Sun!  What a lovely way to end the week. 🌞

Kindergarteners have had another wonderful week!  This week we read the book Happy Dreamer by Peter Renyolds and then shared what our hopes were for this year in Kindergarten.  We also continued to read books that help us become storytellers.  Today's favorite was The Three Billy Goats Gruff! 

We talked about how there are small, tall, and descending letters and how these fit on a paper with two lines.  Maybe your child has been singing "Where do you start your letters - at the top!" We are beginning to practice proper letter formation with our writing and in our new writing books.  

In math, we are doing a lot of counting and number recognition.  They began working with dice, counting the dots, and then finding that number on paper.  I have been so impressed with their endurance during some of these activities! 

In science, we learned about how Monarchs have incredible senses that help them survive and find their food.  Their eyes have thousands of lenses that help them stay safe from predators and help them find food.  They also have chemoreceptors similar to our tastebuds on their feet and antennas that help them recognize milkweed.  I hope your child shared the amazing insect eyes they created! 🦋🦋🦋

Kim Aucter, our art teacher has flexibility in her schedule this year and is able to offer some extra art enriching activities and fine motor practice in our classroom. This week we made gorgeous leaves made with special paper and paint!  If you drive by the school you can see them glowing in our window on a sunny day!!

Here is a note from Mrs. Aucter.

Dear Families,

I will be working in small groups with all kindergarten students on focused fine motor activities. Children ages 5-6 are at a formative stage in their fine motor development. In other words, some extra practice can go a long way! The goal is to further strengthen your child’s fine motor abilities (cutting, drawing, writing) through fun and engaging art projects and activities. 

Feel free to contact me with any questions at kim.aucter@mmuusd.org

Have a wonderful weekend, everybody! 

I look forward to meeting with many of you at our conference in the next two weeks! 🤎

Lots To Share!

Dear Families,

Another great week in the books! We celebrated International Peace Day and the first day of Autumn. We shared fall books and poems.  These poems are now in our poem binder!  We also continued to be storytellers and read The Big Red Hen.  We practiced looking at the pictures and the words in the story.  We had fun matching uppercase letters to lowercase letters with magnets and games.  Friday we began a new journal.  This journal will help us reflect on our week at school while writing words and illustrations. 

In math, we continued to practice counting objects and representing these through pictures and writing numbers.  The children have explored pattern blocks, attribute blocks, geoblocks, snap cubes, colored tiles, and translucent shapes.

We resumed our conversation about how special and unique we all are. We had some lovely discussions on skin color before we began illustrating our self-portraits. They came out so beautifully!

You may have heard that we had a fire drill. We had practiced the plan the prior day and were expecting a fire drill the next day. The drill ended up being earlier than expected but all students did an amazing job lining up and walking quietly outside. It was raining pretty hard so we ended up waiting in the dugout until we were told we could return inside. What an adventure!

We discussed the zones of regulation.  These zones are the emotions that we feel.  The green zone is often referred to as the preferred zone because that is when we are happy, calm, and focused.  Of course, everyone dips in and out of these zones, that is part of being human! We are focusing on recognizing when we are in a zone and how we can work our way back to that feel good green zone so that we can be a good friend to others and be ready for learning at school. 

Friendly reminders:

Please be sure to return the picture form if you wish to order school pictures. Picture Day is Thursday, September 29th.

Please be sure your child comes to school with a coat, the weather is constantly changing.

The school is looking for large zucchinis for our zucchini race next week - please bring one in if you have a connection! The race is on the 29th!

Calling all zucchinis!!

 

Our awesome Zucchini Race is coming up next Thursday, Sept 29th and we still need  

                                                        25 Extra Large Zucchinis

Please put the word out to anyone and everyone that they can drop their zucchinis off at the front office. So far we only have one. Yikes!

Butterfly, Mat Man, & Rules

  Happy Friday!

We have made it through our first full week! Students have been continuing to learn classroom routines and doing a fabulous job, I will add!  This week we read Gloria and Officer Buckle.  This book sparked a conversation around safety tips.  Kindergartners generated some great ideas and came together to agree on some classroom rules. 

Be kind and share with others!

Listen and follow directions!

