Today we read a very inspiring story about Ronald McNair.  The book Ron's Big Mission, by Rose Blue and Corinne J. Maden is about an incident in Ronald McNair's life when he was just 9 years old.  McNair lived in Lake City, South Carolina, where he was a well-liked child in the town.  He loved to go to the library and read books, in fact the head librarian said he was their best customer.  In those times, African Americans could only read the books in the library and not borrow them.  Ronald McNair did something to change that, at least for himself.  Ask me to tell you about what Ronald McNair did to get a library card.  Ask me to tell you what a mission is and what it means when someone says they will not budge.  This story reminded us of how important it is treat everyone fairly, and that is something that is learned early in life.  Ask me to tell you what amazing thing Ronald McNair did later in his life.

In math, we talked about the attributes of plane shapes, and identified shapes that are not regular shapes and discussed why they are not a regular shape.  We read a book again that we read yesterday called Snippets, A Story About Paper Shapes, written and illustrated by Diane Alber.  This is a story about asymmetrical shapes who were discarded into a pile and not allowed to build or play with regular shapes because they were afraid they would destroy their houses that were built of a square and a rectangle.  So the shapes were divided with the regular shapes playing together and building houses, and the other shapes left out.  The author calls the of houses built with just a square and a triangle "mundane."  Ask me to tell you what mundane means.  One shape decides to leave the pile of discarded shapes and show the other shapes "the beauty of being unique."  We practiced making regular shapes and unique shapes by cutting off corners.  We discussed why those shapes were not rectangles, squares or triangles.  Your child is bringing home a ziplock bag of shapes they cut along with a extra paper to cut to show you regular shapes and "snippets!"

We are working hard to pay attention to the talker.  I am reminding the children to sit up, look at the talker, and show understanding not only by participating in the discussions or turn and talks, but by showing understanding in their facial expression.  A smile, nod, any change in expression that shows they are understanding and not just passively listening.  

Have a nice evening!
Miss Wolfe

We started our day with a cute Snoopy comic.  Right away the children were able to find a word they didn't know the meaning of, so we used the comic strip pictures to find the meaning of the word groovy.  One student said that the girls were uncomfortable in this little story, so we talked about why that could have been.  We also talked about Snoopy kissing Lucy and how she might feel uncomfortable about that.  This wasn't the direction of the discussion I anticipated, but we said when someone is kissed by someone that is not in their family, it could make them uncomfortable.  However, since Snoopy is a dog, Lucy was probably more annoyed because she is easily annoyed, especially by Snoopy!  Ask me to tell you about the word groovy!

We continued our study of the forest habitat.  We read an information book about forests and learned about plants and animals that live in the forest.  We also learned about the different levels in the forest where animals live, and began to talk about how their external features help them to live in the forest.  We drew a detailed picture of a forest with plants and animals that live in the forest.  We wrote labels to go with the picture.  Ask me to tell you 3 animals and 3 plants that live in the forest. 
We re-read Denise Fleming's book Where Once There Was a Wood and watched part of a video about how she makes the illustrations in her books.  Fleming makes paper and uses paper pulp and stencils to create the beautiful illustrations in her books.  We just watched parts of the video because it's twenty minutes long, but I am including it here so  you can watch it if you would like to see this artist and author.  For more information about paper making, you can also visit Denise Fleming's website and find directions! 
http://www.denisefleming.com/pages/about/process/papermaking/papermaking-main.html#gsc.tab=0

Have a great weekend!  Hopefully we will all have some time to get outside and enjoy some warmer weather!
​Miss Wolfe

