Merry Christmas

We have had a great week!  Polar Express day was so much fun.  I even heard, "this was the best day ever!" We were also very comfy and cozy in our PJ's.  Santa came to visit today and we sang songs and received candy canes from him.  And to finish it all off, we will have our Christmas party this afternoon.   I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New  Year.  God bless.  

I also wanted to let you know, that on the first day we return from Christmas break, we will have "Show and Tell"  Each student may bring in their favorite item they received for Christmas to share.  Please make sure it can fit in their backpacks and doesn't break easily. 

7th grade buddies

It was another great day with our 7th grade buddies today.  We exchanged ornaments and shared juice and cookies.  The girls down in Mrs. Massie's class sang silly Christmas songs and laughed a lot.  Here are some photos of our time together.

Writer's Workshop

What is Writer's Workshop? WW is the time during the school day we work on writing. It is a very important part of the day! The reason we do WW is not only because it helps us to become better writers, but it also helps us become better readers. Most of the time in WW, the children choose their own topics to write about. I call this self-selected writing. Other times, I may have the complete a sentence starter. Starting soon, we will be publishing our very own books. Here are some photos of the students working in WW.  Lily says that WW is  awesome.  She like writing the best.  Kevin thinks you get better at reading because of WW.  Max likes writing long stories in WW.   

What's Happening This Week?

This week we will continue to work very hard on our Christmas Pageant.  Just as a reminder, it is Thursday, December 13, at 1:30 in the church.   In Language Arts, we are contining to build and read short Ii words.  We are also working hard on comprehension skills.  In writing, we are working on writing a complete thought or sentence.  In Math, we will finish our addition Chapter and on Friday begin subtration.  In Science, we will learn about the five senses. We will also begin our Christmas Thematic Unit.  Today we made elves after reading The Elf on the Shelf.  

Have a great day! 

Letter and number reversals

I am often asked about the question of students reversing numbers and letters. As kindergarteners it is very common to reverse the numbers and letters especially b and d, p and q and more. This is  extremely common  and most likely developmental, meaning their brains are still trying to process this information. If you find your child reversing letters and/or numbers please do not worry. I found this article the help you understand this process a little better. http://www.cms4schools.com/nbps/faculty/klinev/newsfile9925_1.pdf

Here are some visuals that can help the students as well. If you noticed your children doing this, just point it out to them and have them redo.

What's Happening This Week?

Now that Thanksgiving is over, we will begin practicing for our annual Christmas program.  I still can't believe how fast the years go. Please make plans to attend.  All are invited.  Including grandparents, siblings, etc.  If this is your first child at Guardian Angels, you are in for a very special treat.  It is being held on Thursday, December 13 at 1:30 in the church.  The children are to wear khaki pants or a skirt for the girls and a white turtleneck or long sleeve shirt.  We have all the costumes for it here at school, so no need to worry about that. 


This week in Language Arts we will be learning the vowel Ii.  We will be using the short sound of i to read and blend CVC words.  In Math, we will continue with addition, decomposing numbers into number pairs.  In Religion, we will be learning our Christmas Carols and practicing in Church.  Our thematic unit this week, will be an author study of Mem Fox.  We will be using her books to learn Social Studies concepts and respond to her stories in Writer's Workshop. 

Here are just a few of her books.  They are available at the library.  She is an amazing children's author!

7th grade buddies

We had a wonderful time playing board games with our 7th grade buddies yesterday.  There were some great games being played! We also got to sit with them during mass this morning.  I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving.  Enjoy the extra days with your family.

 

COSI

Thanks to the PTA for sponsoring COSI again this year. The kindergarteners had a great time and learned a lot about how the body works!  Here are some photos and a video of them during the stations.
They learned about how the body works like a machine and the parts of the body needed to work well.  Thanks to the moms who helped out with COSI today, too.  It is always a fun day for everyone!

 

What's Happening This Week?

What a wonderful Veteran's Day Celebration.  The kindergarteners were amazing singing their songs and it was very moving.  I saw some Veterans who were a little teary eyed after their performance.  If anyone was there and took pictures or video taped it, send them to me and I will post here. 

This week we will continue with our Thanksgiving unit and we will continue with addition in math.  We will also begin Theme 5.  Our new letters will be Gg and Ff, and our new popcorn words are on and to.

On Friday, report cards for the first trimester will be coming home.  If you have any questions please let know. 


 A huge thank you to the PTA for providing us with the opportunity to have COSI come and visit us on Friday.  It is always a fun, exciting and informational day for the students.

Pilgrims

I can't believe Thanksgiving is only 2 weeks away.  This week with out Thanksgiving unit, we learned all about Pilgrims and how their lives are similar and different to our lives now, and we have been reading many non-fiction stories about the first Thanksgiving.  Here are some photos of pilgrim portraits the kindergarteners made this week after learning about them.  They worked very hard on these and had a great time making them!

What's Happening This Week?

I hope everyone had a great Halloween.  We had a great party on Wednesday.  Thanks to Ronna Clark and all the moms and dads who came to help!

