We read Rainbow Fish, discussed sharing and used the book as the focus for a lesson on addition and subtraction. Each student traced a fish onto a sheet of paper, adding underwater details. As they were drawing, I went around and gave shiny, silver scales to a couple of students at each table. They had to take their beginning number of scales, subtract the number of scales they gave away, and then tell the difference. Those who started with no shiny scales wrote an addition sentence. They started with zero, wrote the number of scales they added and then wrote the sum. This paper should be in your child's backpack so you can talk about it. We read "New Shoes for Sylvia." Our vocabulary words for today were: certainly, perhaps, and resourceful.

We will be spending time talking about describing words this week. On Thursday, the kindergartners and their big buddies will each be bringing an item from home, such as a stuffed animal, toy, or collectible, that they can describe.

Wow, what a busy day! Students met Mrs. Swanson and learned a little about her. She has 3 children who are ages 10, 12 and 16. Of course we had our field trip in the afternoon. We had previously read the book Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and had watched a short video, but seeing an hour long performance was a vastly different experience. To make the play longer, characters and scenes were added that were not in the book and it confused many of the students. There were some funny dancing squirrels but because the students didn't understand their place in the story, I don't think they appreciated the humor. It was cute but long and at the end we had to wait FOREVER for our bus to arrive. It seemed like we were the last school to leave! We got back to school 5 minutes before dismissal time and students were unhappy that they did not get their last recess and their last center.

We invited the other kindergarten class into our room this morning for sign language because the room that we normally go to was being used by the first graders. We had fun playing teachers versus students and the students won! Students read their mini books to three peers before sitting down to color the pictures. Students also colored a special 100th Day badge which I attached to a "crown." Our vocabulary words for the day were: upset, refreshed, and satisfied. I was so satisfied with their behavior in the hall this morning that I gave the class another link on their good behavior chain. It's getting pretty close to the ground which means a reward is coming soon! Thank you Mrs. Siroin and Mrs. Goudy for helping with our art and clean up this afternoon. I couldn't have done it without you both.

I met this afternoon with Mrs. Swanson who will be doing her practicum in our classroom beginning Monday. She has a lot of experience with young children and will be a wonderful addition to our classroom. Don't forget that we go to Alberta Bair on Monday afternoon. For the parents going with us, please be at the school a little before noon. Our bus leaves right at noon and the show starts at 12:30. Have a great weekend.

We have been working on addition for a couple of weeks and today we started subtraction. Most of the students seem to understand the concept but I need to provide more hands-on activities to make it stick. I read a book called The ABCs of Jobs. It went along with our theme of community workers. For each letter of the alphabet, there was a job description and list of tools used on the job. Students learned about helicopter pilots, scuba divers and yoga instructions among others.

Thank you for helping your child remember to bring their 100 items today. I think they had a good time practicing counting with their big buddy. Students counted by 1s to fill up their 100s chart. Next, they put their items into piles of 5 and counted by 5s to 100. Finally, they counted by tens. The 4th/5th graders also randomly called out numbers and asked their kindergarten buddy to cover that number with one of their items. There was a whole lot of counting going on!

The students made some great connections during today's vocabulary lesson. I read Caps For Sale. The man in the story is a peddler and we talked about how that meant the same thing as a vendor, a vocabulary word from the past. Another vocabulary word for today was imitate, which the students related to the word mimic. Last week I pointed out onomatopoeia (the use of words to suggest a sound, such as "woof" or "hiss"). Onomatopoeia is used a lot in children's books. Every time I read a story with it, they shout the word "onomatopoeia." There was a guest teacher in the room next door who came to see me after school. She commented that things have sure changed in the kindergarten curriculum because she could hear the students using a word she didn't learn until high school. I thought that was hilarious! They do enjoy knowing and using big words.

Students had fun practicing addition on a mini calculator. We read stories about people in our community who help others, such as a mail carrier, a school crossing guard, and a police officer. We also read the fiction book Officer Buckle and Gloria, about a police officer who goes to schools to talk about safety along with his entertaining dog, Gloria. At recess, we filled 4 spray bottles with water and a couple of drops of food coloring and sprayed the snowmen that the students worked together to make. He was a tie dye snowman!

