font-family: 'Shadows Into Light Two', cursive;/ Life in Kindergarten: 2016

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Holidays and Traditions

We had a busy two weeks before vacation learning about holidays and traditions.  I enjoyed learning about the traditions of your families.  Our handprint posters helped the children learn more about holidays celebrated by their peers.  The Wednesday before vacation, we had a school community meeting with a focus on winter holidays of light.

One tradition in kindergarten at Rowe School is our Gingerbread Man unit.  Gingerbread house building is always a highlight, as it was again this year.  The conclusion of this unit was our Gingerbread Baby play which the children did a wonderful job performing.  They worked hard to practice their lines at home and school in order to feel confident and fluent.  Thank you for helping your child prepare for our play, and thank you for all those we were able to attend our performance.  The children were very proud!

















Here's what else we've been up to:

During Reading Workshop we have been learning strategies for reading words.  We:
  • practiced using Eagle Eye and Lips the Fish together.
  • learned to use Stretchy Snake (say the sounds in a word).
  • learned that after we have spent time trying to figure out a word, we need to reread the sentence to make sure the word makes sense.  
  • reviewed that readers need to point and hop under each word when they are learning how to read. 
During Writing Workshop, we published one of our pattern books.  All the children chose one book from their writing folder that they wanted to rewrite and fancy-up to add to our classroom library. We celebrated the end of this unit in our pajamas on Thursday.  Children took turns reading their published books to the class.





During Math we:
  • spent a couple days composing and decomposing numbers to learn that there are many combinations of numbers with the same value.



  • played Number Top-It, a game to help us practice comparing numbers. 







  • spent a couple days learning about teen numbers as numbers that have one group of ten and some extra ones.  We learned that the "1" should always be written first in the teen number (in the tens' place) since it tells us we have "one ten."
It's hard to believe we have reached the end of 2016.  I look forward to celebrating the start of a new year with your children when we return in 2017.  Happy New Year!

Warmly,
Katie Caron

Friday, December 9, 2016

The Gingerbread Man

We officially kicked off our Gingerbread Man unit.  The children are very excited about this unit...how can they not be when it involves building gingerbread houses and performing a special play for all of you?!  Throughout this week (and last Friday), we spent some time reading different versions of the gingerbread man tale.  Next week, we will revisit these tales to work on the skills of comparing and contrasting.  We will also be busy, busy, busy practicing our Gingerbread Baby play. All children brought home their speaking parts for the play.  I encourage you to have your child practice his/her parts for just a couple minutes each day to build his/her confidence for our performance.

Dates to Remember:

  • Gingerbread house building on Monday, December 19 beginning at 1:00 (please email me or send a note if you plan to attend)
  • Gingerbread Baby play on Wednesday, December 21 at 1:15 
  • Pajama Day on Thursday, December 22
  • No School on Friday, December 23

This week during Reading Workshop we spent a couple days reviewing buddy reading expectations.  Prior to these lessons, several partnerships were spending most of their time figuring out who was going to read first and what they were going to read, so they were left with little time to actually read. A couple days of mini-lessons helped turn this around!  We also reviewed that readers point and hop under the words as they read.









This week during Writing Workshop we:
  • reviewed that writers focus on writing their words before they draw their pictures.
  • practiced thinking of different patterns about one topic.  I came up with the topic of snow, and the children came up with several different patterns that could be about snow.  This helped show children the range of possible patterns.
  • learned to rehearse our pattern prior to writing and to let it sweep us across the pages.  Once we know the pattern, we can write the repeating words across all our pages then go back and fill in the part that changes.
  • learned how to write a question and answer pattern book.
This week during Math we:
  • practiced solving number stories.
  • played Monster Squeeze.
  • played a mystery block game during which we focused on different attributes about the blocks (shape, color, size, thickness) to help us determine the mystery block.
  • discussed characteristics of triangles and rectangles.
  • collected data about our favorite colors then worked together to group our data and create a bar graph to display our data.
This week's snow brought a new level of fun to our playground.  Thank you for sending your child to school with appropriate gear for playing in the snow.



Have a cozy weekend!
Katie  



Sunday, December 4, 2016

Thank you, Miss Cross!

Dear Parents,

I would like to start by thanking Miss Cross for the wonderful job she did teaching your children this fall.  She is a warm and devoted teacher who worked hard to ensure the children had a smooth transition to kindergarten and between teachers.  She focused on establishing routines and building a sense of community in our classroom.  It is clear that the children care deeply about Miss Cross and will miss having her as their classroom teacher.  Luckily for them, she is still working at Rowe School, so they will be able to see her every day!  I feel fortunate to have had Miss Cross as my long-term substitute teacher.  I always knew the children were in good hands with her.  My hope is that this gave Miss Cross the experience needed to find a well-deserved teaching position of her own next fall!

Although it was hard for me to say goodbye to my baby Carter last Monday morning, your children really helped make that transition easier.  It's amazing how being in the moment in a kindergarten classroom leaves little time for you to think about anything else.  We had a busy week of getting to know each other while at the same time not skipping a beat with our learning.

During Reading Workshop we:
  • reviewed and practiced read-to-self and buddy reading expectations.
  • learned how to choose just-right books for our book baskets.
  • learned how to make a reading plan at the start of read-to-self and buddy reading every day.


  • learned that readers point and hop under each word as they read.
  • practiced two reading strategies, Lips the Fish and Eagle Eye, and learned how to use these strategies together to help us read an unknown word.
During Writing Workshop we:
  • identified patterns in books.
  • learned that writers become better writers by writing every day.  We should write our words first then draw our pictures.

  • learned that we can get an idea for a pattern book from a book we have read or heard before.  I modeled writing a pattern book based on The Gingerbread Man book I had read a few minutes prior.
  • reviewed that instead of starting a new pattern book every day, writers should finish the pattern book they were working on the day before.
During Math we:
  • practiced ordering numbers.
  • learned a new game, Monster Squeeze.  During this game, one partner guessed a mystery number and the other partner gave clues such as "No, my number is bigger/smaller than that number."  The first partner continued to guess a number on the number line, based on the clues, until he/she determined the mystery number. 







  • played Roll and Record, a game that required us to build a graph to show the number we rolled most when rolling a dot die.


  • practiced solving addition number stories.
I truly enjoyed getting to know your children last week, and I look forward to the rest of the school year ahead with them.

Warmly,
Katie Caron