BUCKLEY!!!!

Today we had our first visit with Buckley during our learning time!! He came in at the perfect time! We are learning to use these blue magnetic folders to strengthen letter/sound knowledge and word building skills. Buckley laid in the center of the rug (helping to keep everyone calm, quiet and focused) and watched as we worked. I'm so excited to have him as a weekly visitor from now on! Children also spent some private time (3 students at a time) singing their ABC's to him :-)

Nothing like a dog to bring some peace and calm!

Third Grade Buddies Teach Us About Michigan

Today we met with our third grade buddies in Mrs. Garza's class for the first time! These third graders were excited to share their maps and books they had written to teach us about Michigan Native Americans. It was so exciting to see how proud our buddies were to share and how engaged we were to listen! Each kindergartener was able to hear from at least 2 or 3 different third graders! Ask your kindergartener if he/she remembers one thing that he or she learned from their buddy.

Combinations of ten using Tens Frames

This week our mathematicians have been working to learn and record combinations of ten using ten beans (white on one side and black on the other) and a tens frame. Working together with their partners they would take turns "rolling" the beans and placing them on the tens frame. They would then apply what we've learned about counting objects and organizing sets to figure out the combinations.
Take a look

I loved seeing the sheets returned with good thinking and recording!! This is a great skill to continue to practice at home :-)

Thinking and Learning Centers Week of Nov 5 and 12

Because of the short weeks our Thinking and Learning Centers have carried over :-)

Vowel Cut and Glue 

Learners in the Fawn Room have been working hard on segmenting words into beginning, middle and ending sounds. This means that given a word such as hat, your child should be able to say each sound /h/ /a/ /t/ and blend it back together to say "hat". When these sheets come home (we have done 'a' and 'i' middle sounds) ask your child to segment these words for you. See if you can come up with other 3 letter words with the same vowel sound for your child to segment for you. This is an end of the year kindergarten expectation. :-)

Here you see readers working to record "Wow" pages from their favorite star books. Your child should be able to tell you what book they recorded out of as well as what they liked about each page they recorded.

Above you see writers recording sentences made up of all pink heart words! The big focus with this work is using careful handwriting with spaces and punctuation. Your writers should also be able to read you these sentences when they bring them home.

Epic!!

This ipad app was purchased by the school and is an amazing way to incorporate technology, reading and science! These scientists have been focusing on nonfiction texts (the app reads to them and highlights the words as it goes) to learn more about fall!

Great thinking going on in the Fawn Room these past two weeks!

Studying Pumpkins AND Sunflowers Consolidating our Learning

I am so impressed with our scientists! Today we used a Venn Diagram to record similarities and differences between pumpkins and sunflowers! Their thinking was amazing and I love making it visible on this diagram! The best part is that we were able to wrap so many facets of science into this one experience. In our discussion we focused on a variety of things from the structure and function, to making claims and finding evidence to support our claims!
We used these nonfiction texts to support our original claims:

We used these non-fiction texts to research and find evidence to support our original claims based on our observations.

This is how we recorded our learning:

At the bottom, in purple, are some claims that were made by some friends. Since we didn't have evidence at our fingertips to support these claims we now have a challenge on our hands!!

Our scientists have decided to take it upon themselves to do some research at home in order to find evidence to support or disprove these claims.

Take a closer look:

Here are some ways we decided you can research to find the evidence.

If you and your scientists are able to find evidence please send it in! Your child should bring both the information discovered as well as information as to how and where the information was found!
Thank you for supporting our science work!

Halloween

 Bracelets!

Haunted Houses

Witches Brew

Shape coloring Haunted Houses

Large Motor Halloween Fun!

Reading Partners

This week readers started working with a partner to extend and deepen their thinking. We learned that when private reading we sit back to back with our partners. In doing this readers must challenge themselves to ignore the urge to talk and to continue with their hard work of reading! Back to back reading allows for a quick transition to partner reading as they are already in close proximity :-)

After private reading for 15 minutes partners turn knee to knee and share their thinking.

We learned that partners sit knee to knee with one book in the middle. Partners have two choices,

they can "See-Saw Read" or "Echo Read"

Ask your reader about these two ways to read!

Happy Reading!

Thinking and Learning Time Week of Oct. 29

This week learners challenged themselves by stamping both beginning AND ending sounds in words! Using what they know about letters and sounds, these thinkers pointed to each letter and said the sounds in the word to figure out which was missing! I was so impressed with their ability to complete this task!

This has been my favorite challenge so far this year!! I was so impressed at how these thinkers and writers were able to cut out mixed up words and put them together to make a sentence!! They then practiced handwriting by using what they know about letter formation to write the sentence that was built!

Nothing better than watching scientists at work!! These learners use their sciences eyes to record gords exactly as they see them! They then took what they know about writing and listening for sounds in words to label their recordings. I hope you were able to take a moment and talk to your learner about this hard and meaningful work!

Readers worked on circling our "Heart Words" in this little book. When our learners work with little books they then put them in their private reading shopping bags. These pattern books are perfect for beginning readers!

What a great week!