Read Across America - Getting Seussical in Kindergarten

On Wednesday, March 2 we will get Seussical by participating a special reading event called NEA's Read Across America Day. Kindergartners will make reading a sensation in our classroom, and across the nation by reading, reading, and reading some more!

The Read Across America Day will kick off our month-long author study of Dr. Seuss, a.k.a. Theordore Gisel. This literacy focus will engage K-kiddos in many, many activities, games and thoughtful reading/writing experiences.  I encourage you to send your child to school with a favorite Dr. Seuss book on Wednesday. S/he will share their book, and add it to our collective reading efforts. I can't wait to learn how many books we read on Read Across America Day - we will be keeping track!

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone in a couple of days, and I am very excited about our Seussical reading event! To learn more about Read Across America go to: www.nea.org/readacross.

Community Service Learning - Counting Up and Adding On!!

Today we tallied up items donated to our class for the Kindergarten Day 100 Food Drive. Students used blank 10s frames to connect 1:1 counting correspondence with the concept of making groups of items. An X in each box shows 1. When all ten boxes in the 10s frame has an X in each, we know there are ten items in the box without having to re-count them by 1s. 

Next, children counted each box as one group. We counted by 10s to do quick/efficient math work. So far we have collected 50 food items to donate to the Montpelier Food Bank - yeah!!  


We will continue collecting non-perishible food and household items. When we have 100 total donations, we will take them to the food bank on a walking field trip day. 


Thank you for supporting your child's math learning, and our community. Keep the donations coming! 

Learning about animal tracks by studying the Bobcat

While it may have been too icy and wet to explore the outdoors today with NAP, a special guest named Sylvia the Bobcat visited our classroom today.

Our environmental science learning focused on animal tracks, and the attributes about forest animals that live in Vermont that help them survive. Sylvia, with help from North Branch Naturalist Amy Butler, taught us many things about how the size, shape, fur and paws help Bobcats live and thrive in our forests.

Our journals became a great source for us to draw what our Science Eyes saw while observing the Bobcat specimen, and we always have more we want to know...

We also made tracks of Bobcat's walking and running with stamps and ink.


Can you count how many? We counted, and counted and counted some more to learn about how many pads a Bobcat paw has, and to find out how many tracks we each made on our own papers.

Spruce Up Classroom #6

The Spruce Up Committee would like to help with some projects at the school during this vacation.  

One of the projects involves cleaning each and every classroom.  During the break , parents can come to the school and assist with cleaning the classroom.  

Todd Keller, custodian, will be available and will help with the logistics at school.  So any interested parents should look for Todd when they arrive at the school and he will send them in the right direction.  Anyone interested can contact Jen Matthews at jennifermues@hotmail.com or 802-223-1213.

Outdoor Classroom Postponed

Families,

Due to inclement weather forecasted for tomorrow, Friday February 18, 2011, we will not have Outdoor Classroom adventure at Hubbard Park.

We will have our Science Friday morning with naturalist Amy Butler from the North Branch Nature Center indoors. If you planned to volunteer, please feel free to join us if your schedule still allows. Our next NAP outdoor adventure is scheduled for Friday, March 11th

Thank you!

Igloo Construction Update - Day 7

Well, we have crossed the 150 milk jug count, and now have 153 milk jugs in our igloo. We are two milk jug rows away from doming over our igloo, and having completed the project together. Keep sending in empty milk jugs... we're almost there! 

Special Share - Learning about a Vermont animal

Today, Mr. Keller, UES Director of Custodial Services, brought a unique item to school to share with our class, and Mrs. Koch's class. A skeletal moose head with antlers really, really big antlers!  


Estimated to be about 11 years old when harvested, the moose share generated so many great questions among Kindergartners. 

Questions and comments included how moose live, their skeletons and other Vermont animals. 

Ask your kiddo about this special share today! 

Celebrating Friendship This Week

Valentine's Day kicked off a week-long celebration focused on friendship, and acts of kindness for our class. We began our celebration with a walk around downtown Montpelier to view the many places the Valentine Phantom placed hearts. 

Ask your child about the lesson in the story Somebody Loves You Mr. Hatch. We enjoyed making valentine crowns, and exchanging kind words and cards of friendship and love. We all shared why today is a special day, and thoughts included "we get to share little bits of love with everyone," "we feel so happy on this day of love," and "we celebrate being friends & doing kind things for each other."


Our heart word this week is: love! 

Post Office Field Trip

Team Kindergarten Wrigley had a winning trip to the Montpelier Post Office today! Accompanied by a Montpelier postal service carrier veteran expert, Dave Montgomery, our classmate Maddox's grandfather, who provided us with a variety of information. 


While we couldn't take photos while on our trip, due to a no-photo policy at the service, we have lots of interesting learning to share. Ask your children all about the routines a postal worker has to begin his/her day (4 a.m. for most!), the "BIG" doors, the special lift, postal service inspectors, the safe room, the mail scale, and soo, sooo, sooooo many more interesting facts. 


Enjoy taking a closer look at what a couple of Kindergartners shared they liked the most about the Post Office in connected literacy project. Check our your child's coming home in green folders today. 

A Glimpse Into Book Group Time

During our daily literacy blocks I meet with a book group, followed by several individual student learning conferences. I thought you might like to take a peek at some of the work we do together during "Book Group." Book Group is targeted teaching time for specific skill learning and review. Book Group varies and is based on student need. 


Enjoy the photos and "Day in the Life of Book Group" overview below!

We begin book group with a quick review of specific letters, heart words, vocabulary introduction and handwriting skill lessons. We read a familiar text. I review a targeted literacy skill, such at Think About the Book, and introduce a new text with the embedded instruction. 