Happy birthday, Haley! We were so happy that the weather warmed up enough so that we could go outside for lunch recess! Yay! We read Dr. Seuss's My Many Colored Days and talked about how different colors make us feel (yellow-happy; gray-sad). Students wrote in their journals about how they were feeling, using colors to describe their feelings. We did a fun art project, cutting scrapbook paper to make a colorful snowman. The students wrote a sentence about how their snowman was feeling.

Hi, Sam! We miss you and hope you are feeling better! Tomorrow is Haley's birthday and I know a secret -- she's bringing treats! Report cards were sent home today. I hope you have had a chance to look over your child's report card. Hopefully you'll feel like celebrating their success by going out to eat at Fuddrucker's. I have never had a class with so many students at a reading level 3 this early in the year, so I'm very pleased with the progress, especially in reading. We had our 4th/5th grade buddies come in this afternoon to help with a glyph. A glyph is a picture that gives information. Students added details to a snowman picture to provide details about themselves. For example, if the student liked pumpkin pie they added a pipe to their snowman. Boys had their carrot noses pointing to the right and girls pointed their noses to the left. This would have been a difficult project without our buddies helping. We also got to see our buddies put on a short musical performance in the afternoon. Don't forget that your child is allowed to wear pajamas and/or a hat tomorrow, provided that they make a cash donation to the Make a Wish Foundation.

The students were very surprised to see that I had rearranged the classroom. My projector is now mounted to the ceiling so I no longer need to keep the table centered in front of the large white board. The classroom seems larger and more open. The students did a great job at writing today. I let them choose a coloring page of a girl or boy snowman. They colored the picture and then wrote about it. For example, Alexander wrote, "My snowman has a black hat." I think it helped that they had a subject to write about. Coming up with original ideas is difficult for most kindergartners. Their writing and pictures were so cute that I hung them in the hall.

I placed the Scholastic book order this afternoon. It will be at least a week before the books arrive. Report cards go home tomorrow. Please keep everything that's inside the report card envelope, sign the back of the envelope, and return it on Friday. Don't forget to eat at Fuddrucker's tomorrow night!

I will wait until tomorrow to submit the Scholastic book order. I didn't receive all the Monday envelopes this morning and I don't want you to miss your chance to order. Today students learned about the penny. They know that Abraham Lincoln is on the penny and that it is worth one cent. Mr. Besel, the school counselor, taught a lesson about being a "bully buster." He introduced the terms "victim" and "bystander."

I added a couple of events to the sidebar of the blog. One is Fuddrucker's Family Night this Thursday. If your family eats at the Fuddrucker's by Costco that night, part of the proceeds will be donated to our school. Hopefully you will feel like celebrating your child's wonderful report card that evening. I also noted the date of our 100th day of school. On that day, students may bring a collection or 100 items that will fit into a sandwich baggie. Please only send small items such as pennies, M&Ms, paper clips, beads, pebbles, etc.

No School Monday

Don't forget that students do not have school on Monday. They will need to wear their tennis shoes for gym on Tuesday. Book orders are also due on Tuesday. Have a nice weekend.

In reading we worked on putting animal names into alphabetical order. In math we played a game called "I have...Who has?" for practicing number recognition. It's hard to explain, but each student was given a card with two numbers. It would read "I have 12. Who has 23?" Then the person with the 23 would read their card, and so on. One of our vocabulary words today was "companion" and since the students love to write about their friends, I asked them to substitute the word companion for the word friend. The highlight of the day was when our 4th/5th grade buddies came to read Winter themed books. Each of the older students had selected a book to read to their little buddies. Then they asked their little buddy to draw a picture of their favorite part of the story.

We had a little fun with our study of The Mitten. I printed pictures of all the animals in the story off of Jan Brett's website and glued each to a paper plate to create masks. We pretended like my reading table was a giant mitten. I handed out masks and as we re-read The Mitten and came to their animal's name, the student with that mask would go under the table. At the end, the bear sneezes and all the animals come out of the mitten. The students loved it!

