January 27, 2017

What another busy week we had here in room 113!

Students have completed a lot of different artwork in preparation for our trip to the Aquarium next week. Students made sharks out of newspaper that went home this week as well as finished their House for Hermit Crab individual innovations. They painted with watercolors their covers of their books and they came out beautiful. We made sea turtles, whales, and penguins. We have our very own aquarium in Room 113!

The House for Hermit Crab books will be coming home as soon as your child has shared theirs with the class. The repetition of the language in the book will help students to develop their fluency when they read. I would encourage you to save this book and other books the students bring home and practice reading them often. You can have your student look for different sight words in the text as well as other words they know.

Students have been busy writing in their journals. We learned about a sea turtle and students wrote a fact that they found interesting. Ask your student how much a sea turtle can weigh or where they lay eggs! We also have been talking about the different parts of a fish. Students drew a picture of a fish and labeled the different parts.

We have also been working hard on syllables this week. Students graphed different pictures in the different syllables. This will be important when they write words with more than one syllable to help sound out the sounds they know or when they are reading.  You can practice syllables at home by using different words or objects around your house and asking your student to tell you how many syllables in the word. We have practiced with claps or with putting our hands under our jaws to feel how many times our jaws drop when we say different words.

Today we had our Fish Day! Students were able to go to the other kindergarten classrooms to create different fish artwork. We will have our very own Francis Wyman Aquarium in the Kindergarten hall. Thank you so much to Mrs. Andrews for helping out with the projects!

We will be having a program called Superfish in school on Monday. Mr. Musselman from the Burlington Science Center comes and talks to us about fish and their different parts. He also talks to us about different sea creatures we might see at the aquarium. It is always fun!

Report cards were sent home at the beginning of the week. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out. In March we will have our next round of conferences. I will send home a schedule as it gets closer.

We have been working on our number writing in school, but it always helps to practice at home too. You can practice as homework. Also, the math sheets that we do in school have an additional homework piece at the end you can do with your child and return, if you would like.

We will celebrate Valentine’s Day in school. Students are welcome to bring a valentine for everyone in the class. Please have your student write everyone’s name on the valentine. You can send them in whenever they are done. Unfortunately we cannot have any valentines with food or candy. Students are welcome to bring in an extra snack on Valentine’s Day. They are welcome to eat it while they open their valentines. Today in folders was a class list with everyone’s names.

As a reminder- please do not send in anything for snack that contains nuts. It is sometimes helpful to talk to your child about what they can have for snack out of their bag before snack time. Thanks!

Please keep practicing at home how to dress for the cold weather. We are still heading outside if the temperature is above 20 degrees. It would also be helpful to start teaching students how to tie their boots as well.

From the PTO:

It's time to start sending in those Box Tops again! The PTO is holding a classroom contest, the classroom that sends in the most Box Tops will win a prize! Please make sure to send in your Box Tops in a Ziploc bag labeled with student's first name, last name, and homeroom number. Box Tops must be sent in by February 15th to be counted for the contest.

The next used book store at Francis Wyman will be Wednesday, February 15th. Mrs. Murphy, one of our reading specialists, does one used book store a month. She is always looking for volunteers. If you would like to help out, send her an email at dmurphy@bpsk12.org

Happy Friday!

Over the past week we have been busy getting ready for our trip to the Aquarium! We have been learning a lot about fish and other animals that live in the ocean. Ask your child how many legs an octopus has! We have written in our journals and learned new poems. I am very impressed how students are using their knowledge of letters and letter sounds to write what they hear in their journals. All students are being encouraged now to write in full sentences, some students more than one sentence! Students have made different ocean life art work. It has brighten up our room. 

In math we finished our unit on addition. We talked a lot about how addition is taking two parts and putting them together to make a whole. We started subtraction this week. We have been talking about how subtraction is taking a part away from the whole. Please practice with your students the addition facts that I sent home. Students are expected to answer the facts in 3 seconds to be fluent. I will be sending home subtraction facts soon for you to practice with your student. They are also expected to answer the subtraction facts in 3 seconds to be fluent. 

Some important things coming up:

We are headed to the New England Aquarium on January 31st. If you still haven't sent in the money for the trip, please do so as soon as possible. As always, if your child is not going to attend, please let me know. 

Fish Day will be Friday January 27th. During Fish Day students are allowed to go to other classrooms to complete different fish artwork projects. If you would like to volunteer, please let me know. The time will be from 9:15 until 10:00. You will need to be CORIed and attend a Principal's Confidentiality meeting. 

The next Principal's Confidentiality meeting will be Thursday the 26th at 8:00 in the library. Once you do one meeting you are all set for your student's time at Francis Wyman School. 

