Choice Time!

While the Kindergartners enjoy many of the things we do during our academic learning times at school, for most of them, their favorite time of day is Choice Time.  At Choice Time, each child has a popsicle stick with their name on it.  At the beginning of Choice Time, they are given their stick and they use it to choose a place to play by putting it in a pocket on our chart that corresponds to one of the play areas in our classroom.  

Depending upon the space and materials available, 4-8 students can play in each area at a time.  Blocks, House, Art Center, and Lego have been our most popular play areas all year!  The kids have been coming up with some extremely creative art projects, block and Lego structures, and pretend games as they work together during their Choice Time.  It is so much fun to see what they create and how their imaginations work!

Working together in blocks to build a castle

Lego are always fun!

Hard at work making Art!

Making a friend for Superbee!

Making Jack-O-Lantern Masks in the Art Center!

We each get our own "bedroom" in our Block House!

A Happy Family!

Asking your child who they played with or what they did at Choice Time can be a great way to get them talking about what they did at school! 

Our Listening Rules

For today's Social Studies lesson, we talked about how to be a learner.  We started out by exercising our most important learning muscle...our brain!  We played a game called, "Follow, Follow".  It is very similar to "Simon Says", as we had to practice following directions to touch one or even two body parts!  After we exercised our brain, we met our new friend, Puppy.  Puppy was REALLY excited to come to kindergarten but he was having a hard time listening.  We had to show him how to be a listener at school by going over our 4 listening rules. 

Rules tell us how to listen and act in a group so that everyone can learn.  Our first listening rule is "Eyes Watching".  Our eyes should be looking at the person who is speaking.  As we say the listening rule, we point to our eyes.  Getting our voices and bodies involved helps us to reinforce the learning in 3 different ways: hearing it, saying it, and doing it!  

Our second listening rule is "Ears Listening."  When it is listening time, the teachers will be giving us important directions.  We need to listen to what they are saying so we know what to do when it is time to work. 

The third listing rule is "Voices Quiet".  The listening rules help everyone to be a better learner.  When we have our own voices quiet, then all friends can hear what the teachers are saying.  Our whole school uses a special voice volume chart.  Level 0 means that our voices our turned off, so our action for this rule reminds us that voices should be at level 0 during listening times.  

Finally, to be a good listener, we have to stay in our listening space and keep our "Body Still." This helps all of us be less distracted and better able to pay attention to our teachers.  

After learning about our listening rules, and practicing saying them and doing the actions, our friend Puppy was able to be a MUCH better listener!  We will continue to work on reinforcing these listening rules with Puppy (and ourselves) throughout the year.  Listening and following directions can be a challenge for most Kindergartners, so it is a great skill to work on and reinforce at home!

Powerful Partnerships - EEKK!!!

This week during Reading Workshop, we started our new unit, "Powerful Partnerships".  Now that we have learned how to take care of books and read independently, we are ready to learn how to read with a partner.  We sit with our partner in two different ways, depending upon the type of reading that we are doing.  We start out by reading Back-to-Back, so that each partner can read independently.  Later we move into our EEKK! position.  EEKK! stands for "Elbow to Elbow, Knee to Knee".  
  

This position helps us to talk about and share books with our partner.  This week we practiced our different positions and learned about the first way to read with a partner: Read Together.  

When we read together, both partners have their own copy of the same book.  They both read the book together at the same time, making sure to work together to stay at the same pace.  The small copies of our class Big Books, the books we have made in class during our Word Work, and the ABC Book are all great books to help us practice the Read Together method of reading with a partner.  Next week we will be learning about two more ways: Take Turns and I Read, You Read.

Numerals, Groups, and Number Words

Over the past two weeks, our Math module has focused on numerals, groups, and number words.  We have really worked on emphasizing the difference between each representation of a number. During our Math Centers on Thursday and Friday, it was so much fun to practice writing our numerals using sand, paint, wikki stix, and play-doh! 

We also learned about the ordinal versions of numerals (first, second, third, fourth, etc.).  We followed the directions using ordinal numbers to help us create beautiful paintings of rainbows.

In this unit, we also learned about sorting and organizing data through the use of yes/no questions.  We practiced this through the creation of a pumpkin glyph. Glyphs are projects we make as a way to gather and depict data.  They are often theme-related and artistic.  When they are finished, they are compared to the glyph's legend to help us gain information about the person who created the project. What would your jack-o-lantern look like?  Watch for our pumpkin glyphs on a bulletin board in our Kindergarten hallway coming soon!  This is the first of many glyphs we will make throughout the year. 

Have you ever eaten pumpkin seeds?  Yes=Brown Stem  No=Green Stem

Do you like pumpkin pie?  Yes=Smiling Mouth   No=Frowning Mouth   I'm Not Sure=Zig Zag Mouth

Do you like scary or happy jack-o-lanterns?  Scary=Square Nose    Happy=Triangle Nose

What is your favorite fall treat?
Caramel Apple=Up Triangle Eyes   Popcorn Ball=Circle Eyes
Candy Corn=Down Triangle Eyes  Other=Square Eyes

One Stormy Night...

This week during Shared Reading, our class focused on the Big Book, One Stormy Night.  We found out that it was written by the same author as some of our other books, Joy Cowley!  We reinforced the different parts of the book that we have been learning about during Reading Workshop: title, title page, author, illustrator, sentences, words, and letters. To reinforce these concepts at home, as you read with your child, ask him/her to point out the different parts of the book or name them as you point them out.  

While we read the book together, we had fun listening for the different sound words that the author used to describe what the characters were hearing throughout the story.  After reading, we thought about some of the different events in the book through the use of "Wh" questions - who, what, where, when, and why.  We've really been working on the difference between a question and a statement. Questions are things we don't know the answer to, things we want to find out.  This is a great concept to reinforce when you are having conversations with your child about any topic!

Math Centers

On Thursdays and Fridays during most weeks at school, we have Math Centers in the afternoon.  During this time, we get to apply the things that we have been learning in lots of "hands on" ways.  

Today, we practiced making groups to match another group by choosing a card that had a dot array on it.  We had to count the number of dots on the card, create a group with the same number of wooden cubes, and then use the cubes to build some sort of structure.  We finished by drawing a picture of the structure we created. 

In another center we used dominoes, both the traditional kind and special "five frame" dominoes, to practice matching groups.  Dominoes are a great game to play at home with your Kindergartner, and can offer all kinds of opportunities to talk about Math!

Outdoor Science

As part of our Science unit on Trees and Weather, this week we went outside to find two special trees that we will be focusing on throughout the unit, as well as for the entire year.  Before going outside, we discussed our expectations for Outdoor Science, as it is much different from our indoor science lessons.  

We then went outside to choose our trees.  We observed them in different ways, collecting samples of bark, twigs, leaves, needles, etc.  We also discussed their shapes, sizes, and parts.  We measured the circumference of each tree using both kids and string.  We'll be doing this at several times throughout the year to see how much our tree grows! 

Tree #2

Tree #1

Measuring the circumference with students

Our tree is 7 students around!

Measuring Tree #1 with string

Measuring Tree #2 with string

Trunk & Bark - Tree #2

Trunk & Bark - Tree #1

Branches - Tree #1

Branches - Tree #2

Leaves - Tree #1

Needles - Tree #2