A Recap of Our First Full Week of Kindergarten!

The children are adjusting well and were troopers this week as it was their first full week of school. They are starting to settle into our daily routine and are building their stamina with structured activities. They have also been working hard at following teacher directions, working out small problems with peers, and learning how to sit on the rug during whole group instruction times.  These are areas along with others that we, as a class, will continue to work on for the remainder of the school year as the social curriculum is a huge part of our day!

Mrs. Tatlock Visits Kindergarten

 Mrs. Tatlock, our guidance counselor, came into the classroom on Friday to teach the children about feelings.  They learned about clear mind, sparkle mind, and mud mind.  See if your child can give you examples of each of these minds.  For example, when we are excited about a birthday party, we may be in sparkle mind.  She introduced a special friend to the class; Pumsey, which will be joining her when she comes to the classroom on Mondays for the next several weeks.  After this activity, she read the book The Way I Feel.  Mrs. Tatlock concluded her session by showing the children belly breaths.  See if your child can show you what a belly breath is.


Math Update

This week's lessons focused on introducing the children to the structure of five using a five-frame. The five-frame is an important math tool that provides opportunities for children to work with quantities in the range of 1-5.

The children worked on recognizing the number of dots and empty boxes shown on a five-frame and producing finger patterns to represent quantities in the range of 1 to 5.  Ask your child to show you 3, 4, and 5 using their fingers.  See if they can show you a different way.  The children also built quantities up to 5 with cubes using their own 5 frame mat.

Today the children worked on writing numerals 1 to 5 on whiteboards.  Rhymes were introduced for each number to support children with their writing of these numerals.  The rhymes will be sent home next week at the curriculum night for you to have at home.

We continued with math stations this week as well.  The only new math station that was introduced was Pennies & Mats.  At this station, the children are using pennies and counting mats to practice counting by ones to 10 and beyond.

Name Activity

We read the book A My Name is Alice, which is a alphabet book. For each letter, the characters are making alliterations by using words that start with their first letter in their names.  After reading this book, the children completed a self-portrait of themselves and came up with something that they like that begins with the same letter as their name.  For example: S my name is Sarah and I like strawberries.

Theme

We finished up our Monarch Butterfly theme.  Even though we didn't have an actual caterpillar to watch it change into a butterfly, the children learned a lot as we read several non-fiction books.  As a culminating activity for this theme, the children illustrated the life cycle using drawings and pasta pieces.  Today, they labeled each stage.

Celebration!!!

Last Friday, we filled our class warm buzzie jar.  The children voted how they wanted to celebrate their milestone.  The majority of the class decided they wanted extra recess.  So on Monday, they ended up having 3 recesses!!  We are quickly on our way to filling up the jar again as we are being safe, kind, and responsible.

Each time the classroom jar is filled up, it's brought to the front office and the buzzies are added to the school wide beehive.  When this beehive is filled up, we have a school wide celebration.  We should be having our first school wide celebration in the coming weeks.