Kindergarten is the BEST place on Earth!

Week of March 31

Resources for the week are: Art (Mon), Media (Tues), P.E. (Wed) and Art (Thurs).

Thursday we are meeting up with our FCAT Buddies for Ice Cream!!

We will also be visiting Mrs. Davis' class, we get to hold the baby ducklings!

Friday there is no school. :) It is a Teacher Work Day.

BIRTHDAYS!!! The newest members of the 6 year old club are coming this week.
Jacob joins the club Thursday and Gabriel joins on Friday. :)

Below is what we will be focusing on in class:

Reading: We will be reading the book Here Are My Hands by Bill Martin Jr. We will use our schema and discuss all the different things hands can do before we begin reading the book~ some things that might be said are; help others, clap, give a high 5! We will review our reading strategies and discuss how the picture clues help us some, but we really need to use our sounds to read. :) It is the beginning of 4th quarter, so our skills are changing a little bit. We will continue practicing phoneme deletion/ substitution. Then we will add vowel work (long and short sound), finding the medial sounds of words, blends (two letters that word together to make a sound) and opposites (ex. hot/cold, short/tall). Our Word Family is the -ing family, our blend is bl- and our new Sight Words are as, from, their, which.

Here is a quick video of our book. Along a link to the bl- blend powerpoint I made. :)

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.)

I will make a post of our research charts and some student writing... but for

now all you get is a little sneak peak of one of our research charts. :)

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.

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Play Day Shirts and Shorts

Play Day shirts and shorts are going on sale!! :)

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. :)

All the t-shirts have the same design for the whole school,

but every grade level has a different color. :)

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

Kindergarten~ Kelly Green

First Grade~ Yellow

Second Grade~ Sapphire Blue

Third Grade~ Lime Green

Fourth Grade~ Orange

Fifth Grade~ Royal Blue

The shorts are all black mesh.

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!!

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Owls

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!!

Here is the breakdown of how we made The World's CUTEST Owls. :)

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.

This photo slideshow created with Smilebox

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Mrs. Davis' Ducklings

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...

The Khaki Campbell Ducklings

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.

Here is the breakdown of the ducklings:

Duck #1~ Chuck born on 3/24 at 4:00a.m.

Duck #2~ Beatrice born on 3/24 at 10:15a.m.

Duck #3~ Tito born on 3/24 at 10:55a.m.

Duck #4~ Tobias (#4) born on 3/24 at 12:13p.m.

(Ms. Godbold named this one after the main

character from the movie, Divergent.)

Duck #5~ Anna born on 3/24 at 1:00p.m.
Duck #6~ Daisy born on 3/25 at 5:00a.m.
Duck #7~ Jack born on 3/25 at 10:54a.m.

Duck #8~ May born on 3/25 at 11:45a.m.

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!!

Here is a slideshow of the ducks and the life

cycle pictures from Mrs. Davis' Bulletin Board. Enjoy!

A picture slideshow by Smilebox

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Week of March 24

Hope everyone's Spring Break was fun and relaxing. This week will be a busy week... getting back into our daily routine and completing the End of the Quarter Testing. :) (I can't wait to see how much the class has learned!!!)

Resources for the week are: P.E. (Mon), Music (Tues), Music (Wed) and P.E. (Thurs).
Wednesday is an Early Release Day, Lunch will be at 9:40.

Friday is Favorite Sports Day. :)

Below is what we will be focusing on in class:

Reading: We will be reading the books Owls by Gail Gibbons and The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson. We will be comparing/ contrasting the owls from the books~ real owls versus the pretend owl. 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 multiple times before testing.) Our Word Family is the -old family and our new Sight Words are his, are.

   Here is the Youtube video we will after our discussion on owls. :)

When choosing books to read at home this week, find books where your child can compare the live animal with the pretend animal. An example would be~ My Little Ponies being compared with real ponies. Discuss how they are alike and how they are different.

Writing: We are continuing Report Writing on Zoo animals. This week we will focus on Lions and Giraffes. We are continuing to focus on stretching words for sounds, punctuation at the end of the sentences and only using uppercase letters when necessary.
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 going to finish up our research on Hippo's for the Chimney Lakes (pretend) Zoo. :) We will be answering questions about them~ how they look, what they eat, etc. We will end with drawings of the animals and hang them on the wall outside of our classroom. (We want everyone to learn and love our animal as much as we do!)
At home, ask your child what they learned and share information about hippos with them. :)

Math: We are continuing the Topic on Position and Location words. We will review all of the vocabulary we learned before break and then focus on left & right. ( I see the Hokey Pokey in our future.)We will take a practice test this week. I will look them over and send them home with your child so you can practice for the real test on Friday. :)


At home, review all the vocabulary with your child. Focus on the vocabulary that gives them trouble... I've noticed behind is a bit confusing for some.

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Happy (early) St. Patricks Day!!

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. )