We learned about nouns and verbs today.  We focused mainly on nouns today and enjoyed watching an old Schoolhouse Rocks about nouns.  OK, we watched it twice, and enjoyed it both times!  We wanted to share it with you, so for some of you it might be a walk down Memory Lane.  You will find the Schoolhouse Rocks about nouns on our writing page.  Go to the curriculum tab and scroll down to writing.  We circled nouns and verbs in a poem we read and illustrated the poem on the back.  
Ask me to tell you some words that are nouns.
We also returned to a book we started last week about clouds.  We learned about the three main types of clouds, what they look like and where they are in the sky. Ask me to tell you the three main kinds of clouds.
We were sent an electronic flyer about Daddy Daughter Day at the University of Maryland field hockey game on Sunday, October 5.  I attached the flyer at the bottom of the homepage, so be sure to check it out.  It looks like fun!
Have a great afternoon!
Juliet

Today we worked on finishing beautiful pictures of Oo's we started on Friday.  We listened to a story called A Home for Bird then drew pictures to help retell the beginning, middle and end of the story.  The children will be bringing these home tomorrow and will tell you all about this story.  We noticed that often picture books have many details in the illustrations that give clues about what will happen in the story.  We made really great predictions about what would happen in the book by studying the cover and thinking about the title.  As we read, we were able to change or confirm our predictions.  We spent more time testing today as the kids worked to illustrate.  The KRA test the children are taking now is a new test and is quite lengthy.  I was hoping to start reading groups, but after beginning the test I soon found it would be more advantageous to dig in and get it out of the way as fast as possible.  We are almost finished with the reading portion of the test.  The math part I will start tomorrow.  Like the mClass test we took earlier, these tests are one on one so it takes a lot of time to complete the testing in a class of 25.  The children went to media center today and learned about how the books are shelved.  Ask them about the letters on the binding of their library books.  They were very excited to show me all about it!  We took the first part of the MAP P test today.  This is a test done on the computer for math.  The children did very well, although some still struggled with the mouse.  At least they have stopped trying to touch the screen to make the computer work!  Tomorrow I will give those who need more mouse practice time to work on the computers so next week will be easier for them.  I gave the children a little time to build after the test, although I did test a few more kids during this time.  Hopefully the math portion of the test will go a little faster and we can get into a normal routine of reading groups very soon.  Tomorrow I will take some time and introduce Just Right Books that I have roughly leveled so that I can match readers to baskets of books they can use to read independently.  This should give them some practice reading books that are just right for their reading level.  
I will send home our weekly homework tomorrow.  I decided to let them play instead of make them stop early since they had so much testing today.  Thanks for hanging in there with us while we work through all this testing. 
Juliet

Today was a great day.  We worked with the letter Oo and did some artwork using Oo's to create great designs and pictures. We looked at several different pictures for inspiration before we began our artwork. The kids want to work more on these next week.  We celebrated our August and September birthdays.  We watched a few Pixar shorts for our celebration.
Ask Me About our Bear Buddies that visited us this afternoon.  We met new friends and collaborated to build in different stations.
Have a great weekend!
Juliet

Today we started to make Me Flags, with symbols that tell about what makes us special.  We also used colors that are special to us.  We listened to a great song by Will I. Am, twice, that helped us learn about character traits.  Be sure to check our Social Studies page to find the clip we watched!  
Remember tomorrow we do not have school!
Have a great afternoon!
Juliet

We started our day with a visit from an author from the area named Mark Nobleman.  Most of his work is for kids older than our kinders, but they enjoyed the presentation and showed their best Bells Mill manners.  He's written Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman, Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, and has written for Nickelodeon Magazine.  
Today we learned about symbols and listened to a story about the flag.  Ask me about one fact I learned about the flag.  
We had a great time playing the Attribute Path game in math!
Don't forget that tomorrow is Early Dismissal.  Students will be dismissed at 1:00, and that Thursday we do not have school.
Have a great evening!
Juliet

