We met Jamie Swan, or Mrs. Swan today. She was very nice and the students really liked her. Thank you, Mrs. Morledge-Hampton, for coming in today to help with centers. What a cold day! We were lucky enough to enjoy morning recess, but we stayed inside for afternoon recess. Since it was too wet to go out, students had "free choice" centers, including Legos, puzzles, and any of the regular literacy and math centers.

We have been reading The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything. Students read all of the actions from the story. "Two shoes go CLOMP, CLOPM, one pair of pants go WIGGLE, WIGGLE, one shirt goes SHAKE, SHAKE, two gloves go CLAP, CLAP, one hat goes NOD, NOD, and one giant, scary pumpkin head goes, BOO, BOO" (to scare the crows away). Students wrote some of the action words by sounding them out. We'll do this often, as this is how students learn to write and writing leads to reading. At home, you can ask your child to sound out words, one sound at a time. Start with words whose letters make the expected sound. For example, don't start with giraffe, since the g is making a j sound and not the g sound. If they use they leave out silent letters, there's no need to correct them. PRAISE, PRAISE, PRAISE. Relax...the spelling will come later. If they spell rainbow as ranbo, that's fantastic because look at how many sounds they heard!!!

We're working on patterns in math. We've mostly studied visual patterns, but at home, point out patterns that you can think of, including sounds in music, days of the week, etc. We look at what changes. For example, a pattern of all red buttons in different shapes is a "shape pattern" because the shape is the only thing that changed.

Wow! I made two huge mistakes that I must apologize for. First, the date on the field trip form was incorrect. We are actually going on Wednesday, October 7th not on the 6th. Second, I forgot to add the reading log to the bottom of the newsletter. Please simply send a slip of paper with the total number of minutes your child read to you (or you read to them) and return it inside of the Monday envelope next Tuesday. Sorry for the confusion!!!

Welcome back, Gabriel! We had a great day. I, especially, had a great day, with some wonderful teaching moments. We read the book The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything. Students were able to make a text to text connection, relating the character in this book to characters in two other books. Wow! One of the books they found to be similar was We're Going on a Bear Hunt. (You've probably listened to several verses of this tonight. :)

Reading about a character who is not afraid of things led into our writing project for the week. Today, students created a writing prompt sheet by folding a paper into fourths. In each section, they drew something that they are afraid of. Since we're focusing on scarecrows, we want to put the focus on crows or other animals being scared -- not us! We're not afraid of anything! Our story will be about how brave we are.

Hopefully, your child showed you the turtle they made for letter T day. I can tell that some of you really focus on letter recognition at home as the kids are quick to tell me that they have seen this letter in someones name. I'm glad they are noticing such things!

Please remind your child to cough or sneeze into the bend of their elbow and NOT on their hands. We don't want germs spread to everything we touch. Wash or sanitize frequently!

Picture day went very smoothly, but I was sad that two students were absent. Thankfully, the photographers and their helpers came to get us right at 8:30, while we were still clean! In science today, we studied how things move on an incline. I had a piece of dry wall board and some Hot Wheels cars and Thomas the Tank Engine trains. Students made predictions about which would get to the bottom first and explained their reasoning. We tested our theories and discussed what happened. We talked about the weather changes that Fall will bring (I wish it would hurry and happen) and made our calendar reflect the current season.

Today was American Indian Heritage Day. I planned a lesson that required going onto the Montana Office of Public Instruction web site to view a portion of a video titled Long Ago in Montana. It addressed how Native Americans got the things they needed before money was invented. However, the school district server was down most of the day, so we only had a book to read about a chicken who wanted a scarecrow's hat for her nest. The scarecrow wanted a walking stick. The chicken made a number of exchanges to eventually get the walking stick for scarecrow and was able to exchange for the hat. It was a cute story that had several wonderful vocabulary words, including "delighted." Each student was supposed to come home and tell you something that delighted them. I'm curious to see who remembered.

Starting next Wednesday, a college student who studying to become a teacher will be in our room each Wednesday and Friday for the next six weeks. Her name is Jamie Swan. She will most likely spend the first day or two observing, but she and I will be planning some lessons that she will be teaching. I look forward to meeting her.

