Kindergarten is the BEST place on Earth!

This week we begin End of the Quarter Testing. I can't wait to see how the students have improved since Progress Report Time. :)  Wednesday is an Early Release Day; lunch is at 9:40. Friday is Scarf Day. :) 

                            Below is what we will be focusing on in class:  
Reading: We will be reading about Penguins. :) Fiction and Non-Fiction Texts. We will use a Story Mapping poster to break down the Fiction Story and we will use a Venn Diagram to compare two of the books. On Friday we will also construct the cutest little paper plate penguins. (And I will be taking pictures with my NEW Nikon Coolpix Camera!!! :) It was a Christmas Present.) The Sight Words for this week are: into and made. We will continue practicing rhyming, blending, segmenting, phoneme deletion and beginning sounds of words. When choosing books to read with your child this week, read different types of literature~ fiction, non-fiction, fairy tales, nursery rhymes, etc. Then ask your child Main Idea questions: WHo are the characters? Where is the setting? What is the problem? Is there a solution, if so tell what it is? Sequence the events in the order they happened.
I wasn't able to find the Penguin Video's for the books we are reading... But I found this penguin video. The Penguins in it are adorable Enjoy!

Writing: Narrative Writing~ This week we are discussing "Story Stretching." We will be using the question words: Who What Where When Why and How to stretch our stories. If the story we have written is unable to answer any of the question words, we will add more to our story.
At home after your child has written a story ask them questions using the question words. WHO is the story about? (most of the stories the students write are about themselves.) Then ask WHAT happens in the story? (if the story your child wrote does not answer this question, tell them together you will stretch the story by adding the information.)**Take your time doing this. We will be working on this all week. Only ask a few question words at a time. :)


Science/Social Studies: We are reviewing sound vibrations. We will practice making simple sounds using rubber bands. We will watch different Youtube Videos. (Below are two for you to view.) Then on Thursday we are borrowing instruments from Mrs. Biernacki to produce different types of sounds.
             
Math: We are beginning a new Topic. Topic number 13, it deals with sorting by different attributes: color, shape, size, etc. To get the class excited and focused on listening to what the directions say, we will listen to the following songs. Both songs sort by kid, boy and girl.