Enjoy your day and remember, dressing up for the 100th day of school will now happen on Thursday instead of Wednesday.
Wednesday will be Library day.
Friday is now Gym day.
I am sure your children are excited about the day off today. Today would be a good day for your child to practice reading with their blending word cards or by using our word family lists on our Padlet pages. Work on counting aloud to 100 by 1s, 5s and 10s. If your child is watching TV, ask your child to tell you what happened at the beginning, during the middle, and at the end of a show or cartoon. How many details can they remember? Of course, reading books and playing games together are always fun on snow days.
Enjoy your day and remember, dressing up for the 100th day of school will now happen on Thursday instead of Wednesday. Wednesday will be Library day. Friday is now Gym day.
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Today was the PRIDE program for the Second Marking Period. The students had a wonderful time. We discussed the good behaviors that got them to the program and I hope they can keep up the good work in Marking Period 3.
Reading We have been working on our letter Ee unit. Hearing the different vowels in words like sit and set can be difficult as e and i can sound very similar to kindergarteners. We will focus on these vowels next week and I will send another set of blending cards home as well. You can help your child read successfully by allowing them to read to you whenever possible. Reading aloud to your child helps too. January Book It forms are due back no later than Tuesday. You can also have your child read one of our student-created word lists to you. We've posted them on a Padlet and you can click the link below. There may be some nonsense words mixed in with the real words. I allow this as long as the word rhymes and the student can read it to me and say if it is a nonsense word or not.
https://padlet.com/nbubnis/erhymes
Math
We just finished up Topic 8 on subtraction. I should have grades from the Topic 8 test posted this weekend and tests will be sent home after all absent student tests have been completed. We will begin Topic 9 on Monday. We will be building on our addition and subtraction topics by exploring many ways to make numbers up to and including 10. Next Week We have some special days coming up next week. Wednesday is the 100th Day of school. Children will be allowed dress as they think they would look if they were 100 years old to help us celebrate. Please refer to the note sent home for some ideas. We will also do many counting activities and games throughout the day Wednesday to practice our counting skills. We will count to 100 as we exercise, put together groups of ten to make 100, make a counting project and more! Groundhog Day is Thursday. We will read a story, watch a clip of Punxsutawney Phil and write our opinions of the Groundhog's predictions. We will also do a brief exploration of shadows during Science class. The children are really looking forward to all of the fun learning activities coming up next week.
Blending letter sounds smoothly is one of the most important skills children need to master in learning to read. Children first identify sounds in an unfamiliar word and then blend them together without stopping in order to read the word. Your child may bring home blending flash cards or word lists if extra practice is needed. All words will be decodable meaning there will be no silent letters or special vowel sounds like ou as in out. Children are sometimes asked to read nonsense words like jup to help them focus on blending rather than just memorizing real words they know. All vowels should be read as short vowel sounds (as in apple, echo, itch, and up).
We will sometimes post student-created word lists on Padlets which can be found on our Padlet page. Children can choose a word list to read aloud to you for extra practice. All flash cards and lists can remain at home so you can practice as often as you like.
