Week 16
RULER: Mrs. Serafino joined us for RULER time and conferred with children about what qualities each child felt described their best self. Mrs. Serafino shared a BEAUTIFUL read aloud called The Story of You which Mrs. Brydges read with our class. The book provided a pathway to discuss what being our best selves looks like both at home and at school. There were different scenarios to discuss like welcoming someone new to school or navigating breaking something at home that you didn't mean to break. We had a really rich discussion and the children showed sensitivity and empathy in their conversation.
CKLA Knowledge: We wrapped up our Plants unit by learning about George Washington Carver. We loved learning that he was a famous botanist and artist. As a child, he explored plants in nature and transplanted lots of plants to a special garden where he would study them and learn how to care for plants that weren't growing well. He encouraged farmers to find different uses for various plants, for instance, using peanuts for dyes, oils and makeup. As an artist, he made his first paints from different plant parts. He mashed bark, roots and wild berries!
CKLA Skills: We now have 6 words on our Tricky word wall: one, two, three, the, a, and and. The first 5 words are on yellow cards to signal to students to proceed with caution, that the words are not decodable or not fully decodable. And is on a green card to signal to students that it is decodable (although and is somewhat tricky with the first 2 letters being a glued sound!). We have a big book called Pet Fun and we have been gaining in confidence as we put all of our skills together to read! We also have individual picture readers and we love time with those, too!
Math: We started a new unit in math and a new month in our Number Corner. This week we focused on the number line and number sense. We played a game called "X-ray vision" where we identified missing numbers on a number line and had to prove that the missing numbers we suggested made sense. This helped us to use good number talk, using terms like "one greater than" or "one less than". For Number Corner, the leader of the day uses the 3, 4, 5 spinner and collects pattern blocks: triangles, squares, trapezoids and hexagons. At the end of each week, we graph how many of each shape we have, compare amounts and we also use different counting strategies to figure out how many shapes we had in all that week.
Week 15
Royal Reader: Amia's mom, Ms. Kogut, came in to celebrate Amia's birthday! Ms. Kogut was our Royal Reader and she read Pete the Cat Snow Daze. Happy 6th birthday Amia!
RULER: We talked about frustration and our mentor text was Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!. We talked about ways in which we could tell that Pigeon was frustrated. We talked about strategies for handling frustration. Three ideas shared by kids were: "scream into a pillow", "my preschool teacher Miss Carly said we can take a sip of water to calm down", and "take a deep breath."
CKLA Knowledge: We are learning so much with our unit on plants! We learned that the reason evergreen trees keep their leaves all year is that photosynthesis is possible with needles being so much smaller than deciduous leaves. The photosynthesis slows down during the winter with evergreen trees, but it doesn't stop altogether like it does with deciduous trees!
We also learned how we rely on plants to live, with everything from the oxygen we breath, to the food we eat, to the wood we use for everything from homes to baseball bats, to cotton that is used to make so many of our clothes to medicine that comes from plants and even the tires on our cars that come from the sap of rubber trees!
CKLA Skills: We added a new sound, /e/ to our repertoire!! One of our favorite games this week was to use our large sound cards to spell words, each letter of the word was held by a child in front of the room. As a new word was read, the kids needed to figure out which sound was changing... who needed to sit down and who needed to come up front to try to spell the new word!
Math: We worked on doubles with a game called “Bicycle Race”. This game involved rolling a numeral dice and then doubling that number and seeing if that number helps you move across the board; the kids had smart strategies for how you can double a number! We also have a winter break countdown paper chain, dividing by color in groups of 5. Every day the leader of the day helps us to figure out how many we are starting with; counting by 5s and then ones has been an effective strategy! Then the leader of the day cuts off the chain for the day and this helps us to count backwards and to think about "what is one less than?"
Week 14
Royal Reader: We welcomed Leona's family to our classroom on Monday to celebrate her birthday. Mr. and Mrs. Cicero and big brother Conor joined in the fun! Conor was our Royal Reader and he read Leona and the Unicorn in honor of her birthday. Happy 6th birthday Leona!
Thanksgiving: We also wrote notes of appreciation to our staff members that make a difference in our lives every day at Center School. We did this with our fifth grade buddies then delivered a bag of Hershey kisses tied up with a bow. These notes are a special annual tradition!
The children wrote in their journals about their favorite foods to eat on Thanksgiving! There was a variety of responses, everything from stuffing to mac and cheese to grapes!
CKLA Knowledge: The children learned about the life cycle of a turnip while also enjoying a fiction story called "The Giant Turnip" about a farmer who plants turnip seeds every year and ends up with one turnip that seems impossible to harvest because it is so big! Ask your child how the farmer finally got the turnip out of the soil!
CKLA Skills: We learned the /f/ and /v/ and /s/ and /z/ are sister sounds. With both sets of sounds, we position our mouths in similar ways, but the /v/ and /z/ sounds are buzzier sounds and the /f/ and /s/ sounds aren't; if you say the former sounds and hold your hand on your throat you can feel your throat vibrate!
