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This morning we had a lesson about silent e. We sorted words from a poem and noticed the e on the end made the vowel "say it's name" or has it's long sound. We know that not all words with silent e follow that rule, but when reading or writing, it's a good thing to try first. We watched two short videos that I'll post below, but I will just warn you that the second one has a song in it that has remained in my head the rest of the day. Don't say I didn't warn you! This afternoon, we had a visit from our school counselor, Mrs. Kanter. She talked with the children about keeping friends, even when they disagree. They talked about how to maintain friendships, then drew and wrote to share how they keep friendships. They are still working on that but will finish tomorrow. I may hang some up, but otherwise they will come home on Friday.
Speaking of Friday, our class is going to have a Pajama Day on Friday, so they can wear their pajamas and bring a small stuffed animal. Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe
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We had a great time in math today playing a game that was good for fine motor skills as well as counting, comparing length, and learning to be a good sport during games. We played The Great Link Race. Each table group sat in a circle and one at a time, linked links for a minute. After each round they counted the links and we updated a chart. We didn't have time to compare lengths, but we will be playing this game again and comparing the lengths of the links after each round. We also may make some changes to the game to practice counting higher numbers, so we may begin with 30 links or change the time for each round. We will talk about this as a group and see how we want to change our game. In literacy stations today we added postcards. The children can write about a place they visited and draw a quick sketch on the front of the postcard. We don't want to spend time at school coloring the front of the postcard, so when the children come home they may want to color them then. We read a VERY funny book called Read the Book, Lemmings! by Ame Dyckman. This book is about three lemmings who seem to only hear the word jump, and end up jumping overboard on a boat, with a fox having to save them each time. We talked about the different kinds of texts we read, and why it is so important to really listen closely and read to understand instead of just hearing a part of something and thinking we know all about it. We talked about thinking deeper and going back to the text. Ask me to tell you about this book and what ditto means! Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe Today we had a surprise! Some of our plants in our Bunny Garden have sprouted! We took a look at what is happening underground when seeds sprout and begin to grow. This is a time-lapse video of a mung bean seed. We were able to see the seed coat get saturated and wrinkle and break open, allowing the root and stem to begin to unfold, followed by the leaves. We read a great book with a really good lesson for everyone. The book is called The Bad Seed, by Jory John. The book tells the story of a sunflower seed who, at the beginning of the story, lives with his family in a big sunflower. But as happens, the petals of the sunflower fall off and the sunflower wilts with the seeds falling all over the ground. A rake comes and collects the sunflower seeds into a bag, that goes to a baseball field where a man eats the sunflower seed. The Bad Seed is spit out by the man and flies across the field landing in bleaches, bad hurt. His life changes and he is no longer the happy, friendly seed, but instead a bad seed. The Bad Seed does many bad things. Ask me to tell you some of the things the Bad Seed does. The story ends with a very hopeful message that even when you have made bad choices or made mistakes, you can choose to turn things around and begin to make better choices and be a friendlier, happier person. The book doesn't sugarcoat the fact that it is hard work, it takes time, and the change is gradual. This is one of those books I would recommend to families!
We began to color our postcards for our Postcard Project today. Your child will be bringing them home in their folder with a letter about the project. We need your help in addressing, stamping and sending these postcards to family and friends around the country and around the world. This project is a lot of fun and gives the children opportunities to learn about different places, as well as learn where states and countries are using maps in our classroom. If you would like to send additional postcards, just let me know and I will send more home! We had a fire drill and an evacuation drill today. The evacuation drill just moved the students farther from the building. All the kindergarteners did a really great job! They had to leave their specials for the drill and exited the building a different way. The stood quietly and followed directions on the evacuation part of the drill. Mrs. Oglesby even complimented our class for walking back in to the building so quietly! Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe Today was a busy day! We studied fruits and vegetables, and learned more about seeds. We used hand lenses to see fruits and vegetable seeds in fruits and vegetables. We not only looked at the size, shape and color of the seeds, but how they are attached to the fruit and vegetable. Here are a few photos of our seed investigation! Have a great weekend! I know some little people who are counting on seeing some snow!
