We had a busy morning trying to tape our opposites two part reading. Unfortunately, the screen version we practiced yesterday was different than the copy I gave them on paper. So we will try again on Monday. In the meantime, here's a little song for your enjoyment! I'll try and use a tripod so it's not so shaky, and a wide angle lens next time so the kids don't have to be so close together. They really love this song. Mr. Sheets did a great job teaching it to them! We did some word work today. We looked for words with silent e in them in a short poem. We made a list of words that end with ake. We also practiced some of the trickier red words we have been working with in reading. We practiced said, here and you. We have been learning about folktales and the messages in them. Today we read Petite Rouge: A Cajun Red Riding Hood, by Mike Artell. We talked about the message in the story and how the story is the same and different from the traditional Red Riding Hood story we know. The children are bringing home the postcard for Louisiana. Mrs. Kanter came in for a lesson with us today about names. The children listened to Mrs. Kanter read Alma and How She Got her Name, by Juana Martinez-Neal. The little girl in the story, Alma Sofia Esperanza José Pura Candela, learns about how special her very long name is and how her parents decided on the names. The children decorated their names and put a checkmark by three statements about what they know about their name. Have a relaxing weekend!
Miss Wolfe
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What a busy week we've had so far! We have worked with silent e words that have the long vowel sound in the middle. These words are in many of the books they have been reading, so we are working hard to look through the whole word to see if it ends with a silent e. So many of the children are getting stuck because they are trying to sound out or tap out every sound, so their eyes are going across the word letter by letter. With more experience and practice, they will be better at scanning the whole word to see if they already know it, which is important because they are sounding out red words that they already know so it slows them down, or it's a word that ends with a silent e so they need to use the long sound for the vowel most likely. So this is again something they will learn with more experience and practice. We listened to a story about Harriet Tubman as part of our Women's History Month books. We read Before She Was Harriet, by Lesa Cline-Ransome. This book is beautifully illustrated by James E. Ransome and is written in verse. The book chronicles Harriet's life in reverse, and we learn about the other names Harriet was known by and the causes and work she did to lead so many to freedom. This beautiful book is one I hope the children again as they grow because there is so much to learn about this amazing woman. We worked with the letter v this week. We read Ugly Vegetables, by Grace Lin. This story is about a young girl who is embarrassed because her mother plants Asian vegetables when all her neighbors are planting beautiful flower gardens. But when the vegetables are picked and made into soup, her neighbors show up at the door to get a taste of the wonderful soup. Today we read a story called Grandma Lena's Big Ol' Turnip, by Denia Hester. I chose this book because it's a Russian folktale, The Turnip, that is retold with a twist. This time it is set in the South with an African American family who also grow an enormous turnip. We listened for a message in the story since that is what we are working on in our Benchmark lessons too. The children also made a text-to-text connection to the Ugly Vegetables story since both had soup and communities coming together and celebrating food. In science we continue to work with motion and forces. We used balls to see how more and less force effects the motion and how we can change the path and even stop the path with different obstacles. In math we are continuing to work with story problems, addition and subtraction, and writing number sentences to go with sets of objects that are combined. I will be reteaching this with more manipulatives because the children are having a difficult time writing the equations properly. Some are just plugging the numbers in anywhere and not thinking about what makes sense. We want to be sure they have that strong understanding of what the equations mean before rushing to just learn addition and subtraction facts. We are working with opposites, in fact I am hoping to record the children reading a two-part poem with opposites tomorrow and posting it. I was so impressed with how well they picked up on how to read a two-part poem! Of course we are still checking in on the eagles, and in just a week, pipping should begin for DC8. Today we saw a fish on the nest that Lotus brought back, and we saw how she was being a great "mombrella" for her two eggs in all the rain today. It seems like DC got a little more steady rain than we did! Now for what I know all of you are waiting for, the video I promised to post yesterday but didn't! We read The Three Little Pigs in Benchmark, and had a few minutes before our special, so we watched this old Silly Symphony from Disney. I know some of you already found it on your own, but for those of you anxious to see it, here it is! Enjoy and have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe In honor of Women's History Month, we started our day with a quote from Justice Sonia Sotomayor; "There are two questions I ask myself every day. One is: what have I learned today. The second is ; who have I helped today." What great, simple questions to ask each day! We read her latest children's book, Just Help! Ask me to tell you about this book! We painted sunflowers today. I have pictures of the children and their sunflower for you to see now since we will be hanging these sunflowers in the hall. We first studied photos of sunflowers, then sketched with pencil. We practiced using our whole arm to draw the circles. Then we traced over the pencil lines with oil pastels. Finally, we used watercolor paint to paint in the parts of the sunflowers. The children are soooo proud of their sunflowers. In math, we worked on whiteboards and practiced writing decomposition number sentences. For this we start with the whole number, then have an equal sign and then the parts separated with a plus sign. So it would look like this: 7=4+3. Some of the children are having a hard time with this, so I was reteaching this. We talked about saying what we were writing outloud to make sure it made sense. We substituted words for the symbols. So we would say, seven is the same as four and three. We will review this again and have more practice.
