Kindergarten is the BEST place on Earth!

                            

When choosing books to read at home this week, find books where your child has to use their reading strategies. This may mean choosing books that are a little trickier for them to read... I do not want the students to get discouraged and think they aren't readers, but I want them to have to apply their knowledge of sounds to read. Books written by Dr. Seuss are great for doing this! :) ~ Also, Hubbards Cupboard is a website that uses a lot of our sight words in their books. If you have trouble finding books to use, check out their website by clicking on the link here. :) 




Writing: We are finishing up Report Writing on Zoo Animals. This week we will focus on Zebras. Then we will edit/ revise our work and make it PERFECT. (In my head I can see the students kissing their fingers, then spreading them apart and yelling out, "Perfect!!" haha We do it all the time in class.)

At home, discuss elephants, lions, giraffes and zebras with your child. Share the way each animal looks, the way it moves and the different things it eats. The class has done GREAT during all of our research sessions and you should have a really good discussion with them. They may even teach you a little something! :)


Science/Social Studies: We are beginning a new Unit on Plants and Animals. We will be discussing fiction and non-fiction texts and how they make the plants and animals act. Then we will discuss living and non-livings, we will make a chart that tells the things that living things need.
            

            

At home, ask your child what the differences are between living things and non-living things. Have them tell you what living things needs to survive. If they seem confused, watch the videos with them and discuss them while the videos are playing.


Math: We are beginning a new Topic on Addition. We have discussed addition before and the class did GREAT! I expect this topic to be a breeze. :) We will be combing groups to make sums up to ten and we will focus on vocabulary~ expression and equation. An expression is a statement that tells the amount in each group and has the mathematical sign, but does not have an equal sign or a sum~ 5+3. An equation has the groups, the mathematical sign and the sum~ 5+3=8.
            

At home, discuss the vocabulary with your child. How them a picture of two groups and ask them to write the expression that matches the picture. Then have them complete the problem and make it into an equation by adding the equal sign and the sum.
Ex. OOOO       OO   The expression would be 4+2.    The equation would be 4+2=6.

Beginning Monday, the P.E. Department will be selling t-shirts and shorts to raise money for new equipment. Youth size t-shirts are $11.00. Adult sizes are $13.00 and XXL is $15.00. The shorts are $19.00 for youth sizes and $21.00 for Adult Sizes. They also offer XXL for $23.00. Payments can be made by cash or check~ made out to Chimney Lakes Elementary. :)

(Sorry about the picture being grainy, I took a picture of the flyer. )

The deadline to order shirts and shorts is Friday, April 11. And because I bet everyone is wondering... :) Play Day will be needing Volunteers to help run the Stations on May 6th. Hope to see you all there. It's sure to be a ton of fun!!

This week we listened to two great books!! The fiction one, The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, made the kids giggle. They thought an owl being afraid of the day was the most hilarious thing! haha Then we read the non-fiction book, Owls, and they LOVED that book... I think the class loves hearing facts. :) Not to mention the Author, Gail Gibbons, does the best job of writing books that just grab everyone's attention!! She is amazing!  Here is a link to her webpage that tells all the title's of the books she's written. 




We did a lot of testing this week, but I tried to add a little FUN in when I could. :) So we got crafty!!

On Tuesday, the students colored the background for their pictures~ the night sky was gray and the day time sky was blue.
On Wednesday, the students had their handprints done with Ms. Godbold~ brown for Elf owls and white for the Snowy Owls.
On Thursday, I made all of the tree trunks/ branches and our 5th grade helpers glued them.
Today... Ms. Godbold glued on the "facial discs" (mini muffin cups) and the googly eyes. Then the students made their beaks, feet, leaves and either a moon or sun.

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Instead of having our regular scheduled Science Lesson... we walked down to Mrs. Davis' 3rd grade classroom and visited the new additions to her class...

Mrs. Davis and her class, have been Mommies and Daddies to 8 little eggs since February 26. They have patiently waited for the ducklings to grow in their eggs and hatch... and yesterday it finally happened!! Today we were given permission to go down and visit the ducklings. :) The class LOVED it!! The oohs and aahhs were coming from everybody when they saw them.


After our special visit with the ducklings, we sat outside 
Mrs. Davis' Room and looked at her Bulletin Board. She had detailed pictures of the life cycle and explained them all to the students. They listened to her every word, they were in awe. :)   Then as if the visit couldn't get any better... she invited the class back next week to sit on her carpet and play with the ducklings. :) The class cheered! It was absolutely adorable!! Their little faces were on cloud 9!!

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We were busy learning all about Owen & Mzee this week and getting ready for an observation... but we made some time for fun and made handprint Leprechauns. :) (They are adorable and still in your children's cubbies... Sorry!)

On Friday, I ate lunch with the class. :) I was so impressed on how well behaved they were during the observation, that I ate with them as a reward. :) Although I was sitting next to Gabriel and Mason, and across from Bella... I managed to talk with everyone! The kids are hilarious!! haha  They critique the food from the cafeteria and their lunches from home.  They tell the silliest jokes! They discuss what they are going to do at recess. And a few even discussed the Fun Friday snack we were going to have. :) (Everyone was excited to eat a Lucky Cupcake~ it has a rainbow with gold at the end of it.  :) You'll see them in the 2nd slideshow. )

Personalize a digital greeting             Have a great Spring Break!!