Today we began talking about animal habitats.  We read the story Where Once There Was a Wood, by Denise Fleming which is about the plants and animals that make the woods their home.  The end of the story shows a huge housing development that was built where the woods used to be.  We talked mostly about interesting vocabulary in the story and used some of our Word Bird strategies to unlock the meaning of the words.  We know that when we read, we need to pay attention to the words, and when they don't make sense to us, we need to stop, think and re-read using one or more of these strategies.  The children do a good job of letting me know when they don't understand a word when we are reading aloud, but when they read on their own, they often are so focused on getting to the end of the story that they sometimes are not monitoring their understanding. This is a big focus for us right now as the children are reading more and more independently, and reading longer books.  Reading picture books is so important at this level to help students with their understanding of the text.  I know the children are in a hurry to read chapter books, but not all chapter books provide the same challenges the picture books have with their rich vocabulary and support of the pictures.  With the picture books with great illustrations, the children are drawn to studying those illustrations and hopefully that is helping them to think about what they are reading.  That is a habit we want them to have, so they are not rushing through pages without thinking more deeply about the text.  Many of the beginning chapter book series do not have the same level of vocabulary, sentence structure, and complex story lines as the chapter books the kids are rushing to read.  I encourage you to talk with your child about not rushing to check out the chapter books in the library.  They are missing a great opportunity to interact with some really amazing picture books.  Wow, how did my blog about habitats get me up onto my picture book soapbox?
We will continue to study animal habitats and look more closely at those plants and animals and why their habitats are important.  We will also continue to talk about how humans change the environment and how these habitats need to be considered.

We walked in to school with snow all over the place, and came out and so much of it had gone already!  I hope you enjoy this stretch of nice weather we have coming our way!
Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We had a fun day celebrating 100 days, actually 102 today, in kindergarten.  We read a poem with 100 words and worked with rhyming words.  We have been looking at rimes, parts of words that can be used to write new words.  
We enjoyed showing and telling about our 100 day projects.  The children all worked so hard on their projects and told how they got their ideas and made their projects.  Here are pictures of our 100 day projects!

We practiced working collaboratively this afternoon to build the tallest tower with  100 paper bathroom Dixie cups.  The children needed to find a way to build with the cups that would be stable, and had to work carefully to avoid towers falling.  Of course, the buildings did fall a few times!  The children did a good job of encouraging each other instead of blaming each other for the falls.  That's not always easy when you are very involved in building the tower.  I encouraged them to look around as others were building to get ideas.  Often, children build out flat more than tall initially.  Some children also were building structures more like walls than towers.  One child noted that they needed to make their tower skinnier to make it taller with just 100 cups after studying another group's tower.  

This is a great family game night activity.  Building with cups is usually fairly quiet and the children quickly learn they have to be careful.  The great thing about the paper cups is they usually don't break; if squashed they can be reformed easily.  If your child comes home talking about building with cups, this is what they are talking about. We made our challenge today for 100 cups, but most children want to build bigger structures, so if you decide to buy some cups to build with at home, you may want to buy several boxes.  Here's the size and kind of cup I use in the classroom.

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We had a great Valentine's Day!  The children were so excited to pass out their valentines.  I've been a kindergarten teacher for a very long time, and I can tell you this group passed out their valentines so easily.  They walked around with huge smiles on their faces and enjoyed that very simple little job of putting a valentine in the bags of their friends.  I wish I had pictures to show you, but I walked off without my camera today!
A huge thank-you to our room parents who planned a wonderful Valentine party for our class.  The children really enjoyed it.  Thanks to Rohan's mom, Viraj's mom, Blair's mom, and Miles' mom.  Thanks to Rohan's mom for sending these pictures!

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe​

We had a discussion about these hearts found in nature!  
Today we reviewed two books we read earlier in the week.  We compared the main characters in Somebody Loves You Mr. Hatch and The Lonely Mailman.  We thought about the main characters and how they were similar and different.  We made comparison circles to organize our thinking.  

We had a Valentine Store today in our classroom to buy things to decorate our valentines bag.  We each got 20 hearts on two ten frames.  The bag was 5 hearts, which left the students 15 hearts to use to buy different items from our store.  After buying items, I crossed off the hearts, and the children looked at the ten frames to see how many more hearts they could spend.  Then, they decorated their bags using what they bought, as well as crayons and markers.

