September
September 9-13, 2019
The children are playing a number line game at their math station. They are doing a great job transitioning independently and working the whole time! During stations, small groups will be pulled to have direct instructional time at their individual level. We will begin small group math instruction this week!
Measuring monsters in math stations! The task was to measure the height of the monsters using unifix cubes and to record on their data sheet.
For Reader's Workshop, we read the story Mean Jean Recess Queen. The K-kids retold the story using key details from beginning, middle, and end.
In literacy stations the children identified beginning letter sounds.
The writing center opened this week! The children will have monthly vocabulary words with corresponding activities.
The children take turns being the calendar and weather helper. This interactive calendar keeps the children engaged and participating in the activities. This week we practiced writing our numbers, patterns, and simple addition.
The children completed a rainbow letter writing activity.
The Monster Store opened this Friday! The children were excited to use their hard earned money to buy a prize. Monster dollars are used a positive reinforcement tool by catching their good behavior, promoting kindness, and teaching the children to be more self-aware of their actions.
The K-kids met their 8th grade reading buddies this week. They will partner with the same buddy every other week. The 8th graders will serve as their mentor this year!
Art Class
The children learned about primary and secondary colors and explored this through their paintings!
September 16-20, 2019
STEAM Race car challenge: The children built their own ramp and tested out their designs. The added challenge was to build a ramp with two different heights. One ramp measured at 5 cubes vs. 15 cubes high. I was impressed that many of the children predicted that the ramp with the height of 15 cubes would increase the distance of the race car! They tested out their predictions and were excited with the outcome. Many of the children asked to bring out their ramps during free choice to run more tests.
WOW pictures- This week we made progressive pictures and talked about making our pictures come to life. Pictures need colors that make sense, details, and color to pop! The kiddos drew their own level 5 WOW pictures and shared with their classmates. A few children were stretched to add a few sentences to describe their picture.
In Reader's Workshop we read the story, Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. We discussed making predictions about text based on recognizing clues in the story. They make predictions in their journals and had a chance to share.
Harvest Hubaloo was a fun game the children played in literacy centers. Working in pairs, they took turns hiding the apple behind a letter. The partner had to name or say the letter sound to guess where the missing apple was hiding!
Fun on the playground!
In French class the children are working on their alphabet books and vocabulary! Madame Michaelson's blog is linked on the home page with more details!
This kiddo was excited to bring in a homeade claw device for show and tell. The children were great listeners as he presented. At the end I opened it up to questions and he had a blast being an expert on his creation.
Pac Man tag in P.E
September 23-27, 2019
For Lower School Leadership Week the focus was kindness. As a Kindergarten class, we read the story, Kindness is Cooler Mrs. Ruler and discussed acts of kindness at school and home. Next, we made a list of people we wanted to spread kindness to! The children made bookmarks to share.
In Reading groups the kiddos are working at their individual level. You will see 'just right' books going home this week.
We read the book, The Dot and discussed growth mindset. The children used their creativity to create a picture based on the story.
In Literacy centers, the children listened to a book on tape and completed a reading response.
