Ask Me About Tuesday, December 6, 2016

We started our morning with this picture for our Picture Talk.  This beautiful photograph of the Shenandoah River was very interesting to the children.  They liked the birds-eye view.  We looked at maps to see the river on the maps and how it serpentined around just like in the photograph.  We will be learning more about bodies of water are and how they are the same and different.  Ask me to show you the Shenandoah River and what else I noticed in the photograph.

We have been working with short o words.  We made word ladders on our white boards and changed the beginning sounds to make new words with short o.  We used digraphs and blends, and added endings to words.  
In Writing Workshop, I pleaded with our beginning writers to use punctuation.  I modeled a made-up story and pointed out the punctuation that would be used at the end of each sentence.  Then we made up a class story.  Each student added a sentence and used a motion to tell us what punctuation would come at the end of a sentence.  They made a stop signal for a period, shrugged for a question, and jumped up and sat back down for an exclamation point.  At this point, many kindergarteners are beginning to be aware of punctuation.  Some children who have been reading and writing longer are using punctuation, but the expectation in kindergarten right now is that they begin to use punctuation wtih guidance.  I don't want them to develop the habit of not using punctuation because it is harder to go back and put it in, and it is less efficient.  Really, I don't bribe often, and I don't reccomend it, but I told them we could have a fifteen minute punctuation party on Friday if I saw more punctuation.  I have no clue with a fifteen minute punctuation party is, but maybe I'll find something on Pinterest!
We learned more about maps today.  We learned about a compass rose and the map key.  We will be making our own maps over the next few days.  We also started our Read Across America journey.  From now until the end of the year, we will be reading a book from each state.  Your child will bring home a postcard from that state to show you what we read.  Look for the postcard tomorrow because I forgot to copy it this morning!  Today we went to Pennsylvania.  We took a quick look around the state, especially the rivers in Pittsburgh, Hershey Park and the chocolate factory, and Lancaster.  We read a book called Saving the Liberty Bell, by Megan McDonald.  This story is about real life events based on the people who hid the Liberty Bell so the Redcoats didn't get it to use for cannonballs and musket ammunition.  Ask me to tell you how John Jacob Mickley and his father hid the Liberty Bell.  
In math today, we worked with ten frames and finding one and two more and less than a number.  We used our ten frame as a tool to find the answer, or in some cases to just show the answer.  We also began working with a number line.  We used the number line to find the number, think of which way to go for more and less, then hopped either one or two hops.  So I asked them, what is two less than five, and they would show me on the ten frame, and someone would show us how to find the answer with the number line.  We also used our fluency skills to show the number on the ten frame in different ways.

Tonight is a great night to stay inside if you can!  Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe