Joy
Joy has been the word that has popped into my mind the last few days. One of the things I love most about teaching Kindergarten is the students JOY. Their joy in going outside for a picnic. The joy that comes with a new center, a new playground to explore, seeing their friends. Teaching young children always reminds me of how important the little things are. I feel so lucky to have your children in my care this year. They fill my heart with JOY!
This week we had the privilege of working with a REAL author, Ms. Cathy Beveridge (ask your child to sing our author/illustrator song to tell you what an author does). Cathy talked to us about characters and settings and helped us to write and illustrate our class book. In our story, we have gone out to the playground and each of us takes turn sliding down a magic slide ... into an unknown land of our choice! The students were so excited and engaged in their work as they illustrated the place where they landed. They then dictated their story to Cathy or myself so that we can type out their stories to add to our book. We will have the finished product ready for you to look through at our parent-teacher conferences in November. A huge thank you to Cathy for working with us!
We continued our work on sorting, patterning and number awareness this week and introduced a math game, Kindergarten Yahtzee. In this game, students roll 2 die and add them together. They then cross out the number on their Yahtzee board. The first one to cross out all of his/her numbers is the winner! This game is great for teaching/reinforcing one-to-one correspondence as well as subitizing (being able to identify a quanitity of something without having to count. For example, knowing that one hand has 5 fingers without having to count. Knowing that 5 dice in an arrangement on a dice is 5 without having to count. If you want to borrow one of our Kindergarten Yahtzee sheets, please let me know! All you need is 2 dice and a marker! The students are starting to understand the concept of patterning and are practicing predicting what comes next in a pattern and reading a given pattern using attributes (such as color - red, blue, red, blue). Today we talked about identifying patterns using letters (A-B-A-B).
Today we drew our October self-portraits, writing the word "October" at the top of our page and adding detail and color to our drawings. We are practicing printing in a left-to-right pattern, with the letters in the correct order. We have been identifying the letter Tt in our daily message, again discussing the sound that it makes and what it looks like (remembering to start our letters at the top!). We practiced printing our letters on our friends' backs the other day which we all loved!
Our dramatic play center has transformed into a vet clinic (thanks to Amazon for delivering our vet supplies so quickly). We have been practicing fixing up our pets when they are injured or sick. The students are loving this center! It is so fun to watch them role-play!
Important Dates:
Friday, October 18: AM Class attends. We voted today on having a pajama day so we don't have to get up so early! It is also our first Flashlight Friday with our buddies! Yippee! Students are also welcome to bring a stuffed animal that they would like to check out at our clinic.
Monday, October 21: Kindergarten Organizational Day. No school for students!
Tuesday, October 22: Bonavista Eye Clinic presentation
Thursday, October 24: Food Impact Presentation. Please see the letter attached to messenger.
Thursday, October 24 (pm): Halloween Dance. Please let me know if you have not ordered tickets and would like to do so. Tickets are $2 per person.
Thursday, October 31: HALLOWEEN! Students are invited to dress up! A note will be going home to parents to organize snacks for our party. Thank you to Leah Kirk for taking on the role of room parent for our morning class! We are still looking for an afternoon coordinator if anyone is interested!
For some art projects we will be doing next week, students are encouraged to collect and bring in signs of fall (leaves, sticks, berries etc .... ). THANK YOU!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Ms. O.
This week we had the privilege of working with a REAL author, Ms. Cathy Beveridge (ask your child to sing our author/illustrator song to tell you what an author does). Cathy talked to us about characters and settings and helped us to write and illustrate our class book. In our story, we have gone out to the playground and each of us takes turn sliding down a magic slide ... into an unknown land of our choice! The students were so excited and engaged in their work as they illustrated the place where they landed. They then dictated their story to Cathy or myself so that we can type out their stories to add to our book. We will have the finished product ready for you to look through at our parent-teacher conferences in November. A huge thank you to Cathy for working with us!
We continued our work on sorting, patterning and number awareness this week and introduced a math game, Kindergarten Yahtzee. In this game, students roll 2 die and add them together. They then cross out the number on their Yahtzee board. The first one to cross out all of his/her numbers is the winner! This game is great for teaching/reinforcing one-to-one correspondence as well as subitizing (being able to identify a quanitity of something without having to count. For example, knowing that one hand has 5 fingers without having to count. Knowing that 5 dice in an arrangement on a dice is 5 without having to count. If you want to borrow one of our Kindergarten Yahtzee sheets, please let me know! All you need is 2 dice and a marker! The students are starting to understand the concept of patterning and are practicing predicting what comes next in a pattern and reading a given pattern using attributes (such as color - red, blue, red, blue). Today we talked about identifying patterns using letters (A-B-A-B).
Today we drew our October self-portraits, writing the word "October" at the top of our page and adding detail and color to our drawings. We are practicing printing in a left-to-right pattern, with the letters in the correct order. We have been identifying the letter Tt in our daily message, again discussing the sound that it makes and what it looks like (remembering to start our letters at the top!). We practiced printing our letters on our friends' backs the other day which we all loved!
Our dramatic play center has transformed into a vet clinic (thanks to Amazon for delivering our vet supplies so quickly). We have been practicing fixing up our pets when they are injured or sick. The students are loving this center! It is so fun to watch them role-play!
Important Dates:
Friday, October 18: AM Class attends. We voted today on having a pajama day so we don't have to get up so early! It is also our first Flashlight Friday with our buddies! Yippee! Students are also welcome to bring a stuffed animal that they would like to check out at our clinic.
Monday, October 21: Kindergarten Organizational Day. No school for students!
Tuesday, October 22: Bonavista Eye Clinic presentation
Thursday, October 24: Food Impact Presentation. Please see the letter attached to messenger.
Thursday, October 24 (pm): Halloween Dance. Please let me know if you have not ordered tickets and would like to do so. Tickets are $2 per person.
Thursday, October 31: HALLOWEEN! Students are invited to dress up! A note will be going home to parents to organize snacks for our party. Thank you to Leah Kirk for taking on the role of room parent for our morning class! We are still looking for an afternoon coordinator if anyone is interested!
For some art projects we will be doing next week, students are encouraged to collect and bring in signs of fall (leaves, sticks, berries etc .... ). THANK YOU!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Ms. O.
