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!

Gingerbread Men

Here are the Gingerbread Men we made with our 4th grade buddies! They are still in the hall, hopefully they do not run away around school!

Nutcracker Characters

Gingerbread Man

We have been reading a number of different versions of the classic tale: The Gingerbread Man. We have been comparing the stories and talking about the different characters. We have been making predictions about what might happen to the Gingerbread Man at the end of the story.


Today our buddies came down and we read the book The Gingerbread Man: Loose in the School.

Well, our Gingerbread Man has been sitting on my desk all this week. He visited us from my house. This afternoon after Mr. Stead read us our latest Gingerbread man story we discovered our Gingerbread man was gone!

The Gingerbread Man left us a note at the end of the book, saying he did not want to be a snack, and that he was running around the school!

We decided to track him down! 4th graders and Kindergartners worked together to read the clues and walked around the building to find the Gingerbread man! He took us to the library, the cafeteria, to Mrs. Conley, the music room, the gym, the art room, and then the nurse! Finally we read the last clue at the nurse's office and we found him back in Room 113! 

We were all able to decorate our own Gingerbread men that we will hang in the hallway and hopefully they will not run away again! 

It was a fun way to spend our Friday afternoon with our 4th grade buddies!