Thanks for being so prompt today in picking up your child from school! Things went very smoothly on our first early out. Thank you, too, for your response to my request for helpers on our field trip. Three parents have volunteered their time to accompany us, which should be enough to keep everyone safe.

Hopefully you have had a chance to look through your child's backpack tonight. Book orders arrived and if you ordered books they were sent home today. Thank you for your orders--they help me earn points for more classroom books.

Today students painted rainbows for letter R day. They also wrote lowercase Rs and colored pictures of some objects that begin with R. We have been choral reading a letter book each day. I read the line by myself the first time, and the students read it the second time. During both readings, I point to the words as we say them. This helps to teach directionality (reading from left to right), recognition of sight words (at least one sight word is repeated on each page). Here's an example of today's book: "Here is the ring." "Here is the rainbow." "Here is the raccoon." In this example, students would be seeing/saying three words over and over again: here, is, and the. You'll be amazed at how quickly they learn to recognize those words when they see them in other places. Try pointing out "the end" in your child's bedtime story tonight and see if they can read it to you. Chances are they can! Give tons of praise for how incredibly smart they are!

Welcome back, Aspen!! Thanks to Anna and Gail Bergstedt for presenting information about China and adoption to our class this morning. Suddenly, everyone wants to visit China! I haven't received any picture order forms yet. I am aware that there is now an option to order and pay for your pictures online. In the past, teachers kept track of everyone's money until the actual time of our photo session, then we'd put the check into each child's hand to give to the photographer. I'm not sure how the change will affect picture day.

We read a fun book today called Q is for Duck. Students had to use their brains to determine why each letter was associated with something seemingly obscure. For example, B is for dog because dogs bark and X is for dinosaur because they are extinct. Students worked on their Who Am I? books by coloring their hair and eyes and writing the appropriate color word on the page. The word "blonde" was not well understood and it caused even more confusion when there was not a Crayon to match.

In math, students drew a picture of the way they get to school (walk, bicycle, scooter, car). We put the pictures onto a graph. I can't remember for sure, but I think walk had the most, scooter had the least, and car and bike were tied. For literacy, students listened for how many times the word "the" was used per page of one of our books. Next, they used highlighter tape to highlight the word. "The" and "end" are new words on our word wall, so we will practice spelling them and finding them in books. For writer's workshop, students designed their own quilt and wrote the (very short) sentence, "The quilt."

I learned today that I will need to get permission slips signed in order to take students on our walking field trip to the fire station, so I will send that in next Monday's envelope. If you would please sign it and return it the next day, I'd appreciate it.

Early out at noon tomorrow. Please try to be on time because the teachers have to leave fairly quickly to get to our training. Thanks!

We made pretty peacocks for our letter P day. We also played a game in which students popped up like popcorn when they heard a letter in their name. Students underlined Ps in a poem called Popcorn. For writer's workshop, students drew pictures of at least 3 things that begin with P and copied the words off the board.

Students checked out library books today. At story time, I read The Day the Teacher Went Bananas about a mix-up in which a substitute teacher is sent to the zoo and a gorilla is sent to a school. In math, students made a real graph by standing in columns. Today, we had more boys than girls. We also compared sets of objects. Students drew lines from each object in one set to an object in another set to see which had more objects.

I went to a training tonight to learn about a piece of equipment that turns an ordinary whiteboard into a Smart board. I am excited about trying it at school soon.

Thanks to those of you who returned the coupon books and/or money today. I'm still missing a few, but I'm sure everything will be taken care of in the next day or two. Three new things happened today. First, half of the students had jobs today. Jobs include lunch basket carrier, messenger, chair stacker, library basket carrier, snack helper, and calendar helper. Students who don't have a job this week will have one next week. I rotate them so that everyone will have an opportunity to try out all of the jobs. Second, students checked in this morning by putting their name and picture into a pocket chart. Third, students who have had their hand stamped 10 times got a prize from the prize jar. I have been keeping track on my clipboard, but I think I'll hang up a poster so that students can track their progress and see how many days until they can get a prize.

For our letter O day, students listened to words to determine if they had the short or long O sound in them. We have talked about vowels and have learned a song that introduces the 2 sounds made by vowels, but it may be a while before they understand this concept. During snack, we watched a short National Geographic video about an octopus attacking a shark. Who knew they were so powerful?!