We read some fun books about animals in winter and it seemed like they all had the same characters -- a rabbit and a hedgehog! We also read "Who Pooped in the Park?" Students learned about tracks and scat of various animals that live in Yellowstone National Park. For science, we talked about why animals hibernate and how they find and store food. I made some frozen food for them -- mandarin orange slices inside ice cubes. I asked if they could smell the orange and they swore they could. I asked how they would get to the orange so they could eat it if they were an animal. Most said they would let it melt in their paws (just like it was doing in their hot little hands). Funny! We had more success with the laptops during computer lab today. Students did a counting game and then worked some more on their typing skills.

We read Jan Brett's "The Mitten." Students matched animal pictures to each animal's name. I taught 20 new animal signs and then gave each student an animal card. We went around the circle with the first person showing their animal sign. The second person had to do the 1st person's sign plus their own. The 3rd person had to do the 2 previous signs plus their own and so on. I was so impressed with how well students remembered all the signs.

We read a story about the plus sign. (Can you believe there's actually an entire book about the job of the plus sign?) Students learned the word "sum" as it's used in math. We also contrasted the meanings of "sum" and "some."

I wanted to clarify a couple of things inside your child's Monday envelope. There's a hundreds chart with a sandwich baggie stapled to it. Inside the baggie are instructions on a tiny piece of paper. Your child is supposed to glue the numbers 1-100 onto the chart. Talk with them about patterns that they notice and randomly point to numbers and make sure your child can correctly name them. There is also a book order form. The due date for any orders is next Tuesday the 17th. (Your child was supposed to write that at the top of the form, but I noticed some forgot.) Remember, if you do not order online I need cash and not checks please.

Students read their mini book to 3 peers and hopefully they will also read it to you tonight. After practicing letter and number formation, I asked each student to write their ABCs and as many numbers as they could fit on a sentence strip so I could assess their handwriting. Even immediately following instruction, I saw lots of backward letters and numbers. Please practice with your child if you notice this. Students enjoyed our shaving cream snowman art. The classroom smelled great! Taylor's family came for a visit at the end of the day and shared birthday treats with us.

As you can see from the slideshow above, we have new 4th/5th grade buddies. We will meet every Thursday afternoon with Mrs. Manfredi's 4th/5th grade combo class. Students got to know each other by making an "all about me" book for their buddy. When they finished, they used coffee filters to make snowflakes for our bulletin board.

After yesterday's pep talk, students really worked hard on their writing. I was so pleased with the level of work they produced today.

We're comparing and contrasting snowman stories. We're studying "voice" as it's used in books. Students wrote about what the boy in the story The Snowman might be thinking or saying when he's discovered that the snowman has melted. I noticed that many of the students copied my example off the board. I told them I was disappointed that with all their creativity, that they aren't giving me original ideas. After my brief talk, they really stepped up their writing. I need to give them a pep talk tomorrow, letting them know that school is a safe place to try new things. They are in a supportive environment where a caring adult is there to help. I need to let them know that mistakes are okay and that mistakes help them learn.

We are learning about quotation marks (aka "talking marks") and learning to spell the word "said." As you read to your child, ask them to listen for the word "said" and see if they can spell it for you. We read the book The Polar Bear and the Brave Little Hare. The vocabulary words from the story were warn, concerned, and embarrassed. In math, students worked with a partner to put into order index cards that were numbered either by ones, fives, or tens. The goal for this quarter is for students to count to 100 by any of these means so keep practicing at home. If you haven't already turned in your child's reading minutes from December, please do so as soon as possible so I can get your child his or her Pizza Hut certificate. Tomorrow is library day.

It was great to be back at school today. The students were excited to share all the fun things they got for Christmas. In social studies we talked about how to solve problems with friends. Students learned to calm down, talk things out, come up with a plan, and then try it out. When there's a squabble about who gets to do something first, we decided that rock-paper-scissors is the easiest way to resolve the problem. Students tried out their problem solving skills as they played a card game with a partner. They played Top-It (what is commonly called War, but we can't call it that at school).