We enjoyed a very silly story today called The Hair of Zoe Fleffenbacher Goes to School, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Ask me to tell you some of the things Zoe's hair could do, and how it got her into trouble at school. Enjoy the weekend. Miss Wolfe The past two days we read another story about teamwork called A House For Max.. Ask me to retell the story. In writing, we wrote an extension of the story. We brainstormed different ideas, then talked with partners to share our extension before writing.. In Social Studies, we learned about wants and needs. We also continued to talk about natural resources. We visited Idaho yesterday and listened to a story a little girl wrote about her grandparents. During the depression, her grandfather was out of work, and they were homeless. The grandparents borrowed a car and drove to Idaho to dig up potatoes during the day. At night they were allowed to dig up potatoes for themselves. They left two weeks later with bags and bags of potatoes for themselves which they ate, and sold some as well. Today we visited Vermont and learned about sugaring. Ask me to tell you about maple syrup.
I added a bookmark to almost everyone's Chromebook. It is another Google classroom just for our Read the USA states. You will find a big postcard with what is supposed to be me on each one. You will find the story if you click on me, the postcard if you click on the mailbox, and if you click on the map you will find a little trip in the state we are visiting. There may be extras in the stream for each state. This is how we did Read the USA when we were home, so I figured I put so much work into it, I'd still use it, but I want to read the books myself to the kids. Some may be different, but it will just give the children more opportunities to learn about the states. I hope you enjoy it too. It might make you want to quit your job and buy an RV and tour the country! Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe We started our day looking at this photograph of adorable pandas. The children studied the photograph then talked about what they noticed and what they thought was happening. They decided the pandas were trying to escape. They thought of possible titles for the photograph, which are listed on the chart above. I love that they noticed the pandas were working as a team. This class works so well together, too! In Benchmark, we read a folktale called Altogether Now. This story is about the animals in a farm getting in an uproar over a fox who came looking for a chicken dinner the night before! Ask me to tell you what an uproar is. The horse came up with a plan to trick the fox. Ask me to tell you what happened! It was pointed out by a student that the animals on the farm worked together like that pandas we looked at earlier in the day. Huh, funny how that worked out! In phonics we worked with the w sound. We listened to a story later in the day called Woodpecker Wants a Waffle, by Steve Breen.. This is a cute story about a just that; a new diner opens and the smell of waffles wafts into the woods, and woodpecker reads the sign and decides he wants to try a waffle. Ask me to tell y ou what happens when he tries to go into the diner. The woodpecker in this story is very clever and not only tricks the diners and waitress but the animals in the forest too! These friends of mine are always making me proud. One of the students noted that this story was like the folktale we read yesterday where the fox tricked the crow. We talked about how that was a text-to-text connection. In math, we worked with subtraction story problems. We took a sprint and worked problems quickly, crossing out one and writing how many were left in groups. We then worked with story problems, drawing simple shapes and crossing them out to solve the problems. We also listened to story problems I told them, then looked to see if the number sentence I wrote went with the story or not. We fixed up the number sentences that did not match the story. We had to sneak in a little science at the end of the day because we ran out of time, but luckily had enough time to watch a delicious video that shows how salt water taffy is made. We noticed all the times the workers pushed or pulled on the taffy. I am pretty sure I could smell the taffy being made as I watched with the children. I'll post it below if you need a little brain break to the shore for some saltwater taffy. Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe We started our day with a very sweet short video story called Joy. We practiced retelling this story, identifying the problem which is what gets the story going, and middle part of the story where the problem is trying to be worked out, and the ending which tells how it all turned out. Ask me to retell the story. We talked about what the message in this story, then shared with our partenr/s our favorite part of the video. Then I asked children to tell what their partners favorite part was, which is always a good reminder that listening is as important as talking.
