March 12th-16th

Happy Friday! We had another great week in kindergarten. 😊 The kids had so much fun today setting up their traps to try and catch the leprechaun!  We will see if he decides to stop by the room this weekend. 😉 🍀 Read below for some announcements and a review of our week! We have had fun studying Dr. Seuss and Mem Fox the past two weeks in our author study.

March 30th-April 8th: SPRING BREAK!

April 10th: Field trip to the Laurel's Nursing Home.  Ride the bus with us or meet us there.  We load the bus at 10:00 AM and the program starts at the nursing home at 10:30 AM and lasts till 11:30 AM.

April 25th: Walking tour of Davidson.  We will need lots of chaperones for this field trip.  We walk from CSD to downtown Davidson and go on a tour of the police department, fire department, post office, and possible the library.  This is a really fun field trip to come on with your child! We will leave in the morning around 8:30-8:45ish and it will last most of the day.  More details to come!

Math:
Over the course of last week and this week, students have learned two new ways to do range cards!  I introduced how to use unifix cubes and jewels for range cards.  The kids of course LOVED the jewels because they are pretty and fun. 😊 You can find your child's range card sheets in their blue communication folder and you can have them explain to you what they do.  We do our normal eight station math workshop and the range cards are in 2-3 of the bins for them to choose to go to.  These tables are always full because they love them!  As mentioned a few weeks ago, range cards work on many different foundational math skills such as number sense, addition, subtraction, equation writing, and math facts.

Literacy:
In literacy the past two weeks, we have continued our sight word books, guided reading books, word sorts, and writer's workshop!  Thank you for reading your child's guided reading book with them at home every night and helping them remember to bring it back on Friday.  This is so important in their journey of becoming a better reader!  Remind your child to use Eagle Eye, Stretchy Snake, Chunky Monkey, and Lips the Fish as they read. 👍

Thematic:
This week we studied the author "Mem Fox" who wrote many great children's books!  Our student's favorite books of hers were Koala Lou, Possum Magic, Tough Boris, and Whoever You Are.  We did an activity for each of these books throughout the week.
Koala Lou: Students illustrated a non-fiction book about koalas.
Possum Magic: Students watercolor painted on a white sheet of card stock that had someone's name written on it in white crayon.  It was "magic" when the name appeared.  They had to write that person's name, draw a picture of them, and write a sentence about that person telling them what they love about them.
Tough Boris: Students created a parrot that can sit on their wrist!  We always love to incorporate art into our thematic centers.
Whoever You Are: Students got to use tissue paper to tear and decoupage the "world" and then glued a peace sign on top.  This was a great fine motor skill activity!

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James

February 26th - March 2nd

Happy Friday! It was so good to see a lot of you at math night on Wednesday! Thank you to everyone who came out to learn more about how we run math workshop in our classroom.  It was fun watching the students teach all of you how to play the games.  Below are some announcements for the weeks ahead and then a review of our week!

March 5th-9th Dr. Seuss Spirit Week! Today is Dr. Seuss' birthday and we are studying him next week during our "Author in Me" unit.  We will celebrate a different Dr. Seuss book each day and will dress accordingly to make it fun! Below is the schedule:
            Monday: Fox in Socks Day...wear silly or mismatched socks
            Tuesday: Green Eggs and ham Day...wear the color green
           Wednesday: Wacky Wednesday...wear your wackiest hairdo and/or outfit to school
            Thursday: The Cat in the Hat Day...wear your favorite hat to school
            Friday: Read My Shirt Day...wear a shirt that others can read
March 16th: We will celebrate St. Patrick's Day on the 16th in class (since we will not be at school on the 17th) and we are going to try and catch the leprechaun! The kids are already SO excited to make their leprechaun traps! They can use any box (cereal, shoe, amazon, etc.) to use as the base for their trap and they can decorate it however they want!  Anything green, gold, and rainbow would be awesome!  Please have your child bring this is on Friday, March 16th. 😉
March 30th-April 8th: Spring break!

***Please write your child's name in their jackets that come to school.  It will help us with keeping them all straight and in the event they lost it or leave it on the playground. Thank you!

Math

As most of you saw at math night, the main concepts that we are focusing on now are counting on, one more vs one less, addition, number writing, and equation writing.  We are doing a mixture of math tubs some days and other days doing range cards.

Literacy

During reader's workshop this week, we learned two new Beanie Baby Strategies! The first one is "Stretchy Snake" and he tells us to "s-t-r-e-t-c-h" out the word slowly and say each little sound that we hear.  Once you stretch it out, you put the sounds back together and say it fast to see if you can figure out the word.  We also learned about "Chunky Monkey"who tells us to "chunk the word."  Look for a chunk that you already know such as  -ing, -and, -an, -old, etc.  You also look for a word part that you may know such as -an, -at, -ed, -be-, -er, etc.  The students did wonderful using these strategies during our guided reading groups!  We also did another week of word sorts.  Your child is in one of four groups and they did one of the following word sorts:
1. matching pictures to words for the -at word family
2. sorting based on short e, i, o, u
3. sorting wh vs. th
4. short o vs. long o

Thematic

We began our Author in Me thematic unit this week and started with Eric Carle!  We read many different Eric Carle books and discussed what makes his books special and the common themes that they have.  The students rotated through four centers:
1. Mister Seahorse: shaving cream seahorses
2. The Tiny Seed: fruit and veggie seed investigations
3. Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me: learning about the phases of the moon and art craft
4. A House for Hermit Crab: sand art activity

Science

Because we are studying Eric Carle currently, we read the book The Tiny Seed and did a seed investigation!  We cut open apples, oranges, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, and cucumbers and studied the different sizes and amounts of seeds.  We used a recording sheet and practiced spelling the names phonetically.

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James