In math, we made movement patterns (clap, stomp, clap, stomp, clap, stomp=an AB pattern). We also looked at the various kinds of graphs and students drew pictures of themselves to create a picture graph of boys versus girls. We discovered that there are more girls than boys. During writer's workshop, students were asked to turn letter Os into something else. Some students got really creative and drew pizzas, cookies, steering wheels, lollipops, faces, etc. Students also colored an octopus and glued a poem onto the back. If your child didn't have time in class, tonight you could have them underline the Os in the poem.

Tomorrow is library day. Please return books in the morning. Also, please return the bottom portion of last week's newsletter with the hours of reading you or your child have done over the past week. Have a great evening!

Oops. After dismissing students, I saw a note that was supposed to be sent home today. It was a reminder that either the money for the Preferred Coupon Books or the unsold books need to be returned to school on Monday. I still show that RH, MB, SB, MK, CS, IF, and ES have not returned money or books. If you child has the money or coupon books in their backpack, please email me and I will dig through it while they are at recess on Monday. My apologies.

We had a noisy N day. (I'm not just saying that because of the letter N--it was way too loud today!) We played musical chairs, we fed sound muncher (who ate a nose, by the way), and we learned some new signs (soup, popcorn, potato, orange juice, cake, waffle, ice cream, chicken, and meat). Instead of journals, today we used mini whiteboards to practice writing the uppercase and lowercase letters A-N. For science, students were first asked to predict which objects would sink and which would float and then we experimented. They were very good at predicting! Students are able to recognize an AB pattern in math (2 alternating colors), but I asked them to trace shapes to create an AB pattern and few were able to do this. It just shows me what I need to spend more time teaching.

There was a green sheet of paper that went home last week asking if your child needs a sack lunch on our early out day. Most of you will not need to return that form. If your child will be going to daycare on the early out day, and the daycare kids have already eaten, you might want to order a sack lunch that your child can take with them to daycare. If you will be picking up your child on that day, chances are you will simply feed your child lunch when you get home. I just thought I should clarify this.

Have a great weekend. Please feel free to email me anytime you have a question, or comment on the post and I will respond to you. I'm quite the computer geek and am on it frequently.

Check your child's backpack. Picture order forms went home today as well as fundraiser packets. Exciting news! Our class will walk to the fire station at 17th and Parkhill on Wednesday, October 7th for a tour. Our tour begins at 9am and will take 30-45 minutes. If any of you are available to come along as a chaperon, please email me.

Letter M day was mega-fun. It was music day, so students learned lots of fun songs. For morning literacy, we listened to groups of 3 words, 2 that started with m and 1 that didn't, to detect the sound that didn't belong. We read If You Give a Moose a Muffin and Sir Maggie the Mighty. At story time, we finished our first chapter book, Junie B. Jones and Meanie Jim's Birthday.

For math, students took turns "hiding" our two classroom mascots, Tattle Turtle and Red Panda. Students could not point to where the animals were hiding, but instead had to use math words such as behind, under, next to, etc.

After the one-minute speed reading activity, students drew "Mom and Me" at journal time. Some of you moms have really long legs! We roasted at recess, so many of us chose to sit in the shade and rest. It was a great day!!

As you might have imagined, discussing the constitution with 5- and 6-year-olds was difficult, but perhaps they got something out of it. For our letter L craft, we made heart-shaped (love) ladybugs. Their legs are pipe cleaners bent into Ls. I was so impressed that most of the students remembered the parts of an insect (6 legs, 2 antennae, 2 body parts)!

On day two of our speed reading, most students were able to beat their previous number of letters read in one minute. In math journals today, students were to draw a vertical line (I showed them what that meant) and draw a ball to the left of the line. This showed me who knows the difference between left and right. We will continue to work on it...

I've been gradually changing the activities at the learning centers. As students become better at letter recognition, they will have more literacy-based activities. Centers are a time to practice what they've learned in a more relaxed atmosphere with a peer.

The book order has been placed. Thank you for your orders. It will take about a week for the books to arrive. They will be delivered to the school and I will distribute them to students.

