.remind.com/join/weckiesk

We even had a special visit from Mr. Peace to Dublin where we learned all about kindness and always choosing to be nice!

Phonics

In Phonics we are in the midst of learning how words have super powers! When we say that they have super powers, we are talking about how so many different words can rhyme! We have spent a lot of time working on the following endings:

-at

-an

-in

-it

Be sure to ask your kiddo to come up with some words that end with each of those rimes. They should be able to name a few if not a lot! We have then taken what we have learned about these words to help us write more words on our whiteboards, in partnerships and then ultimately in our Writers' Workshop work! We also have worked with picture cards where we had to first figure out the word, and then use that to help us sort them by ending, and write the words. Hard work, but such good work! If you have a few spare minutes at night or in the car, ask your child to help you find words that rhyme! Great ones to work with beyond those four include: -ouse, -ike, -ice, -oat and -ake.

Readers' Workshop

We have successfully finished our iReady Reading Diagnostic! Yay! Please remember this is just ONE snapshot of what your child can do, but it does not show us or tell us everything. We are always just looking for growth! If your child's score did go down, please know that each diagnostic gets harder than the last, so if their score is similar to the first score, they may have still grown! If your child has qualified for an individualized reading improvement plan because they did not meet the cut score of 355 in reading (ONLY), you will be hearing from me today (Friday, January 31st). Otherwise, please look for their score papers to come home in their backpacks either Friday or Monday (depending how fast I can get them printed).  In workshop we paused the last few weeks for iReady but then picked up this week with learning how to read in a comfy spot and learning how to ignore distractions. This is something we will be working on for many, many weeks to come as we instill good reading habits in our young readers! Guided Reading Groups will be launching next week. Look for a baggie with a book to come home with your child sometime next week. It must be returned IMMEDIATELY the next day. If your child cannot return their book, no further books will be sent home. These books are not cheap to purchase as they are a part of a larger set.

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop we are REALLY getting good at writing words!! While we are expert illustrators, it has been so much fun to watch kids share their writing and realize that they can in fact write words! As we learn to put sounds together and look for word super powers in rhyming words, we are realizing just how much we can spell! Encourage your child at home to draw pictures and add words too! The more practice they have, the more confident writers they will be! We even learned how to write a letter to someone and used our writing skills to impress and thank Mr. Drewno for being such a great principal at Dublin!

Math Workshop

In Math we have been working on all sorts of things! We have been playing with the tricky teens and practicing comparing numbers that fall between 10 and 20. We have learned a game called "Monster Squeeze" that we played with partners first and then on our computers second! This has helped us to compare numbers even more to find what numbers are larger or smaller than other numbers. Today we began talking about capacity and made "Capacity Cakes". Be sure to ask your child about their yummy bonus snack today!

Important Upcoming Dates:

Wednesday, February 5 – Global Play Day (more info in the note)

Friday, February 7 – 101 Dalmatian Day – Five volunteers have been selected… a few need to make sure to return the Criminal Background Forms sent home in your child’s folders ASAP. Our helpers have all been contacted. Thank you! Please plan to be at school that day at 9:20am. Remember, black bottoms and a white top work great for Dalmatian Day. 

 

Diversity Week at Dublin…

Feb 10 – Pajama Day 

Feb 11 – Wear your favorite color

Feb 12 – Wear your favorite sports team (hats are fine)

Feb 13 – Dublin Green Swag

Feb 14 – Red/White/Pink Valentines

 

February 12-14 – Send in Valentine’s Day boxes

 

February 14 – Valentine’s Day Party – Just for the kids and 5 parent/grandparent volunteers. More info to come… look for a Sign-Up Genius for donations soon.

Have a fantastic weekend- stay warm!! :-) Mrs. Weckstein

Here's a few extra fun scenes from Room K2 ...

 (Teachers at Bingo Night)

Friday, December 5th

 WOW!! Where did November go? What a busy last few weeks it has been in K2!! We have been so busy learning, growing, playing and laughing together as a school family. I hope everyone enjoyed reading the "We Are Thankful" books that were sent home just before Thanksgiving. Those took us awhile to create and boy do we have some VERY thankful kids in our class :-).

Phonics

In Phonics we wrapped up our second unit by holding an alphabet parade! We have been doing such great work learning our letters and sounds! We are now even working on stretching out words to hear all of the different sounds in the word to help use our letter knowledge to spell words! The kids loved parading through the first grade and second grade classrooms, then on to the Junior Kindergarten classroom and finally the cafeteria to see the fifth graders and show them just how smart we are! We continue to work on our snap words including: it, is, like, at, I, a, see, the, and, can, go, he and she. Any extra practice at home reviewing these words with your kids is amazing!

