March 17

Museum mode is here! This week we learned about an impressionist artist, Claude Monet. We talked about how his paintings were different from those of the modern artists we looked at last week. Students even got to paint their very own rendition of Monet's most famous pieces. Be sure to look for them at our museum! We will look at other impressionist artists' work next week.

Some hard workers this week!

We practiced finding words around our classroom in our writing around the room activity that start with a different letter. Students have been good at finding lots of different words. Students also wrote in their March journals of what they would like to be when they grow up. We had a lot of different idea including policemen, movie stars, doctors, scientists, and rockstars.

We finished our All I Am books this week. I am super impressed with their writing. They are really using all of their knowledge of letter sounds to create their writing. Look for those books coming home soon!

Today we had a whole school SOARs assembly in the gym. This assembly was focused on the R in our SOARs motto: respect. We have been working on the different characteristics of respect in our room, such as working together, listening when others are talking, and use materials appropriately.

SOAR award winners nominated by teachers for showing "Respect"

 Sasha competed for our class in the school wide relay!

Alex won an award from Mrs. McDonald for demonstrating respect in the classroom!

I have begun assessing students on their addition and subtraction facts to five. I sent home the flashcards in January. This is a great thing to practice with your student at home to help them become automatic with the facts.

Keep up the awesome reading with the reading logs!! I love seeing these logs come back every few weeks! If you would like another one sent home, please let me know!

Today in folders were different writing projects students have done in January and February. If you still have some writing from the beginning of the year it is really neat to compare and see the growth!

We have certainly dived into our Museum artwork this week! Students created their self-portraits and portraits of a friend. We worked with hot and cool colors and different tools of painting. We created abstract cats that we will finish on Monday but they sure are coming out awesome!

In addition to starting our artwork, we have continued to work hard on our writing. We continued working of persuasive writing pieces. Look for them to come home soon- maybe students will even persuade you for something! 

We started a new individual innovation called All I Am. Students describe themselves as what they are: students, kids, boys, girls, dancers... our list went on a on. After students state what they are, they are writing a buddy sentence to complete their description. It is awesome to see what they are continuing to come up with.

We have continued to write in our journals this week using our best guess spelling. We learned a new poem called The Painting Lesson. 

In math we started learning more about the teen numbers and how to break them into groups of ten and the remaining numbers. We are getting good at counting and one to one correspondence. Please keep practicing at home counting with your child. By the end of Kindergarten we expect them to be able to count to 100. Also, please keep practicing with your student their math facts (addition and subtraction to 5). I have started re-testing students on addition facts and subtraction soon.  

Don't forget the Francis Wyman Carnival is tomorrow! It is a great time had by all.

Our next Scholastic book order will be due March 16. You can order books online through the Scholastic website. Keep on reading!

Here are some highlights of our week!

 Showing off some creative work!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Happy Friday!

March 3, 2017

We sure had a busy week here in Kindergarten. Students got right back into the swing of things after being off for a week with vacation. I hope you all had a nice February break.

This week we read a lot of different Dr. Seuss books to celebrate his birthday on Thursday. We had quite a few guest readers in to read to us which was fun.

We finished our topic 8 in math this week. We will start with unit 9 next week which is on the teen numbers. You can practice writing them at home with your student. As a reminder on every math packet that goes home there is a homework piece. Some days we are able to get to it done, some days we are not able to do it in school so you can have your child complete it at home if you would like.  I will be reassessing students on addition facts this coming week, so keep practicing the flash cards at home. I will be assessing subtraction soon, so keep up the hard work with those also.

We started our persuasive writing this week. We are working on trying to persuade Mr. Marsh to buy me a new car. It was a lot of fun brainstorming different ideas!

Our Kindergarten Museum will take place April 11th. All are welcome to come. It is amazing the different artwork students produce. We look forward to seeing you there.

Today we had an electricity show from the Burlington Science Center. Mr. Musselman and Ms. Pavlicek taught us a lot about electricity. It was very interesting.

In backpacks today were the math Symphony screener reports. These are done three times a year on the iPad. They are used in part when deciding intervention groups.  Also in backpacks were two different fundraisers the school holds, Pennies for Patients and the candle fundraiser.

Dr. Seuss Day!

We had such a great day today celebrating Dr. Seuss' Birthday! We were so lucky to have many wonderful guest readers in our classroom today to read us many great Dr. Seuss books!

Mr. Marsh our school custodian read us two books this morning!

 

Here we all are with our Cat in the Hat hats!

Officer Keith Sheppard from the Burlington Police Department came in and read us Green Eggs and Ham. Some friends said they might try green eggs and ham some day!

Mr. Mason our other school custodian came in and read us The Cat in the Hat. It sure is one of our favorites!

At the end of the day, my husband Jeff came in with my daughter Sadie and read us a story.

These are our "things" we hung in the hallway to celebrate Dr. Seuss day. 

An important message about the used book store

IMPORTANT USED BOOKSTORE NOTICE:  

Due to the higher cost of replacing books for our used bookstore, we will be raising the price of a book to 50 cents starting at our next bookstore on Wednesday, March 22.  Since we have not raised our price in close to 15 years, I think we have done well.  It costs $1 for me to replace each book that we sell. As always we love any book donations you would like to send in.  If you are cleaning out unused children's books, please consider donating them to us.  We also take children's magazines.  Just send them to the main office or to my office.  NEW USED BOOKSTORE PRICE IS 50 CENTS a book.

Thank you, Donna Murphy, Reading Specialist.

100th Day of School!

We celebrated our 100th Day of Kindergarten today!!

We made gumball machines with 100 gumballs.

We wrote about what we would like to do by the time we turn 100 years old!

We even made 100th day crowns!

We practiced counting to 100. 

We had a lot of fun today!!