For letter K day, we traced and cut out triangles to make kites. The glue was still wet by the end of the day, so they will come home tomorrow. We played an alphabet bingo game to reinforce letter recognition and students put letters together to build three-sound words. We studied punctuation marks: the period means stop, the question mark asks a question, and the exclamation mark means say it with feeling. Students have been choral reading simple sight word books each day. This "pretend" reading really builds their skills!

We started two new things today: speed reading and math journals. For one minute, students read the alphabet letters they have already learned, to give them repeated practice in letter recognition. They underlined the letter on which they stopped. They will try to beat their time each day. They seemed to enjoy it! I was so impressed with the math journals. Students were asked to draw a box with a ball inside, and everyone did it correctly!

Thursday is Constitution Day, but we will celebrate it tomorrow. We will read a book called We the Kids, which defines the constitution in kid-friendly language. We will also draft our own classroom constitution to reinforce the concept.

Today we started an important pre-reading activity. I gave each student a sheet of paper with three boxes on it. I called out three sound words and asked them to put a block in the box where they heard the sound. For example, "Where do you hear the /a/ in cat?" (in the middle box). A couple of the students insisted that they could not do this because they don't know how to read yet, and I explained that if they would participate with an open mind, they would learn and would eventually become readers--one of the big goals of kindergarten. I try to remain positive, but I insist that every student TRY!

Hearing screenings took up our math time, so we did not get to start math journals today, but we will tomorrow. Each day, your child will have the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of the day's math concept by drawing/writing in their math journal. For example, one day the journal activity might be for students to draw a square and draw a circle inside the square. I will be able to see, at a glance, if they understand shapes and the concept of "inside." Math journals will be one of the main ways I grade students for report cards.

Tomorrow is library. Don't forget to send your library book back to school so your child can choose a different book.

Letter I day brought about a discussion on short and long vowel sounds. We have students named Ian and Izaak, which make different I sounds, but I was glad to know that they already noticed the beginning letter of their friend's names. Students made name inchworms by tracing and cutting circles and then writing one letter of their name per circle. They turned out cute and will be decorating our room for a few days.

In math, we practiced the concepts over, under, and through by first reading the book Going on a Bear Hunt, and then acting it out. It was lively and fun. We practiced singing our color songs: blue and red. I posted a link to the lyrics to the color songs on the class web site under "Links for Parents." The red and blue songs are exactly the same as the ones we sing in class. Some of the other color songs have different words.

There will be hearing screenings on Monday. Have a great weekend!

It was a great day in Room 1! The students know what is expected of them and they are making their dear teacher happy! As a reward for their efforts, they had a fun painting project. I had written their names with white crayon onto white construction paper so they couldn't see it, but as they painted the paper, their name suddenly appeared. They thought that was cool! The paintings are displayed in the hall for now, but will come home in about a week.

After school today, the coupon books arrived. If you returned a form saying that you would sell a coupon book, it will be coming home to you tomorrow so please check your child's backpack. You can turn in the money to me as you get it. Don't forget that book orders and money are due next Tuesday the 15th.

I apologize for not posting last night. It was a long day because I stayed at school and worked until the Open House and didn't get home until 8pm. Needless to say, I was exhausted. Thanks to those of you who were able to attend. I hope you had a good time.

In Social Studies, we talked about how each of us is unique and what makes us special. We also talked about ways in which we are all alike. Students drew self-portraits. Next week, we'll begin work on a "Who Am I?" book, in which students draw their hair color, eye color, name things they like, and tell how they feel.

We made glitter bottles for our letter G art activity. Thank you for sending your empty bottles to school for this craft. In addition to our usual letter of the day activities, we also learned 2 new songs that will teach students to spell the color words "red" and "blue." Journal time today consisted of searching through magazines for pictures of things that go (cars, airplanes, roller coasters, etc.).

In math, we reviewed the concepts of top, middle, bottom and directions left and right. As you would imagine, left and right need a lot of work. I taught them to hold up the sign language L and showed them that it only looks like the letter L when you use your left hand.

During our end of day class meeting, we've been thinking of events that have made it a great day. I am happy to hear things like, "I played with my friend at recess." and "We made a neat craft." It is so fun to have such happy and enthusiastic students!