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We have enjoyed this normal day!  Normal start time, normal lunch time, indoor recess but that seems to be the new normal, normal schedule, normal dismissal!  
Today we read The Lonely Mailman, by Susana Isern which is a beautiful story about friendship.  The lonely mailman delivers mail to the animals of the forest.  But the letters he delivers were all written by him!  He signs the names of other forest animals and sends these letters of friendship, apologies and invitations to other animals.  But the lonely mailman has never had any letters of his own.  Ask me to tell you what happens and how it changes the mailman's lonely life. 
We worked more with short e.  I was so impressed at how quickly the children picked out the words in our poem that had short e in them.  We began to make our own short e words, then practiced some of our trickiest word wall words.  We are working to write the word wall words fluently so they don't slow us down as we write and read them.  We know that writers are thinking of many things as they write, so to have those common words easily written will help as we write words we haven't learned to spell or need to stretch out to write.
In math we worked more with solid shapes.  We studied solid shapes to determine how many faces, edges and verticies they had, then we made our own solid shapes out of Play-Doh. Your child is bringing a small container of Play-Doh home today.  I told them to give it to you so you can decide where they can use it.  It's a little sticky!  Ask me to show you how I can make a sphere, cone, cylinder, rectangular prism and cube out of the Play-Doh.

Here's to more normal days!
​Miss Wolfe

We read The Quickest Kid In Clarksville, by Pat Zietlow Miller today.  This story is about a little girl named Alta, who prides herself on being the quickest kid in Clarksville, just like Wilma Rudolph, who was also from Clarksville, Tennessee.  In fact, Wilma Rudolph is going to be celebrated in a parade in her hometown the next day.  But a new girl comes to town who has fancy tennis shoes and challenges Alta to a race.  Ask me to tell you about what happens when the two girls race.  We talked about how Clarksville was still segregated, and that Wilma Rudolph had said she would only appear in the parade if African Americans and whites could stand together in the parade.  The town agreed, and it was one of the first desegregated events in the town.  
Have a nice evening, and be safe!  It seems like there could be more icy roads tonight and tomorrow.
Miss Wolfe

Wednesdays there is a class in my room after school, so sometimes I'm so distracted I may not be able to blog.  I dumped my blog yesterday accidentally!  So just a quick note on yesterday, we read a really great book called Grumpy Goat, by Brett Helquist.  This is the story of a goat who had never had a friend.  He kept his head down, scared off friends, and made a mess on the farm.  Then one day, when walking up the hill, he noticed a dandelion.  Ask me to tell you what happened and how the goat changed.  This is a really great book because it touches on mindfulness, making and keeping friends, and even the life cycle of a dandelion. 
Today we had a busy morning practicing word wall words and working with short e.  We read a poem and practiced the "Chunky Monkey" strategy.  We found tricky words in the poem, and looked for parts we knew.  We broke the word into chunks so we could read it.  This is just one of the strategies we can use when we don't recognize a word "just like that!"  
In math, we started talking about solid shapes.  We talked about cylinders, cones, spheres, pyramids, cubes and rectangular prisms.  We began to talk about the shape and number of faces on the shapes.  

We have a few Read to Me, Talk to Me books that have not been returned.  If your child isn't bringing home a book, it's because they still have one at home.  Please help your child look for their book and the big reading bag it was sent home in so they can get another book.  

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

Today we read two books about the Chinese New Year.  One book was a National Geographic book with information about the holiday, and the other was a story about a little boy and the leisees he received for the New Year.  Each leisee had a dollar, so the little boy had four dollars his mother said he could spend.  He wanted to buy something in a new toy store, but everything was more than four dollars.  Ask me to tell you what the little boy ended up doing with his money and why.
In math, we played a game where we felt shapes in a bag and described them using the words sides and corners.  We worked with models of plane shapes this time for the game.  Then the student guessed what shape they were holding.  We also worked with stencils of shapes to create pictures or designs, and with geoboards to make shapes with the rubberbands.  We will continue to work on this tomorrow as only two groups got to do each activity.  The children really enjoyed this!  Here are a few quick pictures. 
Have a nice evening!
Miss Wolfe