KINDERGARTEN CONNECTION ~ SEPTEMBER 23rd

KINDERGARTEN CONNECTION 

September 23, 2016

Literacy Highlights

The children are so excited about the opportunity to write and illustrate in Writer’s Workshop. The “big ideas” in Writer’s Workshop thus far are:

• Writers can use pictures, letters and words to tell stories, share ideas, and to teach others
• Writers can reread and add to their work
• Writers can problem solve
• Writers can share their work
• Writers never waste precious writing time
  
  
  We are on our way to becoming letter/sound and “trick word” (sight words) experts in kindergarten! We can read the “trick words” I, a, go and to. The listed words are those I have formally introduced the children to. However, we also take notice of other “trick words” as we engage in shared reading and writing experiences. There are two important reasons why sight words are an essential component of good reading. First, many of these words do not sound like their spelling might suggest, so “sounding them out” would be unproductive. Also, good readers cannot afford the time to dwell on too many words, or he/she may lose the speed and fluency necessary for determining the author’s message. Therefore, good readers have a bank of words they can read automatically, and their energy is spent on applying learned reading strategies to decode and comprehend text.

Math Highlights

We are busy counting collections, naming and ordering numbers, and extending patterns. We are using five and ten frames and our math hands to support our understanding of numbers 1-10. 

Science Highlights

Fall is almost here! We are noticing early signs of fall such as leaves changing, chilly morning air, darker evenings, and fewer birds flying around the playground. We read a book about the change of seasons and predicted what the trees might look like in a few weeks. 

We made our own Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom trees!

We are learning that it feels good to persevere when work takes a long time and feels challenging.

This month's calendar focuses on shape names and attributes, patterning, recording the days of school with different math tools, collecting and organizing groups of objects, naming the month of the year and days of the week, using different counting strategies, and learning how to what productive math talk looks and sounds like in the classroom.

This is our Math Work Places menu board. The job cards will change as new math concepts are introduced. 

We learned how to play a game called Spill the Beans. This game taught us how to organize counters on a ten frame, recognize quantities quickly, and begin noticing combinations to make 5.

We worked with geo boards and rubber bands to to learn more about shapes and their
different attributes. 

We worked with unifix cubes to extend patterns, practice counting, and make groups.

We explored with pattern blocks to help us learn more about shapes and how they can be constructed to create different shapes, patterns, and designs.

We built three dimensional shapes with polyhedrons. We discovered that it takes six squares to make one cube.

We are learning how to use a hundreds chart to support our counting skills. We are beginning to notice patterns in the chart. 

We read this book to kickoff help us focus on how different letters are shaped and formed. We discovered that some capital and lowercase look alike and some look different. 

This is called a two-way sort.

Reading begins with our names! We are focusing on our first letters to help us make connections between words.

This chart helps us form letters the kindergarten way! We use the sky line, plane line, grass line and worm  to help us write letters. 

We went on a lowercase letter scavenger hunt.

We kicked off our our Writer's Workshop! We know that writers use pictures and words to teach what they know. We are working on adding on to our pieces and solving our writing problems.

And we always make lots of time for play!

Mrs. Vicki Nelson taught us about being bucket fillers. We talked about different ways to take care of each other by being bucket fillers. Ask your child to teach you what a bucket filler is.

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND WITH YOUR
SUPER CHILDREN!