Math: We listened to word problems involving bicycles and practiced adding and subtracting using unifix cubes and our ten frames! We talked about the math symbols +, - and = and what they meant and when to use them.
Week 13
Royal Reader: Tyler's family came in to celebrate his birthday! His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Williamson, and little brother Bennett joined us. Mr. Williamson was our Royal Reader and he read Why Won't You Sleep?! in honor of Tyler's birthday. Happy 6th birthday Tyler!
Science: Our Let's Find Out magazine helped us to explore animal adaptations! We learned that animal adaptations are things that an animal does or has that helps them survive where they live. We learned that foxes wrap their bushy tails around their bodies to stay warm in winter and that mountain goats grow a thicker coat of fur for the same reason. We were intrigued with snowshoe hares, learning that their fur is brown for most of the year and that it turns white in winter to camouflage with the snow and protect itself from predators!
RULER: We talked about situations that might put us in the blue or red zones and about how our bodies feel when we are in those spaces. Mrs. Brydges introduced the calming nook and we talked about rules for that space and ways in which that space can help us regulate our emotions. With Mrs. Serafino's advice, every child will get a turn to explore the space before we formally open it. Only 3 more kids need turns to do that and then it should open on Tuesday! A picture is attached to show you what the space looks like.
CKLA Knowledge: We started a new unit about plants! We started by distinguishing between living things and nonliving things. We talked about what living things need to survive. We learned about plants that grow in different climates. We learned about plant parts and also the life cycle of a plant.
CKLA Skills: We learned the sounds /h/, /s/ and /f/ and we practiced the formation for each new sound. We ended our week with a review of all of the sounds we have learned and with chaining several words as they tapped them out and read them. A highlight of the week was "writing around the room", getting a clipboard and recording form and writing and reading CVC (consonant vowel consonant) words all around the room! Kids could pick 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 words to write and read, whatever felt most comfortable. It was a time that was active and social and full of learning!
Math: We read 2 math books that helped us to explore the number sequence in ascending order and descending order: Munch Crunch and Butterfly Countdown! A favorite math game this week was Spill Ten Beans. We also played a game called One More, One Less that allowed us to practice finding a number on a number line and identifying the numbers before and after the given number.
Week 12
Science: We observed our class tree. We noticed very few leaves. We noticed that the leaves that were still on the tree appeared to be brown and dry. We learned that with the colder temperatures and the decreased sunlight of late November days, the tree goes into "rest mode" for the winter! The children love to notice things about the tree that look the same as last month, too, like patches of lichen that are on the bark of the tree and exposed roots that are on the grass surrounding the tree.
Social Studies: Nell's dad, Airman Arnold, came in with Mrs. Arnold and talked about his active duty in the Air Force. He currently works at Westover Air Reserve Base. He showed us and let us hold and observe the many special military coins that he earned while in active duty. He showed us his different uniforms and talked about especially meaningful times during his military career. Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Arnold for joining us!
In addition to the family members that I mentioned in last weekend's email, we learned this week that James's Dad, Mr. Goodhue and Hunter's Grandpa Frank and Matty's Papa are Veterans, too!
RULER: Mrs. Serafino shared with us that Thursday was World Kindness Day! Mrs. Brydges shared the story Be Kind which prompted a rich discussion about how we can be supportive in seemingly small ways that can be really impactful. We talked about being our best selves, especially when we see someone in our family or peer group struggling.
CKLA Knowledge: We ended our Stories unit with a story called Tug-of-War that introduced the children to a type of fiction called a trickster tale. Ask your child what Turtle did to trick Elephant and Hippopotamus. We had a Domain Review to review all of the stories we explored, the vocabulary we were exposed to and to review the important concepts of characters, setting and plot. We had a unit end assessment and we will start a new unit on plants tomorrow!
CKLA Skills: We continue to learn new sounds and new tricky words. We compared words that start with the /m/ and /n/ sounds. We learned that our mouths are closed when we make the /m/ sound, but open when we make the /n/ sound.
Please be consistent about having your child do the Skills homework that comes home; it is important because children can practice the skills they worked on that day in class.
Math: We continue to strengthen our math skills with the Bridges math program. We learned a new math game called Butterfly Race which helped us to practice addition and recognizing odd and even numbers.
We also spent time comparing a circle and a cone. We all cut out our own circle and then cut in a straight line into the center of the circle. Mrs. Brydges showed us how we could curl the paper and tape it and create a cone! But before you did that final step we drew decorations on the paper so we could make the cone into a party hat for one of our stuffies at home!
Week 11
WIN block: We have formally started our WIN block. As I talked about at Back to School night, children get extra doses of small group instruction tailored to their individual needs during this time. We are still establishing routines, but the children seem to be loving it so far!
Social Studies: We did a Let's Find Out about Veterans Day and learned about the different branches of the US military. We also learned about different ways people recognize Veterans Day, including air shows that Navy pilots, the Blue Angels, put on.
We will be blessed to have Nell's dad, Airman Arnold, talk about his experience in the Air Force tomorrow!