When reading a new book, first we always take a picture walk. This gets us thinking about the book and our personal experiences connected to the topic. Then we begin to read the text. When emergent readers come upon a new word they can choose from a variety of strategies they are learning to help them decode it: Look at the Picture, Get Your Mouth Ready, Read the Word with My Pointer Finger, and now Think About the Book. Explicitly teaching children to think about the topic of the book as a strategy to decode words, and better understand the story or non-fiction text is our focus this week. 

Next, readers have the opportunity to "put it all together" and read the new text independently during Book Group while I listen in. This time also provides children with an opportunity to show me they strategies they are using to read, and try new skills within a small group. I also hone in on specific strategies I want the group and/or each child to focus on, it is a great time for me to offer "just right" instruction to each reader.  

Day 5 Igloo Update

Our igloo is growing - we have counted 120 milk jugs in our igloo as of Day 5! It takes a team of kindergarten counters to update our daily count - great cooperation! 

Igloo Update - Day 4

We have four rows of milk jugs, 79 in all! We're still adding on and still counting... 

A Day Full of 100 FUN!!!

The 100th Day of School had our class family singing, dancing and.... counting, counting & counting some more to 100, of course! Ask your kindergartner to teach you our Day 100 "Hi-Ho 100 Days Ago" song.  We also shared what our first day of Kindergarten was like and how we felt that day, then compared that to who we are, what we know and how we feel now, on this 100th day of school. Some wonderful reflection and wonderful changes shared by all in our class. 
Check our learning out:

Learn how your child made their Day 100 necklace using tens frames and color patterns. 

The crowns were super fun, and required a lot of focused coloring, careful cutting and number sequencing too. The rest of the week will be filled with more Day 100 activities... stay tuned! 

Ice Crystals on Soap Bubbles

Kindergarten Scientists ventured out into the sunshine during this morning's considerably "warm" temperatures to grow ice crystals. After learning no one had ever blown bubbles in winter, we discussed what might happen to the bubbles when they were exposed to the cold air - they'll pop, they'll not blow up, they'll freeze, they'll blow up, they'll blow away, the bubble juice will spill - children's science thinking varied. 

               Weekly Science Journal - Journal entry of bubble experiment observation.


What did happen? When the bubble was exposed to the air, and held on the bubble wand, it began to freeze slowly. Ice crystals grew replacing the bubble's rainbow iridescence with spider-web line designs. Bubble blowing in winter was wondrously scientific, and fun! 

100 Days Homework

My, how time flies!


Tuesday, February 8th will mark our 100th day of school We'll celebrate by incorporating counting to 100 activities into our learning. Your children have been learning how to count to 100 by 10s. They're also learning how to group objects by 10s.


You can help by having your child find 100 things around the house to bring in on Tuesday. It could be anything (cereal, pasta, tooth picks, stickers, etc.) just glue or stick the collection to a poster board or send it to school in a baggie. You get the idea... we will take turns sharing our collections over the course of the week next week so feel free to send it to school on Monday if you choose.


Thanks for your help and support! 

Preparing for Day 100!

We are beginning to prepare for our celebration of the 100th Day of School on Monday, February 7th. On this day we will celebrate being 100 Days Smarter with a variety of math activities that engage our counting brains and take us from 0-100 all day long! Enjoy a sneak preview of how we are using our Math block to get ready...

                                       Practice writing numbers 0-100 all by ourselves!

Ten-pointed snowflakes, with ten special adornments... hmmm, how many will we need each child to make so we can decorate with 100?

Publishing Party & Beginning of Co-Writing

Last Thursday we celebrated the publication of our very first books. Each book was a culmination of your child's literacy learning, and him/her to demonstrate a variety of writing and reading skills ranging from detailed illustrations accompanied by words written with some or no adult assistance to extending writing to four pages without straying from the main idea. Your children are authors! Their stories are interesting, impressive and included so many of the skills they've learned in Writers Workshop, and learned from reading real authors' writing by Eric Carle, Jan Bret and Mo Willems.


Grade Three Buddies were thrilled to be our audience this special publishing event. Kindergartners read their stories to a buddy, and the buddy shared a combination of three positive constructive and complimentary comments for our young writers. We concluded the celebration with a lesson on co-writing stories. The K/Gr. 3 partners were so excited to begin writing together that we couldn't create multi-page booklets fast enough! Everyone is looking forward to our next meeting to continue their stories. 


Enjoy a few photos from this wonderful event - your children are so proud of themselves, as they should be! I will post the published books on one of our bulletin boards soon... be on the look out. 

Word Families

Emergent readers are interested in learning how letter sounds work together to build words. We have been learning how letters can work together to make word chunks. Recognizing word chunks help emergent readers quickly and easily read/spell new words.  We are learning the "heart word" am and an. Both words are  important word chunks found in other words such as c-an, m-an, j-am, h-am. Enjoy decoding new words together when you read by looking for word chunks, like -am and -an. Have your child come to school with new words to add to our am and an word family posters!

Home Reading Program Begins

Today, your child came home with a Home Reading Book Bag. This program is in addition to the language instruction provided during Daily 5 and CAFE within the school day. The  purpose for reading at home is to read for pleasure, to read books of interest, and to share the excitement of reading together. 


Please see the Home Reading Program overview letter in your child's book bag for information that may answer the questions your have about this new home/school activity. Remember, our primary goal is for your child to enjoy reading! 

Igloo Construction Has Begun!

Yesterday was Day 1 of our milk jug igloo construction project. Our first foundation row took 20 jugs, and we estimate we'll use upwards of 155 to 180 all together for the finished igloo. Using our math brains to count and estimate is an important skill we are are applying to help with this activity. Fun, fun, fun!