This isn't school related, but I thought it might be helpful to some. Between Sept. 27 and Oct. 3, you can download a free will and trust kit. Go to www.suzeorman.com and enter gift code 898989.

We had a fun Friday in kindergarten today. We learned the letter E and fed sound muncher an elephant, an escalator, an elevator, and an eggplant, to name a few. We read about an ant named Effie who befriended an elephant. In Science, we talked about what makes an insect an insect (3 body parts, 6 legs, and 2 antennae). We made insects out of clay and drew our own creations. For writer's workshop, students drew pictures and attempted to label them by writing the beginning letter sound of the word. We practiced writing letters with shaving cream. At the end of the day, we sang "The Ants Go Marching."

Have a great 3 day weekend. See you Tuesday at 5:30 for Open House!

Get a class calendar

I have created a class calendar, with listings of birthdays and VIP weeks. If you would like the ability to view it online, please email me so I can add you to my list of viewers. Thanks!

Thursday, Sept. 3

It was a dog day in kindergarten -- because we studied the letter D, of course! We fed the sound muncher, made a dog craft, then sang BINGO, barking as we left off a letter instead of clapping. We read a dinosaur story and sang Dig A, Dig A, Dig A Dinosaur. On our mini whiteboards, we practiced writing all the letters we've learned thus far: A, B, C, D (upper and lower case). Rose Park uses D'Nealian-style letters. For an example of upper case letters, see http://www.writingwizard.longcountdown.com/files/worksheet20064224131904.html. For lower case letters, see http://www.writingwizard.longcountdown.com/files/worksheet20064224421232.html

Many of the students wanted to take a nap after lunch, so I told them they could stretch out of the floor as long as they weren't kicking anyone else. As tired as they were, very few were able to keep still. Many of them were more comfortable sitting up to listen to the story, after all! No of them has fallen asleep in class yet!

We did the first lesson in our math curriculum-- one-to-one matching. Students need to be able to point once for each object they count. This skill carries over to reading, as students need to know how to point to one word at a time as they read. We have several students who are on the verge of reading, already!!

Wednesday, Sept. 2

This morning, I handed each student a letter of the alphabet. Once everyone had one, students arranged themselves in alphabetical order. They were able to do this very quickly--I was impressed! Next, we had Social Studies. I chose to read some books by Kevin Henkes because he has some good ones that deal with feelings. We read Wemberly Worried, about a mouse who worried about everything, especially starting school. We also read Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, about a mouse who has her treasured toys taken away from her by her teacher for playing with them at an inappropriate time. If you want to learn more about Kevin Henkes's books, his website is http://www.kevinhenkes.com/young.asp.

We learned the letter C today. Students practiced writing it with "rainbow writing" (tracing over it several times in different colors). We read another Kevin Henkes book, Chrysanthemum, about a mouse with an unusual and very long name. Yesterday, we graphed the number of letters in our names, so we had a frame of reference and some background knowledge. We also fed the sound muncher some interesting things: a computer, a carrot, a cake, and a car!!

Thanks to Kelly Hogan for helping out during afternoon centers! Tomorrow is music--fun, fun, fun!

Tomorrow we have music class

Tuesday Sept. 1

Today we learned the letter B. I introduced the students to my sound muncher (a monster made from a small garbage can with a swinging lid). Sound muncher can only eat things that begin with the letter sound of the day. It was difficult for them to brainstorm things for him to eat, but they were able to give me a thumbs up or thumbs down when I provided some possibilities. Students formed the letter with clay, wrote it, and practiced making the /b/ sound while feeling what their mouths do (it's not a puff of air, like the /p/ sound).

Students went to the library today. They were given a tour and shown the procedure for checking out books. Next week, they will actually get to check out a book. The librarian, Mrs. Waples, has some information she'll send home to you, informing you of due dates and what happens if your child loses a book.

Thanks to Mrs. Ross for coming in to help during morning centers. I have paired up the students so they know who they will be with during centers for the next few weeks. I will gradually mix things up so that they can become comfortable working with a variety of people.

I showed some short videos that give information about preventing the spread of disease (especially during flu season). There are some entertaining ones at this link http://www.youtube.com/USGOVHHS. Please remind your child to cough or sneeze into a tissue when possible, and when not possible, into the bend of their elbow and to wash their hands often.