CKLA Knowledge: We enjoyed the story Goldilocks and the 3 Bears and the children focused on the characters, setting and plot with this story. We also enjoyed 2 stories that were unfamiliar to us: Momotaro, Peach Boy and The Story of Jumping Mouse. In the latter 2 stories, the children noticed some parallels like main characters who thought of others in a caring and respectful way and who went to extraordinary lengths to help others in need. This generated a powerful discussion about what it means to be a hero.
CKLA Skills: The children were introduced to tricky words and we got to use picture readers to practice reading those words! The first two tricky words are one and two. Letters that are underlined in our tricky words are sounds that "don't play by the rules" or are sounds we haven't been formally taught yet. We just have to remember how they are spelled because they are tricky!
Mrs. B. also taught us a fun game called Eraser Man! There were boxes for the letters that helped kids know if the letters were tall, short or letters that are short and also go below the bottom line. The words were all CVC words and if a child guessed a letter correctly it went into the correct box. If the letter wasn't in the word, a body part got erased on Eraser Man! The kids loved it!
Math: We played a new game called “Grab Bag Doubles”. In this game, the children took turns pulling unifix cubes out of a bag and arranging them on a ten frame in pairs. If there was not one left over, we knew we got a "double" and that we had an even number of cubes. If there was one left over, we recognized that we had an odd number of cubes. Playing this game gave us the chance to practice tallying, too! When we got an even number of cubes, we got a tally mark. We didn't get one for the odd numbers. The first player to get 5 tally marks won the game!
The children have been really intrigued by all that they are learning about 2 D and 3 D shapes during Number Corner! They learned that a cube is made out of 6 squares, that a sphere can roll, but a circle can't and that if you roll up a rectangle made out of paper. We have looked for things with cube, sphere and cylinder shapes around our classroom. You could do the same activity at home!
Week 10
Halloween: We did a craft with our 5 grade buddies in the morning which is always so special.
At our party in the afternoon we had stations. At the art table kids made bats with chalk, oil pastels, googly eyes and bat stencils! Children also drew themselves in their costumes in their journals and made Halloween cards for their fifth grade buddies! They made ghost garlands and did Halloween exercises like a phantom planks and batty arm circles!
We then marched in the all-school parade holding hands with our buddies! It seems like yesterday when those 5th graders were in kindergarten. Time flies!
Social Studies: We learned more about the benefits of taking a meta moment. We talked about moments of stress and how our bodies feel if we are upset. We talked about calming our bodies down by checking our posture, putting our hands on our chests and taking deep breaths in and deep breaths out. We could feel our bodies relax when we did this. Then we learned what a mantra is and created mantras to think to ourselves as we are breathing in and out. One child said "think of your mom!" and another said "I am strong" and another said "think of 6 Flags!". This prompted us to think of places we love and to think of a mantra about it and one of our cardinals said "I love school!".
CKLA Knowledge: We learned a new story, "The Three Billy Goats Gruff"! We loved making puppets and using props and retelling the story with dramatic voices! We hope you loved hearing a retelling at home!
We also learned that folktales are a special kind of story that has been passed down through the generations orally, rather than through being written down. The folktales we enjoyed hearing and analyzing were "The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids" and "The Bremen Town Musicians"!
CKLA Skills: Now that we have studied the (short) vowel sounds of /a/, and /o/, we played games where we practiced discriminating the vowel sounds in the middle of CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant). In addition to those vowels, we have now studied the following consonant sounds: /t/, /d/, /c/, /m/ and /g/. We are doing lots of "chaining exercises" where we add, delete or substitute a different sound for each word as we work hard at blending sounds as we read.
(e.g. dad > mad > mat > at >cat > cot > dot). Please do the homework that we send home most days of the week. (You don't need to send it back to school). This practice at home is a critical component of the learning your child does so s/he gets good practice honing his/her skills!
Math: Every month there is a different focus for Number Corner and this month we will focus on 2D and 3D shapes. So far we have explored what is alike and different when observing a square and a cube. We learned a new math game called Bump that has partners, a game board, 2 die and unifix cubes; each player has a stick of 10 cubes in a color that is different from his/her partner. This game offered us the chance to practice different counting strategies, including identifying how many dots are on one of the dice, saying that number and then counting on from there when pointing to each of the dots on the second dice.
Week 9
Science: We learned about the difference between deciduous trees and evergreen trees and went on a hunt for different trees in each category in our school yard! As you will read below in the section about math, we learned about tallying this week. A great family (optional) homework experience could be to take a nature walk in your yard or in a park and look for trees of both types and tally how many of each type you found!
Social Studies: Mrs. Serafino came back and did another RULER lesson, this time teaching us about taking a "meta moment", a process for responding to emotional situations in a way that shows our best selves. We talked about how we react when someone has something we want in the classroom and children did a great job thinking of ideas of what to say to a friend when we are navigating this! We are working on setting up a calming corner in our room where children can go when they need to calm down or need a moment of comfort. If you would like to donate a fidget toy or squishy sensory toy, we would love it, thanks! If you have a small bean bag chair you are not using we could use one, too (we would need vinyl/ faux leather/ nylon instead of a soft cloth covering for allergy reasons).
