Happy Mother's Day

It's hard to believe that kindergarten screening was this week!  I'm sure you can remember when your child came to kindergarten screening last spring.  Time sure does fly by!  Since I was involved with screening, the children spent Thursday and Friday with Mrs. Landry as their substitute.

We have been very busy since we've been back from April vacation.  Here is what we've been up to:

During Reading Workshop we have been working on understanding characters in stories.  We have learned to:

• imagine what characters might be feeling/saying throughout a story.  Readers can pretend to be the characters and make their voices sound like they think the characters would sound.
• compare and contrast the adventures/characteristics between characters.  We spent quite a few days revisiting this.  We started by rereading Chyrsanthemum and Molly Lou Melon, two of our favorite books that we read at the beginning of the school year.  After rereading both books, we talked about how the two characters and their experiences were alike and different.  We created a venn-diagram to document our thinking.
• use sticky-notes to mark connections we make while reading.  We can then share those connections with a buddy during buddy-reading time.

During Writing Workshop we have been busy wrapping up our poetry unit and beginning small moment writing.  We:

• learned about couplets, a two line rhyming poem.  We spent two days creating couplets together as a class, and many children chose to write couplets during independent writing time.
• chose a poem to publish.  The children rewrote their poems on a large piece of paper and then painted a picture to match (a few children are still working on their painting).
• reviewed that writers can write a small moment story, a story about something that has happened to them.
• learned that instead of beginning a small moment story with, "First, I..." writers can create a beginning that introduces their moment by using phrases such as "One sunny morning I..." or "Last winter I...," then writers can begin writing what happened first, then, next, and last.
• learned that writers of small moment stories write a lot of details about one small moment instead of writing about an entire day or week.

During Math we:

• learned about clocks and timers as tools for telling time.  We learned how long a second and minute are.
• used symbols to represent patterns.
• practiced dividing whole objects in half.  We learned that if there were only 8 pieces of paper left in our classroom, we could divide them in half so that all 16 children could get half a piece of paper.
• practiced solving addition and subtraction number stories and children created their own addition number story for a class book.
• played a new math game, Dice Addition, to help us become more fluent with addition facts up to 3+2.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• learned about the quarter.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• played Dice Subtraction to help us practice subtraction facts.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• built 3-dimensional figures out of toothpicks and marshmallows!

This children worked hard this week to make thoughtful Mother's Day gifts for their moms.  I hope you enjoy their creation!

Have a wonderful Mother's Day weekend!
Warmly,
Katie