This week we will start our Thanksgiving Unit.  I can't believe it is that time already! We will learn all about Thanksgiving and integrate it with Writer's Workshop, Social Studies and Language Arts.  In Math, we will start to learn what addition is. and practice addition using pictures.   In Social Studies, we will learn about Cardinal directions, the Mayflower and Pilgrims.  In Religion, we will discuss things we are thankful for. 

On Monday next week, the school will be holding a special Veteran's Day celebration.  It begins at 9:30.  The kindergarteners will be singing a special song.  More information about the whole celebration is in the Wednesday Herald.  Have a great week! 

Singing and Learning.

We do so much learning in kindergarten! Our brains are like little sponges that soak it all up. We do a lot of learning through song for many reasons but the most important is that it is fun! Not only is it fun, but singing helps us learn so many important skills. It helps to improve vocabulary, fluency, phonics skills, phonemic awareness skills and retention. Some of us are musical and auditory learners, so signing is a great way to learn for us. We have started getting into the letters and the sounds and soon we started blending sounds to read words with the short sound of Aa. Here is a song we use to help us learn the letters and their sounds. It is by Dr. Jean. We love Dr Jean and have many of her CD to sing and move to in the classroom.

What's Happening This Week?

We are starting a new Theme in Language Arts called Silly Business.  This week we will learn the letters Dd and Nn.  We will also learn the popcorn words go and we.  We will continue to talk about and practice writing sentences in Writer's Workshop. We will also discuss the times to use an uppercase letter when we are writing.   In Math, we will take our test on Chapter 4 comparing numbers to 10.   We will also start our Halloween Unit.  We will be attending our grade level mass on Thursday. 

7th grade buddies

We met our 7th grade buddies yesterday and had a great time making ghosts with them.  We will meet with them throughout the year to read books, play games and make crafts.   Here are some photos of them together.  We can't wait until the next time we meet!

What's Happening This Week?

We have a lot going on this week in Kindergarten.  On Friday, we will be going to the Living Rosary in church.  We will also be going to the Scholastic book fair during our normal library time at 9:45.  If you would like to have a child purchase a book, please send in money in an envelope  with your child's name.  $5  is enough to purchase a book.

In Language Arts we will be sequencing stories and discussing the difference between fiction and non-fiction stories.  We have also started blending the letter sounds we have learned to read simple CVC words.   In Math, we will be showing ways to make 10, comparing sets up to 10, and couting backward and forward to 10.  In Religion, we will be discussing ways to care for God's world.  In our thematic unit we will be talking about pumpkins and completing a science experiment in the Science Lab:  Does a pumpkin sink or float. 

Today we met our 7th grade buddies and had a great time.  I will post pictures of them later this week.

Math Stations

What are math stations?

Math Stations are a "fun" way to learn math concepts.  We usually do them at the end of a math lesson to use concrete, manipulative objects to help us learn math concepts. We are doing math stations to help us learn sorting, patterning, numeration and more. As we are introduced to new math concepts, we will have new math stations to do! Math stations are fun and improve not only our math skills, but also work on cooperative learning, verbal, problem solving, fine motor and memory skills. Here are some photos of us participating in math stations.    We love math stations!

Popcorn Words

We have been learning some new words we call popcorn words. What are popcorn words? Popcorn words are words that "pop" up all the time in reading. They are also known as sight words and dolche words. They are most often words that can't be sounded out and need to be memorized.

Here is a link you can go to print out your own popcorn words: http://teachers.net/gazette/AUG03/images/popcornwords1.pdf

So far we have learned the popcorn words I, my, the, like and a. If you have time I found this fun game on the internet for the students to play to help them learn more popcorn words. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CCoQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fun4thebrain.com%2FEnglish%2FpopcornFinal.swf&ei=X0mPTvC3HOaIsgLaydDIAQ&usg=AFQjCNGb09cHaRcs0_LcpWfKs6MVy4I00w

It is important that children learn to read these words quickly and accurately to help with fluency and comprehension when reading. Sometimes they can be hard to learn because we can't sound them out or use picture or context clues to help us. Basically, we just need to know them. The more we practice them, the more we learn them. Have fun with those "popcorn" words

What's Happening This Week?

In Language Arts this week we will continue to progress with Read to Self and Writer's Workshop.  We will also learn how to correctly form the letters Pp and Cc and learn their sounds.  We teach the hard sound of Cc in kindergarten.  We will also learn how to read and spell the popcorn words like and I. We will finish our Apple Unit this week as well.  In math, we will continue with numbers focusing on 8 and 9.  In Religion we will be discussing what respect looks like and sounds like.  In science we will learn about the parts of the tree and what their function is.  As always it is another busy week in kindergarten.  

 

Applefest

We had a great time at Applesfest.  We learned a lot about apples and how the settlers used them.  We learned how they use to make apple cider, applesause, and more.

Here are some great photos from today.

Happy Birthday Johnny Appleseed

It's Johnny Appleseed's birthday today.   We read an autobiography and then pretended to be him.  It's always fun to pretend to be someone famous.  We also thought it was funny to wear a pot on our heads.  We  will get to meet him and learn more about him on Friday at Applefest