CKLA Knowledge: We learned about the lives of Ray Charles and Helen Keller. We learned that a biography is a true story about a real person's life written by another person. After learning about each of these remarkable people, we made a timeline of each of their lives to review what we learned. Favorite experiences were watching a short video clip of Ray Charles playing piano on Sesame Street and learning that when we take a walk to the bathrooms outside of the gym we can feel the Braille on the bathroom signs. Ask your child what s/he learned about Ray Charles and Helen Keller!
Midweek we shifted from learning about the 5 senses to learning about stories! Ask your child to retell Chicken Little and the Three Little Pigs! We talked about what characters and plot mean and as always, discussed new vocabulary like "sly" and "blazing". When I told the kids about how different writers retell stories in many different ways, one of our friends said he knew about a different version where the pig is the bad guy. One of those stories is The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig. That is one of my favorites so I read it on Friday! One of the students is our class was so moved by the ending she had tears in her eyes!
CKLA Skills: It feels great to be watching kids blending sounds and reading words! We practiced substituting individual sound/spellings to make and read new words! We continue to orally blend words with their phonemes isolated, and then blended together (e.g. /sh/ /i/ /p/ > ship! A favorite game is say 8 different words, first broken up into their different sounds and then blending the sounds together, tapping down our arms with each phoneme. After we have blended each word, we guess the category that all 8 words have in common, like vehicles or body parts!
Math: We learned about making tally marks using popsicle sticks. Students were given a number and then would make that number on their mats with popsicle sticks. We then added more popsicle sticks or took some away. Students were very excited when we got to 5 and we learned about making a gate with the 5th tally mark. They loved learning that if we see a group of tally marks with a gate that means it represents 5. We ended the week playing the tip toe game and kids with 10 frame cards with dots on them found their partner with tally cards that had the same value! We also played Bingo with 10 frame cards and tally cards!
We also ended the week looking at the cubes we collected during the week during Number Corner (the leader of the day spins a 1-4 spinner every day this month and there are blue and orange cubes in a bag). When we sorted the cubes by color we talked about which color had more and which had less and then we talked about how we could figure out how many cubes we had in all without counting one by one (see photo attached). One child suggested that we could count 5 + 5 with the cubes on the top of both 10 frames and then count on from there. Another child said "I know that 6 + 6 is 12 and I can see both mats have 6. But the blue has one extra and one more than 12 is 13." The children inspire us every day with their thinking!
Week 8 Fire Safety and Bus Evacuation: We did a Let's Find Out about fire safety. We learned to be cautious around hot surfaces (this tied into learning we did about our senses in CKLA and how we have nerve endings under our skin and if we ever burn our skin, our brain will remember the experience and help us to be more cautious next time!). We also had bus evacuation practice on Friday. With Let's Find Out and with our bus evacuation practice, we learned that we should not take time to collect things we own and are special to us if there is smoke or fire in our homes or on a bus we are on; we should just get outside as quickly as we can and stay low if there is smoke and fire. Our lovely bus driver also told the children that they should have a plan with their families about where to meet in their yard if there ever is a fire.
Science: We observed our adopted tree and noticed that with the cooler temperatures, the tree is stopping its food-making process and the chlorophyll is breaking down so the red, yellow and orange colors appear. Our adopted tree's leaves look mostly orange with some green leaves still sprinkled in. We also noticed that there weren't as many leaves on the tree as there were last month! Some of the branches were much more visible. Each month we observe the same maple tree so that we can see how it changes over the course of the year during different seasons.
Our reading specialist, Mrs. Brown, talked with us about a recycling initiative. We can all start recycling bread bags, plastic that comes around multi packs of paper towels, bubble wrap, etc.. The key is it needs to be plastic that stretches, not crinkly plastic. Mrs. Brown told the children that they cannot recycle that type of plastic at home because it would jam up the machines. She said we have bins at our school for this type of plastic and that the plastic gets recycled and made into benches, etc. instead of being buried in landfills. Children can collect crayons and markers to be recycled, too! More information is attached to this email.
CKLA Knowledge: We did a review of the 5 senses including activities like looking at our eyes with mirrors, reviewing the function of the different parts of the eye and then drawing them. We noticed our tear ducts, pupils, irises, eyelids, eyelashes and eyebrows! We also reviewed what happens with our bodies when we smell something and we had a fun smell around the room activity! Favorite scents were cinnamon and maple syrup!
CKLA Skills: We have shifted from having kids form prewriting motions/ shapes like vertical/ horizontal lines, etc, to writing letters! When we teach the kids to print the letters, we initially present them as sounds. Children learned the /m/ sound this week and learned how to write the letter. We noticed we had our mouths closed for /m/ sound! We practiced isolating the first sounds in lots of words!
