The end is near!!!!

It is unbelievable how fast the year is coming to an end!  

It has been so rewarding to see how far each and every one your children have come.  We have worked and played so hard and we have learned so much together.  We still have more to do and learn.  Please feel free to email with any questions you have for things to do over the summer or iPad apps/ websites to help your child with maintaining the skills they have learned throughout the year.

The links to the right of the blog are some wonderful websites for the students to use.  Here are some  apps you may find fun and useful but also educational;
http://www.teachthought.com/apps-2/30-of-the-best-education-games-for-ipad/


For those of you whose oldest children are in kindergarten this year, it's amazing how fast it goes.  To put it in perspective, my oldest son just graduated from high school this week.  I remember his first day of kindergarten  in 2001 so well and all the things he learned that helped him be the successful student he is today.   I was much more emotional at his high school graduation, then when he started kindergarten. But I do think it is true:  everything I ever really need to know I learned in kindergarten. 

McNicholas readers

We had some special visitors today.  The English classes at McNicholas have been coming to school all week bringing picture books to read to the primary classroooms.   Today we had Seniors read to us.  They sure looked big!  Here are some pictures of what was happening. 

Spring is here!

All week we have been discussing signs of spring.  Today we completed sentence frames that started with:  I know it is spring because...........  I was so impressed with the job they did I wanted to share them with you. 

 I will put these together and bind them to make a class book and put it in the basket labeled classroom publishing. I pass out these books at the end of the year and everyone gets to take home around 3 books we "published."  The difference in their work from the beginning of the year is amazing!

What's Happening This Week?

I hoe you enjoyed reading your student's How to be Just Like Jesus books they authored as well as the bird books I am very proud of them and their work on these. 

In LA we will be learning to read, write and spell the popcorn words has and play.  We will also be learning the  long Ii sound using the i_e spelling pattern.  Our thematic unit this week will be Spring where we will be discussing signs of spring.  In Math, we will be reviewing higher number identification and addition.  In Religion, we will be finishing up The Stations of the Cross.  

Friday, spring pictures will be taken,  the students may come out of uniform. All pictures are taken and may be purchased if you wish after the fact. 


Over the last couple of weeks I have read several book by the author Mo Williams.  The students LOVED them. Here is a link to the authors website:  www.mowillems.com

Birds! Birds! Birds!

We have had so much fun learning about the birds we may see in our backyard over the last couple of weeks.  We read many fiction and non-fiction books about birds and learned facts about them.  We also enjoyed seeing videos and hearing the songs and calls of the different birds we learned about. 

This is the great website we went to to see videos and hear the birds. 
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/search

Happy bird watching! 

What's Happening This Week?

Happy Opening Day!  We enjoyed wearing our red for the Reds. 

This week, we will be learning many new concepts.  We will be working on many different comprehension skills this week, such as sequencing, identifying characters and setting, making text to self connections and much more. We will also be starting long vowel sounds.  This week we will devote to long A (a_e).   In Writer's Workshop we will be learning about adding exact verbs, feelings  and adjectives to our writing.  In Math, we will be classifying data and graphing.  In Religion, we will be talking more about the Stations of the Cross. We will continue our thematic unit learning more about birds and completing a bird booklet.

On Friday, we will be using our normal library time 9:55-10:30 to go to the book fair.  This one is buy one get one free. 

Enjoy the beautiful weather the next couple of days!

What's Happening This Week?

First through 7th grade is testing all week, so our schedule will be a little different as well.  But, through it all we will continue to be hard working learners(with a lot of fun too)!


This week in Language Arts, we will finish the last 2 letters of the alphabet Yy and Zz.  We will learn the popcorn words this and what.  In Writer's Workshop we will be learning how to stretch out sentences to make great sentences with a who, what, when, where and why. 

In Math, we are learning about measurement and how to compare the height, length and weight of objects. 

In Social Studies we are learning about American Symbols.

In Religion we will continue to learn about the Stations of the Cross. 

Below is a video of the student dancing and singing along to a fun song titled "Bear to the Left"  Enjoy!

  Also, I am all out of disinfecting wipes so if you could donate a bottle that would be great. 

Have a great week!

library time!

Here at GA, we are so fortunate that we are able to go to library, gym, art, music and spanish, especially as kindergarteners.  They are so important and enrich our curriculum.  Here are some great photos are some what happens when we go to library.

What's Happening This Week?

One of our favorite authors in Kindergarten is Dr Seuss.  Over the next couple of weeks we will be reading and enjoying many Dr Seuss books.   Dr Seuss books are amazing to develop and enrich reading skills with all the rhyme, repitition and rythm.  Today we read  The Cat in the Hat and made our very own cats in the hats. 

 

I also found a great website with many different games and activties that would be great for a cold or rainy day. 

 

http://www.seussville.com/

 

 

 

I know the kids would love to go to the library and check out some books to read with you!

Read the most coast to coast

One of our digital programs we use here at GA and at home for reading and math is called Renaissance Place.  It  has an annual read-a-thon this being the third annual.  The goal is for students to read books and take AR (Accelerated Reader) quizzes 5,000,000 times across the country. 

Here is a link to  the real time count of quizzes taken:
http://www.renaissance.com/read-the-most/.

