Rain Rain Go Away

We've had lots of rain this week!  Lucky for us we've been able to get outside most days!  If we don't get out, we do some movement activities inside or have more choice time.  

Next week we will be starting what we call Daily 5.  The kids will be working in literacy activities in groups of 2.  This week we are learning about all of the literacy activities.  Some of them are:  handwriting & letter formation, writing, poems, puzzles, listen to reading, reading in our class library.  Once the kids are able to be independent during this time, I will begin pulling small groups for reading.  Small groups allow me to tailor the instruction to the needs of each student. 

Here are our learning objectives for the week:  

Fundations:  t, b, f - letter name, letter sound, proper formation

Reading:  Using the picture as a clue to figure out what the words say.

Writing:  Drawing people with details, adding a background to tell a story

Math:  Counting groups of objects, recognizing quantity without counting

Social Skills:  I can have a safe body at group. (This was tough for us.  We are continuing this goal next week.  They will get their certificates next week!)

Check out our week in pictures!

Learning about how to solve disagreements.  We can play one round of rock paper scissors.  

Check out some of our fabulous work!

Puzzles for Daily 5

 Tuesday is library day.  We enjoyed hearing a book about kindness.

We saw Mrs. Fitch for math too!  She taught us how to use what we call JiJi math.  This is a self leveling math video.  Click here to watch a short video to learn more.  

This is one literacy activity called write the room.  We use clip boards and walk around the room to record letters.  As they year progresses the write the room activities will get progressively harder. 

We learned about germs.  We learned about the importance of washing hands and keeping our bathroom clean.  Then we made germs to go on the walls of the bathroom to help us remember.  

Our poem this week was called Yellow.  Here are some of our great mental images!

PTA fundraiser starts today!  We had a visit from flash and our PTA to tell us about it.  

Things to Remember:

• Don't forget to check for Friday Folders!  
• Please help your child remember a daily snack.  We get hungry in the afternoon! You might pick a special pocket in your child's backpack and always put it there.  That will help them find it quickly.  Thanks!
• September 7 - PTA Shakespeare's pizza fundraiser starts today.  Check the Friday Folder for more info.  
• September 10 - Dental Clinic
• September 19 - Family Yoga Night
• September 24 - No School Teacher work Day
• September 28 - PTA Movie Night

Look at us go!

I am so impressed with the kids!  They have improved in behavior so much over the past week.  They are amazing!  Our behavior goal for the week was, "I can have a safe body in the hallway".  Ask your child if he or she earned a tiny certificate this week!  If not, there's next week too!  

Thank you so much to all the families that came to get the scoop night.  I very much enjoyed hearing about your little darlings.  It was a great time for me to get to know you all too.

Here are our learning objectives for this week:

Reading:  Pointing to the words as we read them (One to one correspondence)

Writing:  How to color, how to draw people

Math:  Counting, graphing birthdays

Our week in pictures:

Graphing our ages

 Each week we will learn a poem.  With these poems we will practice lots of skills such as learning sight words, 1-1 correspondence, looking for words we know, drawing our mental images, rhyming words and many more.

 We learned good readers make pictures in their minds of what is happening in the words we read.  Then we added the poem to our journal and drew our mental images!

 Everyday in our school all classes do what we call, "Read to Self".  We sit all around the classroom and read the books and poems in our book box.  We are building our stamina for this.  We were able to read for 3 minutes this week.  Our goals are to keep our eyes in the book, stay in our spots and read quietly.  It's also tough because they can't talk to me during this time.  This is the time when I will soon be able to pull reading groups.

Each morning we work on learning about letters and sounds.  Many of our students have a great foundation for this already.  Not only does this focus on recognizing the letter and the sound but right now a focus is on correct pencil grip and forming the letters the kindergarten way.  We learned that "we always start our letters at the tippy tippy top!"

 Here we are playing a counting game.  We did a lot with counting this week!  This game helped us with 1-1 correspondence.  We will do lots of counting this year, we will focus on number sense which will help us flexibly combine numbers. 

 Here is the winner of our game!

 We had our first counselor lesson this week.  Our counselor taught us about the "never, never rules".  Some of them are: Never touch a gun.  Never use a sharp object without the help of an adult.  Never swim without an adult.  Ask your child to see if he/she can remember the others!

 Library check out day is Tuesday.  We had our first library lesson to learn about how to take care of our books.  

 We learned about our class library too!  We learned how to choose a book and also how to put them away in the right places.

Happy Friday!  Have a great long weekend.  

Things to Remember:

• Don't forget to check for Friday Folders!  
• Please help your child remember a daily snack.  We get hungry in the afternoon! You might pick a special pocket in your child's backpack and always put it there.  That will help them find it quickly.  Thanks!
• September 3 - No school - Labor Day
• September 10 - Dental Clinic
• September 19 - Family Yoga Night
• September 24 - No School Teacher work Day
• September 28 - PTA Movie Night