We listened to a very short fable, Crow Learns a Lesson, about a crow and a fox. We talked about how the fox tricked the crow into dropping the cheese. Ask me to tell you the story.. We read a poem about a hamster and highlighted all the th's in the poem. It's really important the children are able to see the th together and know they will make one sound, /th/ and not individual sounds. In math, we worked with subtraction more, and practiced writing a subtraction number sentence. We listened to story problems and used pictures or symbols to solve the problem. The children did a really great job with this! We also practiced writing missing numbers to 100. We had a great day! Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe What a busy day! We started our day finishing our suitcase for postcards even before the bell rang. I didn't get a chance to put on the handles so they will come home next Monday. We worked with the th sound today. This is a tricky sound for many kindergarten students because they may still be substituting the /f/ for /th/. We worked to make sure we were putting our tongue between the front teeth and force air through the teeth. We will continue to work with this sound, especially looking for the letters in print. We want children to see them and know it's the /th/ and not /t/ and /h/ separately. I remind them I don't want to hear t-huh. We also reviewed red words that are still tricky. We worked with for, come, do and put. We practiced writing them on white boards, which always seems to bring out the best in handwriting! We talked briefly about adding s and sometimes es to words to make words plural. It's important for children to hear the words to help them, at this point, to know whether it is s or es, so as they are writing, they should be softly saying the word and tapping out the sounds. In science we talked about motion paths. Ask me to tell you the five motion paths. If they need help, ask them to thing about a train, a seesaw, a merry-go-round, a snake and a swing. We continue to check in on the eagles at the Arboretum. I had seen a funny video of Mr. President trying to get Lotus to move off the nest, at least that's what the moderators thought. He kept putting a stick on or near her, and she would move it away. I couldn't share it with the kids since it was on Instagram, but I found another video of Mr. President trying to work a very big stick into the nest railings. He had some difficulty. Someone added talking bubbles to the video, and one of the children asked if the person that made the video knew "eagle talk language." I added the video to the bottom of the blog if you would like to watch it! We read a book called Can You Say Peace, by Karen Katz. This book is a sweet book that introduces the word peace in many different languages. We talked about what peace means to us. Then we looked at photographs of the beautiful country of Ukraine. We talked a little more about what is happening, and what it means the people of Ukraine can and cannot do. Then we wrote about what peace means to us. Their writing was very thoughtful and from their heart. I was really proud of what they did. We will be hanging it proudly on our bulletin board outside our classroom. We didn't really have enough time to create sunflowers, so we will do this Monday. Please look in your child's backpack to find a COVID test kit. Have a wonderful weekend! Miss Wolfe This was the easiest Talk Time this year! These kids sure know how to make others happy! We talked about little things and big things that make others happy. Ask me to tell you what I can do that makes others happy.
