Kindergarten is the BEST place on Earth!

Reading: We will be reading the book Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes. We will be working on retelling the events in the order that they happen. On Friday students will be tested on their retelling of the story. We will continue practicing phoneme deletion/ substitution. Our Word Family is the -og family, our blend is cl-, our vowel focus is letter a (short sound & long sound) and our new Sight Words are each, use, there, when. 
                             
When choosing books to read at home this week, find books that you may have read before and practice having your child give a retelling of the book. Their retellings should be told using the characters names and most of the events should be told in the order they occurred. ~ You may notice a few of the events are told out of order, at this time the students are not penalized for that.




Writing: We are going back to Narratives. The students will be writing more complex sentences and lengthening their stories. They will choose whether to write a fiction narrative or a non-fiction one. The choice us up to the students! Everyone has strengthened their use of sounds and increased their sight word vocabulary, so I am very excited to see what everyone's writing is like. :)
At home, have your child write a narrative about anything they choose. When they feel they are done, go over the sounds used to write words, spaces, and whether or not their story answers the questioning words~ Who, What Where, When, Why and How.


Science/Social Studies: We are continuing the Unit on Plants and Animals. We will be observing pictures and discussing whether they are real or make believe plants or animals. We will also be discussing how to plant seeds and what they need in order to grow. On Thursday we will be planing grass seeds in decorated plastic cups. :)

We finished writing about Zoo Animals and the reports are adorable! The students did a great job sharing their knowledge of Zoo Animals and listening to the research I collected. :)  We then made data charts that told how the animal looks, how he moves and what he eats. The four animals we focused on were elephants, giraffes, lions and zebras. 

Sorry about the purple... I started coloring the spots and was about half way done before I realized it! :(

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Today the students were able to eat snack with their FCAT Buddies and play on the "big kid playground." Watching them play together was the cutest thing!!!  Other classes were out at recess~ a 1st grade, 3rd grade, 5th grade. Mrs. Walker's class made sure to sort of ignore all of them and focus on their Kindergarten FCAT Buddy.

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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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