Today, our 7th grade buddies came to visit and read books with us and together we took the AR quizzes.  It was a great time for all.

Everybody Counts

Thank you so much to the PTA and moms who came into the classroom for "Everybody Counts"  Mrs. Mastruserio, Mrs Smith and Mrs Feltman came in to teach our kindergarteners about people who have disabilities.  I know the kids learned alot!  They talked about it long after the moms left.  Thank you again!

Here are some photos of the groups learning more about what it's like to be blind, deaf and a loss of limb. 

Another visit from the zoo

We had our second of three visits from the zoo today!  Miss Danielle brought two really cool animals and we learned about different habitats.  First, we learned about deserts and met a bearded dragon named Sarge.  He was very soft and bumby.

We also met a hedgehog named Ghana and learned about the habitat hedgehogs live in.

We will have our last visit in March and we can't wait. 

100th day

We had a lot of fun on the 100th day of school.   We sang songs, read books, made 100th day hats and did 100 fun things.  It is a special day and we always say we are 100 days smarter!

Here is a short video of us singing to 100.

Here is a fun picture of us wearing our 1ooth day hats.

What's Happening This Week?

There are so many things going on this week!  Today we met with our 7th grade buddies to make a Valentine craft.  We also started our mini Valentine's Day unit.  Tomorrow is the 100th day of school!  We will do many  fun and educational math and literacy activities to go along with this day.   It would have been about a week and a half ago, but as you know, this weather has made our schedule crazy!  Friday we will have our Valentine's Day Party.  Thanks again to Amy Smith and the parents who worked so hard to plan this. 
 
In between all the Valentine and 100th day activities we will be working on finishing our ABC books in Writer's Workshop.  Again, this is so far behind because of the weather as well.  We will also be learning about plane shapes in Math.   In Religion we will be discussing the Holy Trinity and that God created us, Jesus teaches us and the Holy Spirit guides us.

Stay warm and enjoy these pictures of the boys from this morning meeting with our 7th grade buddies.  The girls we upstairs in the Junior High hallway so I didn't get any photos of them.

Catholic Schools Week

It's been a crazy couple of weeks with all the snow days and Catholic Schools Week! We are still getting
a lot of learning in though! Catholic Schools week was a lot of fun with the pep rally, volleyball games, crazy hat day and Penny Fair. Here are some photos from the week.  Not many are from kindergarten, but we enjoyed it all.   Thank you to everyone who helped out, donated and came!  It is all very much appreciated!

 

 

 
Next week will be another busy week with our Valentine's Day Party!  We are also meeting with our 7th grade buddies on Monday.  So much to look forward to.

Popcorn words

I found this great online game to help your children better learn their high frequency words.  We call those words "popcorn" words because they "pop" up all the time in reading.  Most of the time we cannot sound out popcorn words.  We just have to know or memorize them.  The less time we devote to recalling popcorn words, the better our fluency gets which results in improved comprehension.  As your children go on to higher grades, words get added to the list.  

So far we have formally introduced these "popcorn" words to the students:  a  and  are  can  do  go  he  I  like my  see  the  to  we  with  and you. We also call color words and number words popcorn words. Many more will be coming as the year progresses. 

This would be great for a rainy or snowy day! 
http://www.fun4thebrain.com/English/popcornWords.html
 

The Zoo

Danielle from the Cincinnati Zoo came for a visit today.  She brought with her an owl named Goblin and a lizard named Thor.  We learned about the marvelous parts that each of these animals has to help them survive, such as big eyes, an armoured tail and much more.  This was the first of three visits over the next couple of months the Zoo will come.  Here are some photos of today.  

What's Happening This Week?

This will be our first full week back!  We had a very busy day and will have a very busy week ahead.  In Language Arts, we will be learning the vowel Ee,  the sounds as well as  blending words with the short sound of Ee.  We will also be learning what pronouns are.  In Writer's Workshop we are starting my favorite project of the year. We are becoming authors by writing, illustrating, and publishing Alphabet books.  This will take several weeks to complete, but the finished products are amazing!

In Math, we will continue to work on larger numbers through 19.  We learn about teen numbers as groups of a 10 and ones.  For instance, 12 is 10 and 2 ones or 16 is 10 and 6 ones.  It is fairly sophisticated work for kindergarteners, but they are up to the challenge.

For our thematic unit and Science, we will be learning all about Penguins and reading many penguin non-fiction and fiction books. 

In Religion, we will be discussing ways we can follow Jesus. We will also be going to the k-3 grade level Mass on Thursday morning.

Here are some photos of our completed shape penguins we made today.

Back to business

I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas and New Year, as well as the extra off days.  I know how hard they can be, especially if you work.  We had "ketchup" (catch up) days the last couple of days.  The kindergarteners have been so glad to get back and have been great!  This week we are back to business and back on schedule with nothing to practice or plan for that is extra.  It is always nice to get back to "normal" whatever that means in kindergarten!  

Just looking ahead, we have Catholic Schools Week coming up the last week in January.  There will be many details about this in the Wednesday Herald. Penny Fair will be held on Friday that week.  Penny Fair is basically an indoor carnival.  Information is in the Wednesday Herald about his as well. Kindergarteners are required to have a parent or for the parents to make arrangements to have someone with them during this time if they cannot be there.