We also learned that a sound can be added to the end of a word to make a new word. For example we all said the word "ray" and then added the following sounds onto the end of it to make new words: /n/, /z/, /s/, /k/ and /l/. Our literacy coaches and reading center teachers gave each child a DIBELS literacy assessment as a baseline assessment to test children's skills with letter and letter sound ID and phonemic awareness.
Math: We did an activity called “Two Color Ten Frames” where students had a ten frame mat and 2 different colored sets of unifix cubes. We studied different ten frames where the top row of dots was red and the bottom row was white. Students used their unifix cubes to match the example ten frames. Lastly,we used number racks with 5 red beads and 5 white beads on a silver rod. When I flashed a ten frame card with a certain number of dots on it, they needed to slide that many beads across the number rack with as few pushes as possible! As children start to understand the relationship of 5 within 10, their ease in using the number racks increases!
RULER: Mrs. Serafino came in and did a lesson about having big feelings and taking a "meta moment" and thinking about our feelings before we act. We talked about identifying our feelings when things weren't going our way and talked about examples of situations that can be challenging emotionally. She gave us some great calming strategies like taking deep breaths, drinking water, coloring or drawing or reading a book.
Fifth Grade Buddies: We love our fifth grade buddies! We were so excited to reunite! We did a candy corn mosaic art project together and loved it. Afterward we had a closing circle about the time together and younger and older students alike were sharing such positive experiences!
Explorers: Mrs. Serafino kindly shared a video and some photos of the children's STEM challenge and teamwork they did in explorers this week!
Week 7Royal Readers: We got to celebrate the birthdays of two of our cardinals this week! Jack was joined by his mom, Mrs. Miller, big sister Lily, and little brothers Sam and Luke! Mrs. Miller and Lily were Royal Readers and read Doctor De Soto to our class! We also enjoyed having James's family join us for his special day! Mom Ms. Brandolini was a Royal Reader and read Dragons Love Tacos and Dad Mr. Goodhue was a Royal Reader, too, and read And Then Comes Summer. Big brother Rylan was also able to join us! Happy 6th birthday Jack and James!
Science: We read a book called It's Pumpkin Time and watched a video about the life cycle of a pumpkin. We enjoyed learning how a seed planted only an inch into the ground grows a sprout out of the dirt that turns into a vine that grows yellow flowers that produce a small green pumpkin that grows into a bigger orange pumpkin! We showed this life cycle in our science notebooks with a cut and paste sequencing exercise.
We also got to put our hands inside of a big pumpkin that had its top carved out and got to touch pumpkin flesh and seeds if we chose to!
CKLA Knowledge: We learned about the sense of smell and taste this week! We learned that odor molecules rush in through your nostrils when you smell something and they travel high up into your nose until they reach smell receptors. The smell receptors tell your brain about the molecules you just sniffed and your brain sends a message back about the scent... whether it be that it's a sweet smell or a foul smell!
When we learned about the sense of taste, we learned how connected our sense of taste and our sense of smell are! We learned that while we have over 10,000 taste buds all over our tongues, our sense of taste and smell work together to help us figure out what food tastes like!
CKLA: Skills We started to have kids isolate the first sounds in words. When we did this with our names, one of our friends noted that we have friends in our class whose names start with C and K and all of those names start with the same sound, even though their names start with different letters!
Children also learned the proper technique for forming +, x and loops. These are all pre-writing practices that will help children form letters with accurate technique.
We also continue to practice blending sound blending within words.
Math: We learned a new math game called Count and Compare that helped us to compare numbers and whether they are greater than, less than or equal to another given number. The game is similar to the card game war, but a cool feature is that at the end of each play, someone takes a turn spinning a spinner that has less than and greater than on it. If the spinner lands on less than, the child with the small number gets the trick and vice versa. At the end of the game, each player counts his/her collected cards and compares the number of cards collected with his/her opponent. A teacher then spins the greater than/ less than spinner and if the spinner lands on less than, the child with fewer cards wins! As always, with our math games, we talked about being good sports before playing!
RULER: We had our school adjustment counselor, Mrs. Irizarry, as a guest reader in our classroom. She read the beautiful book Just Ask about the ways we are all different. We talked about feelings that sometimes arise when someone is really different than we are. It was a healthy and productive conversation and our cardinals showed depth in their emotions!
Week 6:CKLA Knowledge: We finished our unit on Nursery Rhymes and Fables with some assessments and also a culminating activity that intersected with our RULER curriculum! We talked about the main characters in the nursery rhymes and fables and discussed where we thought the characters' feelings would fall on the mood meter! This required some good critical thinking. An example of this is one child thought Jack in "Jack Be Nimble" might be in the red zone because he had so much nervous energy that his clothes might light on fire jumping over the candlestick (we learned that hundreds of years ago people would jump over a lit candle as a traditional game in England). Another child thought Jack would be in the yellow zone because jumping over a lit candle would be so much fun!
We started our new unit on the Five Senses on Wednesday.
