Fun Friday and a Full Five Days

Thank you to all the families that were able to come to our brown bag breakfast.  We really enjoyed sharing our hard work with you.  It means a lot that you can take time out of your busy schedule to join us.  

This year, our school service learning project is to help Kohfeldt Elementary school in Texas.  This was a school that was affected by the hurricane.  We are partnered with the kindergarten classes.  They have shared that they need supplies for literacy work stations.  We are going to be making class sets of clipboards to send to the kindergartners.  To fundraiser for supplies we are holding a penny drive.  So far we have around $30.00.  If you have extra pennies laying around we would love to have them!  We will be using them to practice counting too.  After our supplies are purchased, if there is any extra money we will be giving the kindergarten at Kohfeldt a gift card to purchase additional work station supplies.  We will be taking donations until March 23.

Our wonderful PTA puts on a circus each year.  This is a huge fundraiser for BEU.  With this money PTA is able to help with classroom supplies, fund field trips and even get us new playground equipment.  One of the fun things they do is to have classroom raffle baskets.  Each classroom provides supplies for a basket that will be raffled off.  Last year our basket was amazing and I know it can be this year too.  So far, I have only received one item for our basket.  We have a few people that have signed up but could definitely use some more.  Thank you to those that have signed up already.  Some ideas are:  Campfire hot dog sticks, bug spray, camp fire food, yard games, something to look at the stars, bug nets etc.  These items are due February 9th.  Here is an example of another camping basket.  Thanks for helping to make our school great!

Click here to sign up.

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090d4da9ab22a2f58-camping   

Here are our learning objectives for the week:

Reading:  Telling facts read in non-fiction books.  Using sounds to solve unknown words.  Looking for capitals in sentences.

Writing:  We worked hard on conventions this week.  We did our best to make sure to start with a capital and use lowercase letters for the rest of the sentence.  We also made space man and space lady sticks to help us remember to use word spaces.  

Math:  Writing numbers as high as we can go.  Understanding the addition symbol and the equals symbol.

Fundations:  We finished learning how to form capital letters.  We are now working hard to read three letter words by segmenting and blending the sounds.  We are also working on writing three letter words by segmenting the sounds.  

Enjoying the library.

Playing an addition game.

Candy Bracelets for Kohfeldt 1st Graders.  Thank you to this friend for getting us each one!

Making torn paper penguins to go with our penguin poem this week.

Brown Bag Breakfast

Puzzle Day

Happy Birthday Friend!  Thanks for sharing treats!

We would like to welcome our new friend to our class.  We are glad you're here!

Things to Remember:

• January 29 - 100 day of school!  This is a change due to the snow day.  Let's make this a fun day and dress like we are 100 years old!  
• February 2 - Matching Color Day  - We will wear blue
• February 2 - Yearbook orders are due
• February 9 - Classroom basket items for the BEU circus due today.  Thank you to all those that have signed up already. 
• February 9 - Career Day - Dress like what you want to be when you grow up.
• February 12 & 19 - Parent Teacher Conferences
• February 14 - Valentine Party 2:20
• February 16 & 19 - No School
• February 23 - Six flags reading log due
• February 24 - BEU circus

Short Week

What a short week!  With an unexpected snow day we had to squeeze a lot of learning into a short amount of time.  The cold weather has kept us inside for recess but we've found some great story time yoga that we all love.

We have spent the first half of the year learning all about how to be good writers.  And this week we got to show off our skills.  We took our writing assessment this week.  We each wrote about something we have done.   I will share these with the other kindergarten teachers as well so we can see how much these amazing kiddos have learned.  

A lot of our learning happens in small groups.  This allows me to ensure that each student gets exactly what they need.  When I work with small groups, the other students are all engaged in lots of different learning activities we call daily 5 and math rotations.  Our Daily 5 time includes using word cards to write stories or label, writing words focusing on beginning sounds, putting together poem puzzles, sorting pictures by beginning and ending sounds, handwriting, matching upper case to lowercase, listening to reading, and this week we even added Osmos to these rotations.  During math rotations, the kids practice math on the ipad with a program we call Jiji math, adding two numbers, and number formation.  I am continually impressed by how independent these amazing little people are during this time.  

Here are our learning objectives for the short week:

• Fundations:  Letter formation capital letters
• Reading: Using known sight words to read.  Monitoring to make sure we read exactly what's on the page.
• Writing:  We just began a new writing unit.  We are working on learning how to write non-fiction teaching books.  The kids were so exited today to share what they are experts about.  
• Math:  Solving story problems on paper and making sure to show all the parts of the problem.  We also worked on understanding teen numbers.
• Counselor:  Growth Mindset:  We can stretch our brain with new learning!  

Our week in pictures:

Our poem for the week.

Drawing mental images of the poem

 Working at Math Rotations.  These kiddos are practicing number formation.

 Kindergarten writers working hard on their assessment.

Our Fancy day ladies

 Playing a counting game to work on teens

 Learning about tens and ones in small group (Don't they look adorable all fancied up!)

We played a game called count and sit.  This was the moment we learned who the winner was.

Things to Remember:

• January 26 - Brown bag breakfast - 8:00 - 8:30 in our classroom.  Mark your calendars.
• January 26 - BEU puzzle day - Your child can bring a puzzle to share for this fun day to celebrate problem solving.  My goodness January 26 is full of fun!
• January 29 - 100 day of school!  This is a change due to the snow day.  Let's make this a fun day and dress like we are 100 years old!  
• February 9 - Classroom basket items for the BEU circus due today.  Thank you to all those that have signed up already.