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!

Monday, October 14th

 Hello Weckie Families! There has been so much fun and learning going on in our K2 room as of late! Thanks for clicking to read our blog and learn more about what we have been up to in Kindergarten!

Phonics

In Phonics we have wrapped up our first unit which has had a heavy emphasis on letters and their sounds. We have spent time looking at all of our first names and making noticings, practiced spelling them, counting the letters and noticing the syllables. Then we took time to practice writing familiar names to continue learning about the letter and sound relationships. Names like: Daisy Duck, The Pout Pout Fish, Sponge Bob and more, to name a few! We have also been trying to practice writing lowercase letters 3-4 times a week. We start at ‘a’ and work our way to ‘z’ on our whiteboards. We have noticed how many letters are formed using the “magic c”. You’ll notice: a, b, c, d, e, g, o, p and q all have a “c” formation in them! We have been reviewing our “Alphardy” song with Dr. Jean which helps us to better remember the sound that each letter makes. I highly suggest you sing this one at home too and have your Weckie teach you the hand motions! (https://youtu.be/MTeUONxZYAs?si=o31ETyJOK4uMPENw) 

Readers’ Workshop

We have continued to grow our collection of high frequency word mini-books in our book bins at school to practice reading with! Soon we will start to send the oldest one home weekly. I like to keep about 5 at school. Each week we tackle a new high frequency word with these books. So far we have done: I, a, is and the. We have been working on noticing patterns in the books we read. We have also been looking at familiar texts and practicing retelling the main events from the beginning, the middle and the ending of the story using words like: first, next, the, and lastly.

Writers’ Workshop

In Writers’ Workshop we are well on our way in our authors' part of our unit. We are writing our own books just like real authors do, putting different parts of our story on each page. I continue to encourage the kids to be brave and attempt writing words/letter sounds, anything, to match their picture! This can be overwhelming and scary, but also is the first step in learning to write by ourselves! I remind them daily that the spelling is not important, just getting down the sounds they hear in words is most important right now.

Math Workshop

In Math we have been learning all about shapes! We took time to talk about squares, circles, rectangles and triangles! We explored with pattern blocks. We described sides and corners of the shapes. Then we got the magazines out and cut out different shapes that we could find and sorted them onto three giant shape posters! They turned out amazing! Next we moved onto a look at the number 5! We spent time using counters to make numbers 0-5 in different combinations on our fives frames. We also read a fun book to continue to think about 5s. We have been working hard on number books which will come home later this week with your Weckie!

Science

In Science we have become engineers! Our young scientists have embarked on a unit of study of motion! They are learning about push and pull, force and more! We began by reading a book called, “It’s Not Junk!” which posed us a design challenge. Students had to create a ramp that they could roll a ball down, have it be able to follow a course (like with turns) and then make it to the finish line AND knock down as many crayons along the way as possible that were standing on the course! With some creativity and some classroom supplies, it was AMAZING to see all that the kids built and how well they got their golf ball to travel through their course. We repeated this challenge a second time another day, and each group got to create a new course and try to modify it based on the type of ball they selected. We had groups using: a marble, a ping pong ball, a tennis ball, a wooden ball and a rubber bouncy ball! Check out some pictures below from Day 1!

Classroom Volunteers

We are in need of classroom volunteers. Attached below is a link to a sign-up for classroom volunteers. Please know that you will need a completed background check on file. Before signing up, please contact the Dublin office to make sure you are either all set with your background check (it has been submitted and cleared) OR to find out if you need a form to fill out and have submitted. With our iReady diagnostic taking us a bit longer than planned, we are a bit behind on getting parents in, but will soon :-). This will be our volunteer schedule through December. Then depending on how our Readers’ and Writers’ Workshops are doing (we try to build our stamina and make them longer) we may go away from stations and simply need more parent help for specific activities.

*Please note, if you are signing up to help with stations, it is helpful to have the SAME parent(s) for these days consistently (i.e. if you can help with stations on Mondays, sign up for ALL of the Mondays). These should not be one time sign-ups, but our “Monday Parents”, “Wednesday Parents” and “Friday Parents”.

We will continue to add parent volunteers at different times besides stations throughout the year. Please be patient as this takes some time to accomplish! :-) Thank you!

Please click here:

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0444AEA82DAA8-52337236-classroom