CKLA Skills: We have been using our hands to blend syllables. We are so impressed with how quickly they picked this up. We did a lot of practice with this and even got to play a game with it that was similar to “Duck, Duck, Goose” but in this version you would say a 2 syllable word, one syllable at a time (similar to duck) and then you would eventually say the word with the syllables blended together (goose)! We had so much fun with this! We also pivoted from syllables to individual sounds in words. With this exercise, we tapped our shoulders, elbows and then wrists for several words that have 3 sounds; we then slid our hands all the way down our arms to put the sounds together!
Math: We have shifted from working with 5 frames to working with 10 frames. Children have all kinds of great counting strategies when asked how many dots are on a ten frame and how they can tell how many there are without counting the dots one by one. Children are loving our math games "Spill 10 Beans" and "Which Numeral Will Win?"!
We also started exploring patterns and explored AB, AAB, ABB and AABB patterns. We did this with ourselves (e.g. short sleeved top, long sleeved top), with math manipulatives and with paper insects!
RULER: Mrs. Brydges read I Like Me! and we talked about character traits we appreciate about ourselves. This is the beginning of a larger conversation about "our best selves". This was a heady topic and hard for the children to grasp in the beginning. Eventually we came up with the following list (some of the words were my words that I introduced after the children described acting that way in kid language):
a good friend
creative
respectful
helpful
infinity loving (this was a child's idea!)
artistic
kind
clever
good at building
nice
inclusive
Week 5: CKLA Knowledge: We enjoyed our nursery rhymes and even compared and contrasted Little Boy Blue and Little Bo Peep with a class Venn Diagram! At the end of the week, we shifted over from nursery rhymes to fables. We learned that fables always have a story and a lesson to be learned called a moral. Our first story was "The Lion and the Mouse". Children worked hard to put sequence cards in order after we enjoyed the fable a few times and explored key vocabulary words and answered literal and inferential questions about it.
CKLA Skills: We continued to practice counting how many words we hear in each sentence that I say. They put cubes down in boxes. A favorite activity this week was one where we took turns jumping across pretend lily pads, one jump for each word in a phrase or sentence. This was tricky when there were words with more than one syllable! We finished Unit 1. Unit 2 shifts to phonemic awareness (hearing sounds in words) and oral blending of sounds.
Math: We have enjoyed learning more about circles, rectangles, squares and triangles this month. We have learned little songs to remember each shape's attributes! We have been noticing items around the room that have those shapes like our clock having a circle shape and our door having a rectangle shape!
We finished our Number Printing book and learned a new math game called "Which Numeral Will Win?".
Explorers with Mrs. Serafino: This week in Explorers your class officially finished our charter by coming up with action steps on how we can make people feel the way we agreed upon and by decorating a cardinal to go around the charter. We played a little game of Mirror, Mirror so one student modeled an emotion and the other student was the mirror and had to copy it. We talked about what we noticed about the person and what changed depending on the emotion (opened eyes, clenched fists, jumping up and down, still body, etc). Then I read the book The Boy With Big, Big Feelings. Next week we are going to do an activity linked to this book.
Week 4:Science: We started our first science unit about trees. We learned the trees are the biggest plants in the world and that the stem of a tree is its trunk. Children brought some awesome background knowledge about trees to our conversation. We adopted a maple tree in the front yard of the school. Children noticed lots of things like lichen on the bark and a grasshopper right at the base of the tree on the trunk! One of the kids asked me to take a photo of the grasshopper and "send it to our parents"... these are modern kids! So here you go! We noticed that most of the leaves were green. We made observations in our science notebooks. The children will observe the same tree every month for the whole school year to see how the tree changes over the course of a year.
Social Studies: We have lots of read alouds that support our goal of teaching empathy and emotional intelligence that we strive for with the RULER program. We read the story, How Full is Your Bucket?. The children were easily able to understand this metaphor about an invisible bucket we all have. When your bucket is full, you're happy; when it's empty, you feel awful. We talked about how you can fill someone's bucket by being supportive and kind. We talked about not wanting to dip into anyone's bucket with words that hurt. We are working on building community using kind words.
Fifth Grade Buddies: We met our fifth grade buddies on Monday! This is one of Center School's most special traditions! Children did a "get to know you" activity. We were so excited, kids and teachers! We have a request of families this year that all K and 5th grade teachers will make clear to their classes. Please do not send your child in with a store bought gift for his/ her buddy at any time during the school year. A handwritten note or drawing is lovely and fine! It's tempting for kids and families to want to buy gifts like stuffed animals for their buddies around the holidays, Valentine's Day, etc. and we see the kindness behind the gesture. However we see tears almost every time this happens, from the older and younger kids when some kids have gifts and others don't. The relationships that are formed are so special; gifts are not needed! Thank you for your partnership and your understanding.
