December 17, 2010

Special Thanks!

Thank you so much to Mrs. Ceru and Mrs. Evans for a fantastic Holiday Party!  Also, thank you to everyone who helped at the party and/or donated items!  The kids LOVED the party and it is such a great experience for them!

Needed

boxes (any size)
empty gallon milk jugs (We need a lot!  Ask relatives and neighbors, too!)


A Wild Week of Learning in Kindergarten


-Heart word of the week: are

-This week, we worked on the skill of summarizing with a book called, Apple Farmer Annie.  We aslo practiced recalling the sequence of events in the story.

-In math, we played a game called, Which shape am I hiding?  We had to ask yes/no questions about the attributes (number of corners, number of sides, etc.) in order to figure out which one it is.

-We had a fun week full of traveling to other countries and learning about other holidays.  For each country, we learned their holiday colors, a symbol, and a traditional food.  We even had the opportunity to try that countries traditional food!  While we traveled, we received plane tickets and a passport.  We filled out our passport for each country we visited.  Check out our passports to see what we learned!

December 10th, 2010

Holidays Around the World Week!

We will be having a very full week next week!  We will be traveling all around the world to learn a little about other Holidays.  We will learn some of their traditional holiday colors, some of their symbols, and some of their traditional holiday foods.  Below is a list of when we will be learning each.  If possible, try to have your child dress in the traditional colors of that holiday!

Monday- Hanukkah (Have your child wear: blue, white, silver)
Tuesday- Kwanzaa (Have your child wear: red, black, green)
Wednesday- Las Posada (Have your child wear: red, green)
Thursday- Christmas (Have your child wear: red, green)
Friday- North Pole (Have your child wear: PAJAMAS!) 

Let me know if you have any special knowledge about any of these holidays!

Wild Learning in Kindergarten   

*Heart word of the week: play

*This week we continued to practice using adjectives in our writing.  We also refer to them as pink words.  We also wrote about where the gingerbread man hid.


*In math, we were introduced to pennies.  We now have a math center involving counting and comparing pennies.  We also learned about growing patterns.  With our growing pattern, we were also introduced to counting by 2's.

*We read a book this week called, Duck on a Bike.  With this book, we practiced figuring out the story structure, characters, and plot.

*We continued with gingerbread this week.  We made gingerbread glyphs.  Glyphs represent information in a special way.  For example, girls colored their gingerbread man's eyes pink and the boys colored the eyes blue.  Also, buttons were colored red if we were 5 and green if we are 6.  Once we finished with our glyphs, we sorted our glyphs as many ways as we could think.

December 3rd, 2010

Wild Learning in Kindergarten 

-Heart word of the week: is

-During writing this week, we were introduced to using adjectives.  We also called them pink words.  In addition, we started using a "Space Man" to help us remember to leave spaces between our words.

-In math, we practiced comparing sizes of objects.  We discovered that we had to match up the ends of objects in order to accurately compare the objects.  We practiced with the terms longer and shorter.

-Our focus book for the week was called On the Go.  This book looked at different ways to travel.  It looked at different cultures and how they might travel around.  We practiced the strategy of recognizing the story structure.  Also, we were introduced to classifying and categorizing with this book.  We practiced grouping things together that we saw in the book.

-We started our gingerbread theme this week.  We have been reading many different versions of the story and have been comparing the characters and the endings.  Our community centers are full of gingerbread activities.  We are retelling the gingerbread story in our dramatic play.  At our art center, we are decorating a gingerbread man.  We are measuring using a gingerbread rulers at our math center.  We also have gingerbread puzzles, patterning, rhyming, and a dice recognition game.

-We had some special gingerbread dough dropped off in our classroom.  We decided to make a gingerbread cookie out of it.  When we went back to the kitchen, the gingerbread cookie was gone!  The gingerbread man left clues all around the school of where he was going next.  We really enjoyed trying to track him down.