Mrs. Thomas talked about all the classes the library offers for children, young ones and teenage ones. She informed the class there are 21 different libraries in Jacksonville and that you can check out 50 books at one time! WOW!! (Ms. Godbold and I were unaware of that and we were shocked. That is a lot of books! haha)  She reviewed Fiction and Non-Fiction books with them, discussed the order of the alphabet and how it correlates with finding books at the library. :) Then the kids practiced following directions by performing Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. They performed the song at normal speed, then at lightning fast speed and finally at slow speed. (The class was precious!!) Next Mrs. Thomas read the book Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? and gave all the students characters cards. While she read the book, the students held up character cards and they ended the book by sequencing the events in the story. :) After that Mrs. Thomas read them the big book Where's My Teddy? and then they made their very own paper bear. 

As if the lesson couldn't be more perfect... she gave each of the kids a baggie of Teddy Grahams. :) Mrs. Thomas is going to try and visit our class again before the year is up. ( I have a flyer for classes offered at the Library during Spring Break. There was a problem uploading the pictures of the flyer, so I'll be posting the pictures tomorrow.)

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Today during Reading Block, we discussed the vocabulary that would be in the Owen and Mzee book. (The class was AWESOME!!) We discussed what we thought the words meant and how the word was applied in the story. :) It was great! Even after going to Reading Stations and Centers they remembered the meanings of some of the words and used them. For example~ two girls said that they were inseparable, a boy said he was puzzled because he couldn't find his lunch tag in the lunch tag bucket and another boy called our room our enclosure. To which I replied this classroom is my sanctuary! haha  (All the comments brought a huge smile to my face.)

Then we watched the photo montage of all the cute pictures of Owen and Mzee. After that we visited the website that is named after them. The class thought the website was amazing and I promised them I would put a link on the blog so that they could visit it. We only had time to visit the Sing Along tab and they wanted to visit EVERYTHING!! :)



If you click on the Media tab, there are video's they can watch about Owen and Mzee.  Here is one of the short animated videos, they call it a "Hipposode."

                              

So... I remembered to bring my camera home on Friday, but I forgot to bring the chord to transfer the pictures. Here are the remaining pictures from Dr.Seuss Week. :)

The students all made the "things" with their handprints. :) Then we numbered them by their number in our class.


The students all made their AB pattern hats out of an Oreo cookie, frosting and gummy lifesavers. Keeping the kids from licking their fingers and waiting to eat until after I took their pictures was tough! haha But I made it happen. :)

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To get the children excited about the Opera, we have been discussing it in class. We discussed how the performance would be a play put on with singing, instead of talking. We discussed they way Opera sounds (the class got a chance to hear me and Ms.Godbold pretend we were Opera singers. haha). Then we watched a Youtube video that gave us a sneak peak into the play: It is a recording of Seymour Barab's play. (This was all scheduled by our music teacher Mrs. Biernacki. Her husband is the head of the Voice Department at UNF~ Krzysztof Biernacki.)
                             



Reading: We will be reading the book Owen and Mzee by Isabella Hatkoff, Craig Hatkoff and Dr.Paula Kahumbu. We will be discussing the vocabulary we can find in the book, the characters and setting, similarities and differences between the two characters. Then we will end with the books main topic and a retelling of the story with a B, M and E. We will continue practicing rhyming, segmenting words for sounds and for syllables, phoneme deletion/ substitution and ending sounds of words. (They will each be reviewed a few times a week instead of doing them all daily.) Our Word Family is the -ig family and our new Sight Words are an, big, many, now. 
Here is a photo montage of the book for you to view. The students will all get to see it at the end of our lesson on Monday. 
                      
When choosing books to read at home this week, find books where your child can compare the main characters in the text. An example would be~ in Cinderella your child could compare Cinderella with her evil step mother.  After reading the book a few times, ask your child what the main topic of the story is and have them explain their reasoning to you.


Writing: We are continuing Report Writing. We will begin to collect facts on Zoo animals. This week we will focus on Elephants. Please remember, although the writing genre has changed... we are continuing to focus on stretching words for sounds, punctuation at the end of the sentences and only using uppercase letters when necessary. To get the students excited about Zoo Animals, we will watch this Interesting Facts Youtube Video. :)
          
At home, discuss the different Zoo animals with your child. Talk about how the animal looks, what it eats/drinks and where it lives. Then bring up any interesting facts you know about Zoo animals and share them with your child.  Finally, have your child practice writing sentence facts about their animal.

Science/Social Studies: We are beginning a new Topic on objects~ Big and Small objects being near and far. We will be discussing how distance tricks us into thinking the size of objects are something that they aren't. We will be watching various Youtube video's and going outside to apply the knowledge that we are learning. :) Here is one of the video's we will watch. It's very simple, but it shows how the characters are the same height, they just appear small because they are far away.    
                             