CKLA Knowledge: We continued with our unit about nursery rhymes. Some of the nursery rhymes we explored this week were "This Little Pig Went to Market", "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe", "Star Light, Star Bright" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". The children loved all of the nursery rhymes, but This Little Pig Went to Market was a favorite! When I asked the children if the rhyme could happen in real life, children chimed in that pigs don't wear clothes and go to the market and so on, but then another child said "but it is true, my mom tells me the story on my toes at night!" At that point another child asked if I would email about learning this nursery rhyme; she was hoping her parents would tell the nursery rhyme on her toes!
CKLA Skills: Children continued to learn to make different writing strokes like vertical lines, horizontal lines, diagonal lines, circles and squares. The children love using their arms extended straight, with their pointer fingers pointed forward as a pretend laser (as their pretend writing instrument) and making writing strokes in the air like robots. Mrs. B. uses a silly robot voice and we love it! We also love writing the strokes on paper all around the room.
We practiced clapping for each word in a sentence. This got tricky when words with more than one syllable still got one clap!
Math: We have had fun with a pretend grasshopper, Hap, with number line games, where we count on from a number larger than one, tell what number is covered on the number line and justify why it is that number (e.g. "I think the number is 7 because, it is one less than 8 and the number after the covered number is 8"), and count backwards from a given number.
We learned to play a fun math game called Spill 5 Beans which we played with a partner. Each partner pair had 5 chips that were red on one side and white on the other. It helped children recognize that numbers can be decomposed into different combinations. Ask your child to tell you the rules for the game!
Explorers with Mrs. Serafino: Today we focused on the words collaboration and compromise. We listened to the story Collaboration Station, talked about what collaboration is, talked about times we have collaborated and then we collaborated ourselves. They had to brainstorm what a paper plate could be turned into and in groups they all brainstormed ideas on butcher paper. Then, each individual had to pick their favorite idea and they had to compromise and collaborate to put those ideas together into one. They did a great job and were so creative!
Week 3: All-School Assembly: A highlight of our week was when we had an all-school assembly on Friday morning. Lots of us saw siblings, cousins and neighbors. We sang our Center School song "This School is Our School" which is sung to the tune of "This Land is Your Land". The chorus of the song is:
"This School is your school
This school is my school
From the kindergarten, to the Fifth Grade classrooms
From the secretaries, to Mrs. Hutton
This school was made for you and me!"
It is a sentimental song that brought tears to Mrs. Wysocki's eyes and mine, too!
RULER: Our social studies lessons have primarily focused on building classroom community and helping children identify their feelings using a mood meter. A favorite activity this week was playing a game called "Guess That Emotion"! Mrs. Brydges whispered a feeling word into a child's ear (e.g. frustrated) and that child would act out that feeling and kids guessed what the feeling was based on that child's acting!
CKLA (Core Knowledge Language Arts) Skills: We have been working on identifying and counting sounds with both knocking sounds and with instruments! We have been focusing on position words and left to right directionality. We put cubes on our mats everytime we heard a different sound, being sure to add the cubes from left to right.
A favorite activity was shaking hands using our right hands! We practiced using eye contact and giving Mrs. Brydges a handshake, using our right hands. You can practice this at home, too! (This helps with social skills, but also in discriminating between right and left).
We also worked on using a tripod grip using broken crayons. Very short crayons help little hands grip a writing instrument with a proper grip. We practiced making vertical lines, starting at the top and then horizontal lines starting on the left!
CKLA Knowledge: With our knowledge component, children have been learning nursery rhymes! Each lesson gives children some background knowledge for the nursery rhyme, including important vocabulary words. The children have been diving deep into meaning! When we learned "It's Raining It's Pouring" a child asked if the character in that nursery rhyme is real. We talked about how nursery rhymes are songs and poems for children passed down through the generations and are mostly thought of as fiction. Another child chimed in and said everything that happened in "It's Raining It's Pouring" could happen in real life. This was a heady discussion with 5 and 6 year olds! We ended the week by learning "Jack Be Nimble" and the history behind it and then jumping over a real candlestick!
Explorers with Mrs. Serafino: This week we chose our five words for the kindergarten charter: happy, safe, calm, respected and inspired. We talked more deeply about happy and calm and they each drew a picture of what makes them feel happy or calm or something they can do to make someone else feel happy or calm. We then watched a clip from Daniel Tiger and talked about how he felt at different times and plotted him on the mood meter. We discussed facial and body cues to help us figure out how he was feeling. They did a great job! (Thank you Mrs. Serafino for this update!).
Math: With our Bridges math program, we are currently working with quantities within and including 5. Students are working on decomposing within 5 (5 is 1 and 4, etc.). Students are also learning to subitize within 5 (quickly identify unstructured and structured quantities). We loved having Mrs. Brydges flash 5 frame cards with set numbers of dots on them really quickly and then recreating that amount with cubes on our 5 frames with unifix cubes!
We are working on printing our numbers in a number printing book. We try hard to remember to print numbers "starting at the top"! On each page there is a little jingle to help us remember how to print each number. We love these jingles! Our first jingle was :"A straight line down is fun. That's the way to make a one!" On each page, the children draw each number carefully several times and then draw the number of pictures that correspond to the number on that page.
