Monday, November 25

How can it be the end of November already?  I don't know if I have said this, but I am enjoying these 2 groups of Kindergarten so much!  They are both amazing, unique groups of students with such a wonderful energy and enthusiasm to learn!  I enjoy every day spent teaching them!

Last week was filled with talk about our families.  We graphed how many people are in our immediate families using a horizontal graph which was different from the vertical graph we used to graph the number of letters in our names.  Some of the things we discovered were ...

R. O. – 4’s have the most.  That means that the 4’s have way more than the 5’s and the 6’s and the 3’s. 

A.M – 5 and the 3 have less. 

E. S-J – 3 people have 6 people in their family.

CM – There are more people with 4 people in their family than 5. 

BM – I learned that 5 has less than 4 and 4 has more and 2 has 2. 

AK – I learned that 4 is lower than 5 and 6 is lower than 5. 

Lucy has the most number of people in her family with 8.  Blythe and Mackenzie have 2. 

We drew our family pictures using sharpies on watercolor paper.  The students did a wonderful job and, for some, it helped to clarify how many people ARE in their family.  Students were encouraged to label their pictures and some could with "mom" and "dad" and even some of their brothers and sister's names.  It is really neat to see how the students are moving forward with their understanding and letters and sounds and their ability and interest in writing!

We brainstormed all of the things that our families love to do together and then did our own writing in our journals.  Most of the students are comfortable copying print from the whiteboard to begin their message and some are trying to finish their messages independently by sounding out and printing their own words.  

We have been enjoying Todd Parr's books as many of them are about family.  We have read "The Family Book", "The Brother Book", "The Sister Book", "The Daddy Book" and "The Mommy Book" (morning class only).  We love reading Todd Parr's stories!  Today we went on Todd TV and learned that Todd's favorite color is blue and his favorite food is macaroni and cheese.  He LOVES animals, especially dogs (the Pitbull is his favorite breed) and has adopted 4 of them!  Yes, we think Todd Parr is pretty cool!

We have continued our work on sorting and patterning and today we were excited to make our own pattern worms!  Not all of the children are finished, but ask them if they can "read" their pattern to you!  

We were excited to go to the Book Fair with our buddies last week and make a wish list of the books we would like.  Thank you to everyone who supported the book fair by purchasing a book, poster or other item.  Congrats to Alejo (am) and Lucy (pm) who had the closest guesses to the actual number of smarties in the jar.  Great estimating!!!!

Thank you to everyone who took the time to come connect with me at conferences last week.  Your support and involvement in your child's education does make a difference!

Have a wonderful evening!  

Ms. O.