Wee Deliver- a Francis Wyman postal service will begin February 6th until the 14th. Students in 3rd grade run a school-wide post office. If you would like to write a letter to your student, there will be a mailbox outside the office. We are 113 Friend Place, Burlington MA 01803. You can drop off your letter by the office or you can send it in your student's folder and I can take care of it for you.

Scholastic Book Orders will be due the 26th. You can order online through the website link at the top of the blog. 

I am still looking for more volunteers to be a guest reader in our classroom. I am looking to start a schedule soon. Please send me a note or an email if you would like to be a guest reader. Thank you!

Wish List:

We are in need of a few items in our classroom for different projects. We are looking for:

-paper plates

-tissue paper

-paper towel rolls

-toilet paper rolls

-newspaper

Acts of Kindness

                          

Today we read two special books: Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes and What Does It Mean To Be Kind? by Rana DiOrio

As a class we talked about what it means sometimes when we are worried about different things and different fears we can have. Wemberly is a little girl mouse who is always worried about something, and her fears get greater as she gets closer to going to school. We talked about how it is okay to be worried about things, and just like Wemberly, a friend can be a great resource for us when we are worried.

In What Does It Mean To Be Kind? it talks about different ways that people can be kind to each other- such as forgiving someone who has hurt you or giving a compliment or celebrating all differences. Keeping with our school wide SOAR motto, we talked about what it means to be kind in our classroom and to our friends. Our last SOAR whole school assembly focused on acts of kindness.

 Tonight, the students have homework. Keeping with acts of kindness, I asked them to do something kind. If you could talk to your student about different ways to be kind at home that would be helpful. Tomorrow we will write about different ways that we were helpful at home. I can't wait to see what different acts of kindness they did tonight!

Shaving cream fun!

We sure have been busy here in room 113 in the past few weeks!

I hope you all had a nice, restful vacation. Students came back energized and ready to work!


We have been busy writing in journals, making class books, learning new poems, and decorating different snowman artwork! I love how creative the students are and the different ideas they come up with!

In Fundations were started learning how to tap out words last week. A reference was sent home in folders last week if you would like to practice tapping out words at home. Students seem to be getting the hang of it nicely. This week we started practicing the uppercase letters. You can practice at home as well. All of our uppercase letters start at the sky line. Students have been working making their letters nice and neat, and it has been showing in their writing journals!  In their journals we now are encouraging students to write full sentences. The students are working hard on applying the sounds they know to the words they hear when writing. We call this 'best guess spelling' in Kindergarten. This will also be helpful when we start reading groups and come across words we do not know.

We are beginning to learn about fish. We talked about how fish are cold blooded and other differences between fish and mammals, which we studied back in October. We will be headed to the New England Aquarium on January 31st. If you have not sent in the money yet, please do so as soon as possible so we can get the tickets squared away.

A few new class books are out circulating around homes. They are The Jacket I Wear in the Snow and The Snowman's Hat. Please make sure if you have any class book that you send it back the next day so another student can have a turn taking one home!

We read A House for Hermit Crab this week by Eric Carle and started our own individual innovation at the book table. The repetitive text will help develop fluency when reading. Students are thinking of different animals that live in the ocean to add to their books and illustrate. They are coming out nicely and are great to keep at home and reread.


We are still going outside in the cold weather even with the snow on the ground. We will be at the hard top area. If students would like to play in the snow they need snow pants AND snow boots.  Please practice with your students on how to get on and off their snow pants and boots. It saves us a lot of extra time getting ready for recess with 16 kids!  Please make sure you label everything because items can easily be misplaced and they tend to look alike.

December 23

We sure had a busy week here in Kindergarten! 


Today in your student’s folder was a packet filled with books, a number chart, and some math games.These books are at your student’s instructional reading level. These books can stay at home and you can practice with your students reading them.  As well as being able to read the words, it is very important that students are able to retell what happened in the story. Asking your child questions about the story will help build their comprehension. We will begin guided reading starting in January, but you can always look for other books to read at home with your child, using the books I sent home as a reference. Continuing to practice the Kindergarten sight words is something else you can do at home. The list of sight words if on my blog if you have misplaced your list I gave you at our conference. None of the things in this packet need to be returned.


This week we completed our Goodnight Room 113 book that will begin circulation after our vacation. We are still missing quite a few books. If you have a handmade class book at your house, please send it back in as soon as possible so another student can take it home to share with their families.

Mrs. Christiansen came in this week to teach us our 4th life skill: When something is too hard, find a teacher and ask for help. She read us a story called Beautiful Oops which we all really enjoyed.

We got to see the 4th and 5th graders perform their holiday concert on Tuesday which was awesome!

Thank you to all of you who came to our performance of the Nutcracker! We hope you enjoyed it!!



For those of you who celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a very Merry Christmas with your families!

Have a wonderful vacation and a Happy New Year!