Kindergarten is the BEST place on Earth!

                            Below is what we will be focusing on in class:  
Reading: We will be comparing and contrasting the items in various books, that includes activities, animals, events, etc. Here are the different book titles: Mice Squeak, We Speak, Lets Play, Country Mouse City Mouse and Now I'm Big. When we compare the items, we will use a T Chart or a Venn Diagram. We will continue to discuss the different types of Connections~ Text- Self, Text-Text, Text-World. We will continue practicing rhyming, segmenting, phoneme deletion/ substitution and beginning sounds of words. Our Word Family is the -it family and our new Sight Words are that, but, they, long.
When choosing books to read with your child this week make sure there are items to compare. Examples: animal books that showcase different animals and where they live, family books that showcase the different jobs/chores of each family member. After the discussion, ask them if they were able to make a connection with the book and to tell you about it. :)

                                        

Writing:Response to Literature- For the next few weeks we will be reading different Eric Carle books and filling out a banner size Attribute Chart. The categories on the chart will be: characters, setting, problem, solution, Math Link and Connections. (Quite a few of the books deal with Math :) and I love Math so... we need to document it.)  Students will be filling out two Book Report Papers a week inside of their Reader Response Journal. (When we complete the Journal it will be a Writing Grade for the quarter.) We will continue to focus on spaces between words, capitalizing the beginning word of a sentence and putting punctuation at the end of each sentence. I will be stressing stretching words for all the sounds you hear and writing all of them down.
At home read your child a book, it may be best to read the same book two nights in a row and then have them write about the characters, the setting, what they liked, did not like, etc. Here is a video for you to get to know Eric Carle and love him as much as I do. :)

            
(We will be using the Reader Response Sheets I found off of TeachersPayTeachers from Rachaelle Smith. I checked out a few different ones offered, but I loved her papers the most. :)  Here are a few of the pages that will be in the Reader Response Journal.)


Science/Social Studies: We are continuing to discuss Gravity. The students are very interested in the concept and are great at explaining it!! They loved last weeks video's, so we may even watch them again.  :) We will be making an entry in our NEW Interactive Science Journals about the force of gravity and what happens when another force tries to intercept... I can't wait to see their faces!! We will have a fan turned on it's side and observe what it does to coffee filters, muffin cups and sheets of paper in their normal state and what happens when we crumble them up into wads. 
            

Math: We are beginning a new unit on Measurement using Informal Units or Non-Standard. We are starting out the week by measuring the length of our shoe with different math tools and recording it on the white board. Then we will be measuring the length of heads, arms and legs. (I will try to take a few pictures of the class working on this activity, it is adorable!!) Below are two video's we will be watching in class. :)
At home ask your child to measure the length of their shoe. They could measure it using: lego's, matchbox cars, barbie shoes, army men, etc. As the week progresses, move on to measuring longer items (bed, coffee table) and use objects to measure that have longer lengths: spoons, barbie dolls, etc.