Readers' Workshop

In Readers' Workshop we are wrapping up our second unit! The last few weeks we have been set up in reading partnerships and made plans for how we can read books together! We have taken time to talk about what a good partnership does and what a good partnership looks like. Readers have been earning shamrocks when caught doing good partner reading. We talked about how we have partners so we can help each other out with tricky words, recognizing snap words, and how we can talk about the books we read together. While this takes a lot of practice, it has also been a lot of fun!

Readers' celebrating their "Key to Reading" the world!

Writers' Workshop

We are well on our way in our third unit of Writers' Workshop. This unit is where we write about favorite objects or places and practice labeling their parts and using words in our work! There's been such a strong emphasis on drawing, that this makes for a fun shift where they can apply what they have learned in Phonics and Readers' Workshop to their writing! We moved tables recently so we have new students at each table working as the Table Captain (getting our writing supplies ready) and the Table Setters (setting up our word charts/drawing charts) for the table. Kids have really LOVED sharing their writing on the big screen as I work my way around to each table group to confer with the writers' at that table. You have to be pretty brave to get up and share your work enlarged! We have brave writers! Here are a few who have shared :-).

Math Workshop

We just completed our third unit in Math! We have learned a some new games as of late to help us practice our counting. Games have included: Roll and Record and Monster Squeeze. We have taken time to practice writing our numbers on whiteboards and are aiming to get every child to be able to write beyond 30 by the end of the year. We are well on our way to this goal!

Upcoming Events

-Outdoor Center Field Trip - Thursday, December 19th. Remember we will NOT be back here for lunch so everyone needs to pack a lunch. 

-Holiday Party - Friday, December 20th - Afternoon - Kids will need to come in their PJs for our "trip" on the Polar Express. We will only be having our party planning parents attend this event so that we we can use different parts of the room throughout the party and keep the focus on the adventure we are taking. 

SO many more fun pics... Enjoy! :-)

Tuesday, October 29th

 Hello Weckie Families!

We have been SO busy in Kindergarten the last couple of weeks! Let's take a look at all we have been learning and doing together...

Phonics

In Phonics we wrapped up our first unit and have moved onto a Word Scientist unit. We are taking all that we know about letters and sounds to figure out how to make words! Our Word Wall has been a great resource that we rely on for many of our sight words and familiar names. 

Then we have been spending time with becoming ABC chart experts! We talked about why the charts have pictures and how the pictures can help us figure out the sound that a letter makes. We have created our own ABC charts from a blank chart, we have compared different ABC charts, we have matched pictures to the letters in a big sort on a pocket chart and we have successfully taught our stuffies about our ABC chart at our own ABC School we had this week! We continue to do activities daily to review our letters and sounds. Anything you can do at home to help reinforce this would be amazing and so very helpful!

Readers' Workshop

This week we sent home our first sight word book, "I See". Each week we do a new book and we keep 6-7 of these mini books in our book bins at school to read. Moving forward, I'll send the oldest home each week. Please keep these in a safe spot together so that you can practice reading them with your child too! We have practiced using the pictures to help us figure out the words, using 1:1 matching with our finger pointing to each word, word by word, and we have gotten really good with our sight words! Our sight words so far include: I, a, it, can, see, and the.

Writers' Workshop

We are wrapping up our first writing unit on becoming authors! We have created one page stories, multi-page stories and are even going to be making covers this week for our stories. We are learning to draw pictures, write labels and even put some letters/words down on our pages! To do this, you have to be brave! We have lots of brave writers in our Kindergarten class!

Math Workshop

We have been busy counting in math! We have worked with a couple different counting activities. One activity used a number board to count up to 10, another activity used pockets where we had to add to the number of counters in the pockets to find the total! We have been playing two different games with our dot cards, one is called "Match Up" and the other is "Top It". We have also taken some time to really look at different shapes. We created three giant shape posters that we can now reference in the room about shapes too!

Number Grid Counting

Pocket Problems

Science

Our young scientists have been having a blast learning about force and motion! This last week they continued to explore with ramps, tracks and different balls. We learned vocab words including: push, pull, force, motion and will soon introduce, collision!

A few more fun pics from the last few weeks...

We got to have Kona Ice Slushees as a Fun Run reward!

Working on our fine motor skills at Fun Friday!

Buster the Bus paid us a visit at Dublin so we could learn all about bus safety at our very first school assembly! We learned so much and did so great!

                                And our room is looking awfully cute for Halloween this week!