Miss Wolfe We went on two more virtual field trips; one to Hawaii, and one to Alaska. We noticed some unique landforms. We saw glaciers in Alaska, and sea stacks and the coast in Hawaii. We also know Hawaii has volcanoes, but saw only lava on our field trip. If you are looking for a little get-away, check out these videos! Wednesday we read a book Lacey Walker, Nonstop Talker. The story was about a little girl who loved to talk, but her talking caused her some problems. Ask me to tell you what happened when Lacey did too much talking, and what she found out when she couldn't talk for a day!
Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe Today we studied a photograph of the Grand Canyon. We talked about what the word grand means, and what a canyon is. We are learning about landforms, so we took a virtual field trip around some of the most beautiful landforms in the United States. I heard an awful lot of ooooohs and ahhhhhs, and "I want to go there" when we watched this! It might even be better than Disney World! Ask me to tell you what a landform is and is not. We practiced retelling today with a simple story by Pat Hutchins called Where, Oh Where, Is Rosie's Chick. This is a sequel to Rosie's Walk! We practiced retelling using the characters' names, the setting, the problem or how the story got started, the events in the story or middle of the story, and the ending and how everything worked out. In retelling, students are telling key details from the story in order. We used our hand as a way to remember what to include in the retelling.  We started planting today. We are growing a bunny garden. Don't get excited, we are not growing bunnies, but instead food bunnies would eat. Since it's the winter, we will only watch our garden sprout and begin to grow. We dissolved dirt pellets in water. This was the most exciting part! The dirt "brownies" expanded and eventually made a good amount of dirt. By the way, dissolved and expanded were your kids' words. I'm always impressed by the words these friends know!
In math, we measured our shoes. We used cubes and found out how long our foot is. Then we compared our foot to others to find a foot that was the same length, longer, and one that was shorter than our foot. Then I gave the students a challenge. They needed to figure out how long their foot would be if it were twice as long. They came up with three different strategies; double the number, get the same number of cubes and add them to your measuring stick, and count the measuring stick twice making sure to count on the second time. We also talked about counting accurately today. We looked at arrays, circles and ovals, and scattered collections that could not be moved and talked about how to count and be sure you are keeping track of the count. We know the number and our finger have to move together, but we talked about where to start and which way to go. Ask me to tell you the trick to counting a circle of items. Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe  Today we studied this interesting photograph of a volcano. While there was a lot of discussion of what it could be, when we shared together this was said to be an "upside volcano." We talked about how this photograph was taken from high above and that it is a bird's eye view. The students had a lot of questions and observations, so we watched a short video about volcanoes. Then we learned that volcanoes are a landform, and that we will be learning more about landforms over the next couple weeks.
We read the sequel to Knufflebunny today called, Knufflebunny Too, by Mo Willems. Once again, Trixie's feelings change throughout the story. Ask me to tell you about the story and how Trixie's feelings change. Mrs. Kanter came in and talked about tattletelling, or squealing. She read a great book called Don't Squeal Unless It's a Big Deal. They discussed how to know if something is a big deal or not, which is tricky because with young children lots of things are big deals to them. This is something we will work on throughout the year, but we want to emphasize that if someone is being hurt, bullied, is not being safe, or if property is being destroyed or an animal hurt, an adult has to be told immediately. We talked again about kid-size problems and using de-bug. This is again an understanding that will develop over time. Ask me to show you the paper I brought home about squealing. Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe We had a busy, fun day! We worked with the chromebooks today. We reviewed how to sign in and how to find our classroom. We also worked on signing out and shutting down the computers so they are ready for the next class. Following directions and listening was really important to do this, and the kids did a really great time. They had a lot of time to work at the websites I put in their classroom. I think we are ready now to use the chromebooks during literacy and math stations since they know how to sign on and find the classrooms. So far, what the children are doing on the chromebooks is mostly practicing skills in literacy and math. I do have them start by doing some keyboard practice so they are able to find the letters and numbers quicker on the keyboard.
In Writing Workshop today, we started using a Writing Folder. The children learned how to write the date with numbers so they will put that on their writing pieces as they work on them. They also learned where their work in progress goes and their work they have finished that is ready to possibly edit or revise. These workshop routines are important so the children can work the entire time during the workshop and not need to come to me and tell me they are finished; now they can go back to work they started before to fix up or finish it on their own. Have a great weekend! Miss Wolfe |
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May 2018
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