**All of us have much to be thankful for. I am thankful for my students dedication to their education. I am so thankful for our wonderful and hard working assistant, Ms. Dennis, who is always anticipating my every thought! I am so happy to have Mrs. D., who volunteers her time to work with my students every Tuesday. I am thankful for the great support and help of all my kindergarten families. You truly make a difference! Please enjoy your family time together as I will. I hope you have had a chance to listen to our talking story book at the end of this blog. The students have worked so hard on it. Enjoy!!!
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin on Tuesday, November 27th. At that time, you will receive notification of your child's skill level.
**The Irving PTO will sponsor the CHINESE ACROBATS on Tuesday, November 27th at 1:30 pm.
**Trimester 1 has ended. Report cards will go home on Tuesday, December 4th.
**Calling all cooks! We need lots of volunteers for our annual Gingerbread Cookie Baking. We will cut, create, decorate, bake and share on FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7th from 12:30-2:55 pm. I will provide the dough, sprinkles and cookie cutters. You can provide the baking sheets and spatulas and aprons! Please email if you can help. It would be great to have 6-8 parents!
**Our Winter Concert featuring our own KINDERGARTEN and FIRST GRADE is Thursday, December 20th. We have 2 seatings--the first is at 8:15 am. The second one is at 9:45 am. Come share the joy! I will be working with our room parents to coordinate a get together after each program.
**Our field trip to the Brookfield Zoo was awesome!! We had a beautiful day to walk around and see our animal friends. The students spent their free time exploring the world of big cats, gorillas, monkeys, rhinos, kangaroos, bison, wolves, bats, snakes, frogs to name a few and various activities at the Hamill Family Play Zoo. At the Great Bear Wilderness Exhibit, we enjoyed a classroom experience with our instructor, Fay. She guided us through an introduction on bears of all kinds, looking at artifacts and providing activities where the students could compare themselves to the height of a each types of bear. The students saw a black bear skull, touched black bear and polar bear fur and experimented with a grizzly paw print and compared it to their own hand. She took us out to the bear wilderness where the students saw a grizzly, sloth and polar bears up close and personal. The students also viewed Christmas trees decorated by local towns in the area. Our own Irving Girl Scouts and Daisys had a great tree decorated. The bus ride home was quiet and reflective (some napping students!) A special shout out to our volunteers-M. Schwager, C. Cummings, L. Banghart and S. Connelly for their assistance!
This week:
We completed our cross curricular unit on bears. It was all about illustrating and practicing our reading for our recording of our talking story book. What fun! The students listened to a story about life on the Mayflower and what it was like for adults and children in 1620. We took a look of what it was like once they arrived in Jamestown. The students made butter using their gross motor skills to shake the cream as hard as they could. Liquid changing into a solid. A child in the 1620's may have churned the butter from cream and the students made some comparisons. The students used their butter and honey to accompany the Bear Paw Snacks they made. The students had a flat circle of dough and used another circle to shape and roll little circles to make the toes. We all had a mini science lesson on gluten. Our gluten free students used a rice dough. We talked about how gluten is what makes it elastic and rubbery so the toes will stick. The rice flour did not have gluten so it was very hard for the toes to stick. We baked up our paws and served them with our butter and honey. YUM!!!! Our station day activities included creating YES/NO bear pop ups and answering the questions, creating pattern block turkeys, making bear caves (mixed media) and graphing, comparing, counting and recording brown bears and polar bears using teddy grahams.
Reading/Social Studies: The students continue to work in Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasurers Reading series. The students built background knowledge on their travels both near and far. The students listened to the big book story, "On the Go." They observed how people traveled from one place to another and the vehicles they used. We looked up each country on our world map. In their comprehension study, the students compared, contrasted and categorized the types of travel and vehicles. The sight words go and see were reviewed. The students worked on their target sound short i. The students used chants and rhymes to reinforce the sound. The students continued to review the use of action words or verbs. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included TRAVEL, JOURNEY, PREPARE, RELAX and FAMILIAR. In phonemic awareness, the students used their elkonin boxes (sound boxes) to sound blend 3 and 4 letter words using short i. The students read their pre-decodable story, "Go, Go, Go." They made predictions about story content and sound blended the word unknown. During an interactive writing exercise, the students made pop up signs using the word GO to help cheer on kids they knew in the Turkey Trot. We read two poems on transportation. "The Bike" and "Riding the Subway." The students noticed the rhyming in both and help to track the words as I read them. The students worked with partners to create sentences using their sight words and pictures. They shared stories with each other to build fluency. Our workstations this week included reading a story and making your own retelling cards, playing the Long Ride Game with a partner creating words using the word families ip, it, im, at, am, ap, creating a sentence using go and see and illustrating it, creating and categorizing real and nonsense words using the app, Word Wizard and practicing reading their story sentence for our talking story book.
Math: The students began work on sorting by common attribute. They participated in a game called "What's My Rule?" where the students listened and looked for obvious attribute being described by me. Great for enhancing listening skills! The students continued to participate in generating, continuing and copying patterns using blocks, tiles and bears. In our folding paper geometry activity, the students randomly folded their paper creasing it well. They unfolded it to see what shapes were revealed and outlined and colored the shapes. How many 3 sided? How many 4 sided? Any 5 sided shapes? The students wrote numbers from 0-50 on their way to 100 and continue to work on place value.
Writing: The students are working very hard in their yellow writing journals. They are beginning to be more aware of where they write their upper and lowercase letters when writing their sentences. We did have a discussion on where tall lowercase letters are written and where some lowercase are written that fall below the bottom line. The students continue to work on practicing the Starting Corner Capitals they have learned thus far. The students continue to use the writing prompts from their reading series and have also made reflections based on their growing knowledge of bears. We continue to stress beginning with a capital letter, spacing between words in a sentence and using an ending mark. Students are recognizing nouns and now--action words (verbs ) in their sentences.
Technology: In reading, student small groups used the app Word Wizard to create real and nonsense words using the word families--in, ip, it. The students continue to use the app iTalk to record what they sound like when they read. The students are beginning to recall how to email their work to me, They read their page of the talking book using the app Sonic Pics. The students are learning about speaking louder and clear when reading aloud. A shout out to our tech coach, Ms. Ortega for her assistance on our talking book! Students also used the app Montessori Crossword to reinforce segmenting and blending skills. In math, students small groups are using the app Starfall Patterns to practice generating and continuing a pattern. The apps Number Find, Sam Phibian, and Addition are very helpful in their skill development.
Literature: "Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What do you See," Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you Hear," "Friends," "A Day in the Life of a Bear Cub," "Polar Bear Cubs,' "Maybe a Bear Ate It," "When Will It Be Spring," "Sleep Big Bear, Sleep." "Polar Bears," "Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What do you See?" "Black Bear Cubs," "Bears in the Forest," "If You Lived in the Time of the Mayflower," "Thanksgiving Is.." "Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks," "Little Bear Comes Home."
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