Great day!  We read a wonderful story called Thunder Cake, by Patricia Polacco, about a little girl who was afraid of thunder.  Ask Me About how the Babushka in the story helps the little girl get over her fear of thunder.  I'll be posting the recipe for Thunder Cake later this evening on the website under Arts Integration.  The Arts Integration tab is a great place to go to learn about special books, music and art we have be using in our classroom.  We also learned about identifying the beginning, middle and end of a story.  The beginning is how the story gets started, usually with the main character having a problem.  Usually the middle part of the story is the biggest part.  This is where the problem is developed more.  It's really the meat of the story.  The ending of the story is how it all worked out.  How did the problem get solved and what happened with the main character.  
We practiced writing our names the kindergarten way, using a capital letter to begin the name and the remainder of the letters lower case.  We also practiced writing no and to, our two word wall words we are working on this week.
We went to the media center today.  Monday is our media day but library books can be returned any day.  
Have a great afternoon!

Ask me about being a weather detective!  
Today we looked at paintings.  We analyzed the paintings to look for clues that would tell us about the weather and the season.  We zoomed in to look at details and zoomed out the look at the whole picture.
Today we also had a visit from Mrs. Kanter.  She talked about our names and why names are special.  Some of the kids shared how their parents named them and any nicknames they have or had.  This might be something you want to talk about over the weekend if your child doesn't know why you decided to give them the name they have.  
I will be updating the website this weekend with lots of pictures and reading information as well as a newsletter.  I have a new camera and the computer at school isn't playing well with it so I'll be heading home to load more pictures.
Have a great weekend!
Juliet

Today we read a story called What If Everybody Did?  The story illustrates situations that show what would happen if everyone just did what they wanted and didn't follow the rules and routines.  We connected it to our classroom and learning to take responsibility for our personal and school property.  Today we had to throw away 20 markers from the Writing Station because children did not put the lids back on the markers.  The children don't know this, but they were old markers and this is something I do almost every year to illustrate why we need to be responsible for our classroom materials.  We are putting the markers away for a while and we will try using them later this fall as the children become more responsible, but it illustrates the natural consequence of not taking care of our supplies.
Today we worked on sorting a group in several different ways.  This was to be homework earlier in the week, but I am sending it home today.  Ask your child to show you at least three different ways to sort the collection of animal pictures they are bringing home today.
Enjoy the evening!
Juliet

Wow!  This class really knows a lot of weather words!  This morning we woke up our brains by playing Stand and Deliver.  We stood in a rectangle and went around one student at a time, each student naming one weather word.  They had to listen to others so as not to repeat a word that had already been said.  All the words had to be weather words.  When a student couldn't think of another word, they had to sit down, but they could get up if they thought of another one.  The students came up with 37 words!  We will use the words for a concept map that we will build as we study weather.  
Then we listened to the story Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.  We made a w with our fingers when we heard a weather word.  We ended our day outside using our senses to record what we noticed about the weather.  Unfortunately, a big lawnmower made it very hard to listen and to smell anything except fresh grass, but we will go outside again soon as part of our weather unit.
Literacy Station time is going well with children learning the expectations for the noise level as well as the work they are to do.
September seems to be moving too fast for me!  I love the cooler weather, but I can't believe that today was the seventeenth day of school!
Enjoy your evening!
Juliet  

Today we worked more with analyzing.  We looked at one of the paintings in our Art Smart Station and practiced zooming in to look at details, and zooming out to get the whole picture.  We were able to make guesses about where the kids in the picture were going.  Then we looked at our other pictures in Art Smart and saw that all the pictures are about kids at school.  All four pictures are very different, but they also are the same in many ways.  Several children visited the Art Smart station today to sketch, label and/or write about the paintings.  
Today we worked with Stretchy Snake in Writing Workshop.  The stretchy snake is a tool we can use as writers to help stretch out unknown words so that we can get down the sounds we hear in the word to make our best effort in writing the word.  We know that the stretchy snake is to be used as a tool and not a toy, otherwise the snake will be taken away from the writer.  we worked on lists again, making sure to write a title on our list.
In math, we worked to collect data.  We voted on favorite baseball teams.  Be sure to look at our Math page to see more about the results of our vote.  Mrs. Oglesby may not be happy with the results!
Have a nice evening, 
Juliet