Help keep our classroom and environment beautiful!

In literacy, we explored an array of stories around inclusion, embracing who you are, and why it's important to have classroom rules. Students learned or were reminded of Mat Mat. We used our wooden letter pieces to build him. Students continue to learn about curves and lines. Mat Man can help us when we are illustrating pictures and reminds us to add details to our drawings. During word work, we had fun matching objects that rhyme.

In math, we continue to explore different types of manipulatives, building our spatial awareness and fine motor skills. We began to do a counting jar activity where students will be given objects to count, identify, and write the number on a recording booklet.

Have you heard that our butterfly emerged from its chrysalis? Releasing a butterfly back into the wild is always a magical moment for the students and me. We waited patiently for 12 days. This week we have connected this to our organisms unit and discussed what the caterpillar/butterfly needs to survive.

Reminders:

*Please remind your child to bring a jacket each day. The mornings can be chilly and we go outside several times a day. Thank you!

*Please remind your child to return library books on Wednesdays. 

Week 2

Kindergarten students had a great week!  We spent a lot of time with social cognition this week by reading stories, having discussions, and doing activities that were centered around being part of a group.  The group plan and whole body listening are some phrases you may begin to hear. We also talked about how we have thoughts and feelings.  These thoughts can be categorized as green (safe to share, kind words that make people feel good), yellow thoughts (be cautious sharing, some of these thoughts might be hurtful to others), and red thoughts (thoughts that should not be shared because they are hurtful). We read a poem that encourages us to share those green thoughts and then we painted gorgeous paintings of flowers!

We started our first math unit titled: Counting People, Sorting Buttons.  Please read the family letter in your child’s folder describing the skills and concepts covered in this unit. This week the children practiced counting on the calendar and noticed special days in the month of September. We also explored more math materials and talked about how some materials are similar and different.

During Reading Workshop, the children are learning how to read emergent storybooks. They listened to The Carrot Seed and Mrs. Wishy Washy a few times and then were able to tell the story in their own words. They took turns reading the story to their partners. They are so excited to learn what readers do!

The kindergarten students learned how to hold their pencils correctly. They practiced using a pencil grip with a bent thumb and pointer finger pointing to the tip. They worked on having good posture while writing so they can do their best work. We also looked closely at names in the classroom, counted the number of letters, and sorted them by the number of letters.

Next week will be our first full week! Get lots of rest!

Welcome!

 Dear Families,

Welcome to our class blog, this blog has been moved to this new location!  This can be accessed from the UCS website.  In this blog, you will see all of the fun learning that we are doing in Kindergarten.  Also please remember that you can see more frequent updates on Twitter @PoorAmy.  

The first few days of school have been filled with building community and exploring our classroom materials and centers.  Students have been respectful and kind learners.  On the first day, we read Butterflies on The First Day of School and decorated butterfly bracelets. We also recited a magic poem that turned our playdough into colorful dough! 

On Thursday, the first day of September we read a book and had a great discussion about alopecia and how September is alopecia awareness month!  Students were very thoughtful and kind with their responses.  I had pictures of some inspirational people like Bethany Hamilton, Stevie Wonder, and Christie Valdiserri, a model who has alopecia. Christie tore her wig off on the runway to show that she does not need hair to be beautiful! We then shared what makes us unique and special! I was so proud of how all of the kindergartners took in this information and reflected with kindness and sincerity.  

Students did a lot of exploration with math manipulatives this week.  They explored pattern blocks, geo-blocks, unifix cubes, and colorful animals to sort.  I was so impressed with their spatial awareness skills that by day 3 I challenged them with some butterfly-shaped task cards, which had them build the shape on their own.  All of the students rose to that challenge and completed one or more of the task cards!  Very impressive!!

We had our first All School Morning Meeting on Friday.  We sang a song, met the new teachers at UCS, and the 4th graders welcomed the K. students by giving them a carnation.  It was a very sweet ceremony!  We look forward to these meetings being on a regular basis.

Thank you all for sharing your lovely children with me, I can't wait to continue to watch them grow and build a strong classroom community.  Also thank you for your communication regarding after-school plans, soon all of this will flow into a lovely routine!

Please enjoy the video of our first 3 days!