At home, discuss the vocabulary with your child. Go outside and point out how the house down the street looks small compared to your house, but that it's only because of distance. When they get closer they will see that the house is a normal size house. Apply this concept to other items that are far and near to your house.


Math: We are beginning a new Topic on Position and Location of objects. This week we will focus on the following vocabulary~ inside, outside, above, below, on, in front of, behind and next to. It seems like a lot of vocabulary, but we began discussing the words last week and your children already have a good understanding of the words. Here is a video to review the vocabulary with your child.
          
At home, review the vocabulary with your child. Then ask them where certain items are in the room you are sitting in. For example: if you are in the bathroom. Ask where the towel is, where the toothbrush is, etc. Continue this process in other rooms of the house or until your child has a good understanding of the vocabulary. 

Today was a lot of fun for the students, for me and for Ms. Godbold! Ms. Kirby and her students joined us in celebrating Green Eggs and Ham. :) (Ms. Kirby teaches Kindergarten next door.) Together we discussed the book, read the book and talked about our favorite events. All while having our volunteer Mrs. Glass make our green eggs. Ms. Godbold was her cooking assistant. :) (ooh Our room smelled yummy. It smelled like breakfast food until 12:00. Everyone that came in noticed the smell. haha)

Anyway, all week long we discussed making the green eggs on Friday and every time I said, "green eggs." The class would yell out, "and ham!" Even Ms.Godbold would yell it out! haha So even though I do not eat ham. I think we have the best class ever, so I went out and bought two packages of carved ham. :) The class was  excited abut the green eggs... but seeing the ham really made them smile. :)

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 Today we read The Foot Book. When we were done listening to the book, we discussed all the characters and how their feet looked/ were described ~ quick feet, high, feet , clown feet, etc. :)  Then we discussed the animal feet on the slideshow I created. The students used their schema to figure out the animals and clearly explain for the rest of the class why they chose the animal they did. :) Check out the link and you can view the slide show at home:  The Foot Book
(I apologize for some of the pictures being warped. :( It happened when I transferred the file.)


* Our Asst. Principal, Mr. Hill, was in the room for this lesson and the students were great! Everyone did amazing!! I think he was shocked to be reminded that they were only in Kindergarten. :)  I told them they were all CHAMPS and to show them how proud I was of ALL OF THEM... everyone received Treasure Box!! :)  

                                                   

The students all got a chance to pretend being the Cat in the Hat and see what it was like to balance things on their heads. (In a photo app of course, we do practice safety first in Room 41. :) haha) The students loved getting to see themselves!! The laughter began with the first picture being taken and continued all the way through to the last picture of our Vision Specialist. (She couldn't resist taking part in the fun. :) Who can blame her, the excitement of Dr.Seuss takes the kid out of all of us!)

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Today we made Cat in the Hat hats. :) The students were able to color their hats in any AB pattern. A few wanted the traditional red and white pattern... but some were very adventurous and chose two bright bold colors! :) They were beautiful.

Also, a sweet friend of mine Jo "Grandma Jo" Brown made the class Dr. Seuss headbands. (Mrs. Hope and I had her Grandson in our Kindergarten Co-Teach Class last year.) We have been wearing them in class as headbands, neck ties and bracelets. :) The class LOVES them!! They ask to wear them everywhere around school. :) So I wanted to send them home with the students today. They may bring them back to school and wear them every day this week!! :)

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Today we all had our pictures taken, we were pretending to be The Cat in the Hat. :) It was a little tricky matching the students faces up in the picture hole. They all wanted to see themselves so bad and they kept moving before the pictures were taken... But no worries, the pictures are still super cute! :)

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I think I am more excited about this week than the class is... haha We will focus on a different book everyday. We will aim to do at least two readings of the books a day. By Friday everyone will be going home talking in silly Seuss rhymes. :)


                           


                                                                 
Monday and Tuesday: Our book will be The Cat in the Hat. We will discuss the author Theodore Seuss Geisel and chart out facts about him. We will discuss what a timeline is and chart out the years he wrote some of his most famous books. :) We will discuss addition story problems using some silly Dr.Seuss type scenarios. We will write opinions pieces about our opinion of this book.


                                                                  
Wednesday: Our book will be Wacky Wednesday. We will discuss how the illustrations help the reader figure out what is going on in the book. We will discuss discuss any connections we have with the book and write about them. (Connections can be text-to-self, text-to-text, text-to-world or text-to-media.) We will have a review of gravity and whether or not the events in the book are really able to happen. Then we will discuss the position of items through out the book using math vocabulary~ above, below, next to, inside of, etc.


                                                                   
Thursday: Our book will be The Foot Book. We will discuss the main topic and retelling events from the book. We will discuss characteristics of animal feet and discuss what animals the foot pictures belongs to.  We will write about our favorite animal feet. We will review measurement and practice measuring animal feet with counting cubes.


                                                                     
Friday: Our book will be Green Eggs and Ham. We will discuss how the book begins and then how it changes at the end. We will make green eggs and discuss our opinions of them. Students will write what they think of the green eggs. We will practice math skills~ counting, number writing, counting on from a given number, counting backwards from a given number, ordering of numbers 1-20, etc.