Yesterday we took another practice Benchmark assessment. We practiced really listening to the comprehension questions and making sure we looked at all the possible choices for answers before we clicked on our choice. We know that kindergarten students need more practice in how to take a test, especially online. We also practice using the "elevator" in the middle of the page to pull down the page so they can see all the illustrations that go with the story and to see all the possible choices for answers. Today we made our suitcases for our Read the U.S.A. postcards while I was calling reading groups. I'll send these home tomorrow. We watched a short video about Light Up the Night, a fundraiser we are doing for childhood blood cancers. I will be sending out an e-mail about the fundraiser and with the link to the video so you can see what this is all about. We also talked a little about what is happening in the Ukraine. I kept it simple and didn't share any pictures of the fighting, but tomorrow we will read a book about the Ukraine, see some photographs of this beautiful country, and will be making sunflowers in art stations to put in the hallway in support of the people of Ukraine. I wanted to let you know in case your child has any questions about what is happening there. I'll take pictures to show you the art they create for our hallway. We continue to check in with the eagles on the nest at the Arboretum. I think the first egg will hatch March 23, and the second on March 26. Right now there isn't a whole lot going on, but the children have been so engaged and have asked so many questions. Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe We had a great day! We started our journey to read across America. We are going to try and read one book from each state. Your child will bring home a postcard from the state we read and can keep it in a suitcase we hope to make tomorrow. Today your child is bringing home a postcard from Oklahoma. We started in Oklahoma so we could read a couple books by Woody Guthrie who was from Oklahoma. The children enjoyed singing along to This Land is Your Land and to Riding in My Car. I will also be publishing a Google Classroom to go along with our trips so you can find out more about the state is you wish! We used the rekenreks today in math to show different numbers broken into two parts. The children did a great job of thinking of different ways to make numbers 7-9. When we work with rekenreks, we slide all the beads to the right. The beads are in groups of five white or five red. This helps the children get a good understanding of the number 5. They can move five over together then think about how many more they need for a number. We used both the top and bottom bunk on our rekenrek to show the numbers. We also worked on breaking sticks of cubes apart and making a number bond and equation that goes with the number. In science we read a book called Bird Builds a Nest, by Martin Jenkins. This is a great book to help introduce push and pull in science. It also got us thinking about all the work birds and other animals with nests do to build their nests. We will be working more with push and pull tomorrow.
Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe We started our day looking at photographs of different places that would be great places to relax and recharge. We talked about the importance of taking time to recharge, and how that is part of staying healthy. We referred to our SELF poster that reminds us to take care of ourselves with four healthy practices. Ask me to tell you what the letters in SELF stand for in Health. (Sleep, exercise, leisure, food.)
We took a quick peek this morning at the eagles nest at the Arboretum. Lotus was on the nest and had little water droplets all over her. This was a great opportunity for the children to begin to learn about how birds keep their bodies dry when it's raining or snowing. We talked about how birds have oil that is spread over their feathers when they are preening, making their feathers like a raincoat for thei r bodies. The children have so many questions and are keeping me on my toes looking for answers to what I don't know about eagles! We read some books on Epic this morning, instead of reading from our classroom library. This is one way I can assign books that the children can read independently this way. There are also a few books I have assigned that are high interest that are either read to them, or that they can look at the photographs and read some of on their own. We also practiced taking a photo, on Seesaw, of some of the writing we did last week. They did a great job for the first attempt. In Benchmark, we read a story called The No Tech Day! The children had a lot of ideas of what you can do with batteries or electricity. We are working on writing our opinion about the best thing to do on a no tech day. We continue to work with number bonds in Eureka. Some of the children are having difficulty with the abstract way of showing the parts and whole in the number bond diagram, so we are taking more time to just discover the relationship between numbers. We will be doing more work with manipulatives to reinforce breaking apart groups of items to help the children get a better understanding of the concept of number bonds. If you would like your child to work in the homework book, please do not go past lesson 12. We read an African folktale today called Anansi and the Moss Covered Rock, by Eric Kimmell. The children enjoyed this folktale. Ask me to tell you about Anansi and the Moss Covered Rock. Enjoy your evening! Miss Wolfe |
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June 2022
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