A Hoot of a Kindergarten Class!: week of August 10

We will start our morning at 8 am with Morning Meeting where we will read take attendance, find out who the responsible people are for the day (this is our line leader, morning director, energy saver, teacher helper, lunch helper, and pencil sharpener), the Morning Director will help with the months and days and seasons, Shape of the Day, Calendar, and Weather, we will recite the Pledge, do our 100 days count, and recite our class promise (Today will never come again. Be a blessing. Be a friend. Encourage someone. Take time to care. Let your words heal and not wound.)

Here is a few of our daily journals this week:

Here we are doing one of our math journals this week:

The students are really enjoying going to the Literacy Center with Ms. Kim each morning. On Monday, they read the book, Mind Your Manners in School. Then, they talked about how to be good friends at school. Next, they sorted all of the dress up clothes into different piles so that they could put them away properly. They sang few songs about following the rules and being good friends.

The students also had fun making first day of school hats. {freebie alert- click link!}

This week we will be focusing on writing and revisiting and/or learning the sounds of Aa and Bb and learning how to writing our names correctly.

The students completed their first Write the Room using the letter A. They had to walk around the room and record only words that begin with the letter A. They loved it!

And here's Charlie Writing the Room Bb.

I introduced the students to Shared Reading the week. Each day we do something different. Monday, we read no words , look only at the pictures, and I ask the students “What jumps out on this page?” allowing the students to make predictions. Tuesday, read the story aloud letting students make predictions, I choose certain words throughout the story and cover the words, leaving only the first letter visible and allow students to try and figure out the word that is covered using the picture and the first letter. We also revisit their predictions. Wednesday, students retell the sequence of events from memory- we do not use the illustrations to jog their memory. The students learn to summarize in one sentence then we reread the story to check the students’ sequence of events and make a chart with the title of the chart being the title of the book and we like when a phrase is repeating. Thursday, students retell the sequence of events from memory- do not use the illustrations to jog their memory, students summarize in one sentence, reread the story to check the students’ sequence of events, and we read the chart. And lastly, on Friday I give students one page for illustrating their phrase from the chart on Wednesday. We display pages for 1 week in classroom and then turn the pages into a classroom book to be placed in the classroom library.

Our Shared Reading book this week was The Little Yellow Chicken which was the Little Red Hen's grandson and he was having very similar problems as his grandmother! :)

We read The Kissing Hand on the first day of school and revisited it later in the day and made a T-chart comparing Chester's school and our school.

We also made invitations to our favorite stuffed animals inviting them to school Friday for Show and Tell. :)

After watching Chrysanthemum online, we decided since we have been talking an awful lot about feelings this week that maybe we knew some ways to cheer Chrysanthemum up.

If you missed CMA Open House Wednesday and are thinking about enrolling your girl in dance/gymnastics or your boy in tumbling, please come by the school and get a registration form or fill out the one that was sent home in mailboxes and return it to the school by August 28th.

CMA offers a one time deal to the girls with a leotard bundle. It comes with tights, leotard, ballet slippers and a bag. They only offer this at the beginning of the year.

CMA visits our school once a week for lessons.It is $65 a month for girls and $45 for boys. My son has been taking tumble since he started school here and really enjoys it. And the end of the year recital makes it all worth while!

We will begin Limited Centers next week while this week we focused more on Open Centers so the students could get familiar with the rules, layout, and what is in each center.

We read Wemberly Worried this morning and then wrote about what worried us. William said flying for the first time worried him (flying on a plane.)

Libby said crocodiles worried her.

(Me, too!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Then students broke up in pairs to discuss what makes each one worried. I set a timer and they came back to share what each friend’s worries were and how they made their worries turn into “happies.”

Then we had our Show and Tell for our stuffed animals we invited to school for the day!

One of our social studies lessons this week was learning about appropriate behavior during flag salute in classroom and elsewhere. We watched “Our Beautiful American Flag & The Meaning of the Stars & Stripes” to learn more about our flag.

We also discussed responsibilities of school in social studies. And what responsibilities we have in our classroom, too. And made a chart to compare.

One of the students' responsibilities each day is to sign in.

And now for a tour of our centers! We will begin Limited Centers next week. This week, the students were exploring Open Centers learning the rules, clean up procedures, and what is in each center.