Week 2: Royal Reader: We had 2 birthdays this week and we enjoyed celebrating our birthday kids with Royal Reader time, a special tradition in our kindergarten classroom.
Matty's parents, Mrs. Martin and Mr. Bykowsky, came in on Wednesday to help Matty celebrate his birthday. Mrs. Martin was our Royal Reader and she read The Wonderful Things You Will Be to our class. On Friday, Iris's dad, Mr. Weatherborn, came in to help her celebrate her special day. He was our Royal Reader and he read Me First to our class. Happy 6th birthday Matty and Iris!
We actually have 8 summer birthdays this year! If your child has a summer birthday, you can come in for Royal Reader time on or around your child's half birthday or in June. If you prefer celebrating your child's half birthday, please email me (Amy) 2 weeks before your child's half birthday.
ELA: We will start our formal literacy program, CKLA, tomorrow! We appreciate the time before the program starts to enjoy some extra read alouds and enjoy the alphabet in playful ways! We counted letters in kids' names this week and each child made a caterpillar craft; each body segment had a different letter of your child's name! We also enjoyed the ABC book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and then got to walk around the room with a clipboard to notice all of the print around the room and record letters we saw on our recording sheet!
Math: Our math lessons this week focused on our shoes. We looked at attributes our shoes had, e.g. laces/ no laces, black/ not black, size 12/ a different size (the kids came up with all of the categories!) and divided children's shoes up based on the attribute we were focusing on. This gave us the chance to practice counting, comparing number values and looking at different ways to break apart the same number.
Social/ Emotional/ RULER: We enjoyed the book Chrsysanthemum and this prompted a healthy dialogue about how we want to feel at school. This helped us to write our class charter, which includes not only how we want to feel, but what we all need to do so kids can feel that way. We gathered all of the kids' thoughts last week, but they haven't seen the charter yet with everyone's ideas synthesized! We will share it as a class tomorrow and all sign it, too! It's a living document that we will refer back to often and revise as needed.
Week 1: We have had a great start to our kindergarten year. These first days of K can be tiring for our smallest Cardinals. We spend lots of time getting to know each other and settling into routines. We are guessing you didn't have much trouble getting your children to bed at the end of the week!
In the email we sent a couple weeks ago, we suggested letting kids acclimate to the cafeteria before ordering hot lunch. The kids are ready now, so if your child wants to try ordering it, s/he is welcome to do that. Just be sure that you have reviewed the menu online to be sure there is an option that your child will like. Thank you for sending in spare snacks for the upper section of your child's cubby, knowing that teachers are not allowed to give out snacks; if you haven't done so yet, please send them in in a large ziploc bag with your child's name on it. Those snacks are in case you forget to pack a snack on a given day. Please be sure that your child's daily snack is in a designated spot in his/her backpack that your child can easily find and that it is in a separate spot from your child's lunchbox if your child is bringing lunch from home.
We sent home the picture day ordering information in your child's backpack at the end of the week. Picture day will be this Wednesday, September 3. Luckily our class has the first slot at 8:50 so children should appear in photographs roughly the way you send them to school! Please remember Wednesday is a P.E. day, so please be sure your child has sneakers that day, whether s/he wears them to school that day or has them in his/her backpack.
The children all settled right in on our first week of school. We played name games and practiced looking our friends in the eye. We did a family portrait and we wrote our name.
We studied our names! We noticed upper and lower case letters and a space between our first and last names! We did a name puzzle activity where we cut the letters of our first and last names into a cup. We then covered the top of the cup with our hand and shook the cup. We then glued the letters of our name below the letters already printed on our papers. When we finished our work, we found a teacher and two friends to read our names to. Our teachers and friends gave us compliments!
We celebrated the alphabet! We recited the alphabet from A-Z and then cut out the letters on paper squares and put them into a cup. We then took our spoons and stirred the soup and pretended to eat alphabet soup. When Mrs. Brydges modeled it, she pretended to blow on it so she didn't burn her tongue. The kids thought this was hilarious! Then the children had to glue the paper letters onto a paper bowl in order from A-Z. They had to read the letters to a teacher in order from A-Z when they were done, pointing to the letters as they read them.
We started our calendar routines with Number Corner, part of the Bridges math program. We have a growing number line and a spot where we show how many days we have been in school with links. We played with some of our new math tools- unifix cubes, pattern blocks, cuisenaire rods and snap cubes. Children were already having mathematical conversations about length, patterns and shapes.
We have a social/ emotional program called RULER. We watched a short video clip and tried to name feelings the characters seemed to experience. We talked about when we might have felt the ways the characters felt and about how much our emotions and feelings matter with our health, friendships, and our experiences at school. We then got up and acted out different scenarios that might make us feel different ways. We could see that our bodies easily show how we are feeling!
I (Amy) am planning on calling a few families each day over the next couple weeks. I’d love to hear how your child is adjusting to kindergarten, and it is a good time to answer any questions that often arise at the beginning of the year.
We are so happy to have a whole year with this sweet group of children!