Thank you for your support and have a great day! Reading This week we completed most of our unit on the letter Ff and the Superkid Frits. The children were introduced to adjectives and we practiced describing different things we saw using adjectives that tell how objects feel, look, sound. The children have been doing a great job reading words, sentences and stories to complete our lessons. You may see some blending cards come home on Monday for some extra practice. Blending is just identifying sounds the letters in a word make, then saying them together without stopping to read the word. The children are great at identifying sounds but blending them together to read can take some time and practice for many children. The children have also been creating their own word families. These are lists of words that rhyme. Some have been posted on a Padlet and these can be used for some additional blending practice. Just click on any list and have your child read to you. We will continue to add word lists as the children create more in class. Click on the pic below. Math We are still working on subtraction. The children have learned how to take away and are writing number sentences using the minus and equal signs. The children work with counters, the Number Rack app and pictures to help them solve problems. We have also been doing a little extra practice with patterns. Science/Social Studies The children learned a bit about Martin Luther King on Tuesday with a story and drawing activity. Of course, the inauguration was big news this week. We will be focusing much more on the President and America's symbols closer to President's Day in February. In Science we finished up discussing people and animals in winter. We may return to the study of snowflake shapes and patterns if a nice snowy day happens sometime soon. For now though, we will move on to the states of matter. We will focus primarily on water so snow and ice will still be part of our lessons. Finally, I can't finish up this post without sharing a recess picture with you. The students have been so enthusiastic about learning this week. I love my class!! Reminders
Monday will be Art Day. Library Books are due Tuesday. Look for report card on Wednesday! Wear sneakers on Thursday for Gym. Winter Studies This week we began studying winter in Science. We began with winter weather. On Tuesday we were able to study a real snowfall before we left for the day. The children were excited to study real snow and get outside and I was happy for the opportunity for some authentic learning. It wasn't the best type of snow for finding whole, individual snowflakes but the students made some very good observations. We may try again before the winter is through. Animals in Winter The children learned that animals can migrate, hibernate or be active in winter. They made handprint cardinals to decorate our hallway. Next they used a website called PebbleGo by Capstone to look for information about cardinals. We combined our science research with writing workshop to write cardinal facts. The children also did a digital project about their learning which you can see on our latest Padlet. Scan the code below or visit our Padlet page. Math In Math class, we began working on subtraction number stories and sentences. Today we played a special playdough game called Subtraction Smash to review what we've covered so far. The minus sign will be introduced next week. Reading
In my last blog post I mistakenly posted that we would be beginning a unit on Hot Rod and the letter Hh next. I forgot about poor Frits who loves fishing. We will be reading about him and studying the letter Ff next week. Children will also learn that some words have double letters as in fluff and doll. Our memory word for this unit will be I. Reminders No school on Monday! Enjoy your long weekend. Book orders are due Tuesday. Send orders to me or order on the Scholastic Reading Club website. Our class had a wonderful first week back at school. They were very well behaved and were hard workers. They are really getting the hang of addition and number sentences in Math. After we wrap up the current topic, we will continue to add by finding different ways to make 10. Subtraction will be introduced soon.
In Reading the children are really enjoying the stories about all of our Superkids. We will finish the unit on Icky and the letter Ii. Hot Rod and the letter Hh are up next. We will focus on segmenting words into individual sounds and emphasize the vowels we have covered so far (short a, i and o). The students will also begin reading longer stories featuring our Superkids in their workbooks and from our Guided Reading library in small groups. Last week we focused on good behavior and PRIDE Rules for Social Studies. Now that we are almost half-way through the year, I will be encouraging the students to be more independent and self-sufficient. I will expect students to think first and begin to follow classroom rules without so many prompts and reminders. They are trying to be the best Kindergarteners they can be and we are looking ahead to what will be expected of them in first grade. This coming week we will switch gears to Science. We will be studying winter weather, people in winter, and animals in winter. Hopefully we will get a little snow soon so we can study snowflake shapes. Please make sure your child has warm winter outerwear so that we may take advantage of any flurries we see and any calm, sunny days for recess. Welcome back!
Our class had a great first day back and were very well behaved all day. What a great start to the New year here at school. This week we will review our rules during Social Studies to ensure we continue the way we started today. The students will discuss some stories about good manners and behavior and will role play good school behaviors as well. In Reading class we will focus on the letter Ii and the Superkid Icky. We work primarily with the short i sound as in itch or mix. The students are also learning to segment words and write all the sounds they hear. We will begin with 3 letter words with the the vowel in the middle or CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant). They will also be expected blend sounds together to read words with the letters they have learned so far. We will wrap up our first Math topic About addition this week. The students have been working with smaller numbers (sums of 10 or less). Our focus has been on using the plus sign, the equal sign and writing number sentences(equations). Once the students have mastered where to use these symbols and where to place the parts and the whole group or sum in a number sentence, we will begin adding with larger groups. It may have been tough for everyone to wake up early and get back into the routine today but our class really made it a good first day back. I am very proud of the boys and girls for doing a great job today. |
Mrs. BubnisKindergarten teacher at John S Clarke Elementary. Categories |