Goodness! Somehow, our November and Decemeber updates are missing! We apologize for the lack of content and updates and will add some of those updates/photos here soon!.
Here is what we are currently working on in Kindergarten: Reading: We are working our way through different genres of books. We are learning about folk tales, fairy tales, and fables. We also have worked through the Kindergarten sight word list for the district. You can view those words in your child's daily folder OR click here Writing: We continue to work on our storytelling skills by writing with sentences. We have learned about sounding out words, using a capital letter to begin a sentence, put spaces between words, and using punctuation at the end of a sentence. Currently, we are writing personal narratives and will work more on the writing process and editing our writing for readability. Math: We have worked on 2D and 3D shapes as well as describing and sorting these shapes by their attributes. We are now working writing, recognizing, and representing teen numbers. We enjoy our mystery jar activities each Friday! Thank you for your participation! Phonics/Handwriting/Phonemic Awareness: We have introduced all of the letters in the alphabet and have worked on proper letter formation for each letter. As the year progresses, children are expected to write with lower case letters in most of their writing. We are working on blending phonemes to make words. For example, /c/ /a/ /t/ spells cat. Science/Social Studies: We learned about magnets and how they either attract or repel. We also have learned about seasons and different types of weather. We enjoyed exploring different holiday traditions, learning about past and present, and are beginning to learn about famous Americans like Martin Luther King, Jr.
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First of all, thank you so much for supporting us through our Boosterthon Fun Run fundraiser! We learned a lot, had fun, and raised money for our school. However, the most important part is that we worked as a team to accomplish something big! Thank you so much. Our students were excited to help our school and "spark their minds" in the process! We have been very busy in Kindergarten as we wrap up our first 9 weeks. Here is what we have been working on: Readers Workshop: We continue to work on building reading stamina. We have learned how to retell simple stories by recalling the beginning, middle, and end of the story. We have also learned how to ask questions (and, also the difference between a question and a comment). Students have done an excellent job thinking about stories and wondering what will happen or why events are happening. This is so important in the comprehension piece of reading--we want to make sure that our students not only decode words when reading, but also understand what they are reading! Writers Workshop: Writing is such a fun time for our Kindergarteners as they learn to express their ideas through print. Our writing is beginning to evolve from drawings to more labels and words. We are working on conventions of writing: Using a capital letter to start the sentence, that sentences are comprised of words (and that words are letter sounds put together), spaces between our words, and punctuation to end the sentence. Your child may ask you "How do you spell_________?" at home. We encourage you to ask them to write the sounds they hear in the word instead of spelling it for them. Ask students to say the word slowly and write those sounds. This will help them develop their writing skills so much more than spelling words for them! Math: This 9 weeks we worked on numbers 0-5--how to write the numbers, represent the numbers, and identify the numbers. We also worked on 2D shapes circle, square, rectangle, and triangle. We learned about attributes and how to describe the shapes by using the number of sides and number of vertices (corners). Science: We have had so much fun making comparisons of matter. We have learned about comparing size, weight, color, and more! Making observations is a big part of what we do as scientists! Social Studies: In Social Studies, we learned about needs and wants. We are now working on community helpers and jobs. We've discussed how people have jobs to get the things they need and the things they want. In the coming weeks, we will have several visitors who are community helpers. October is Fire Safety month, so we will have some firemen visit our campus. We will also have visits from police officers, a nurse, a vet, and more! We will also have a future career dress up day so that students can share what they want to be when they grow up! Phonics/Handwriting: We have learned all 26 letters of the alphabet! We will now revisit each letter and really focus on proper letter formation for each letter. Please remind your child to use the correct pencil grip (3 fingers) and start from the TOP to form letters (never the bottom)! Sight Words: So far, we have learned the following sight words--see, the, me, I, am, you, it, to, can, on, said. You can see all of the Kindergarten sight words on the back of the calendar in your child's daily folder. Here are a few pictures from our fun! Howdy, Kinder parents and families! We have had a busy few weeks and are so glad to have your precious kiddos with us each day. Here is a look at what we've been up to! Reading Workshop: We are working on building our stamina for reading independently. Currently, most classes are "reading" books for 3-4 minutes. That means eyes are in our books, we are either looking at the WORDS or the PICTURES, and we are thinking about our reading--the WHOLE TIME. We have also worked on procedures in our classrooms for finding books, returning books, and where to sit during readers workshop. Writers Workshop: Our writing time continues our illustration study. We are learning how to add details to our pictures to convey meaning. We've also learned some big, fancy words like VISUALIZATION to help us see what we want to write first in our head before we draw it on our paper and to PERSEVERE when trying new things like writing. Next, we will work on adding labels and goal setting in writing. It's such a fun time for our students! Phonics: We have learned letters Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, Ee, Ff, Gg, and Hh. We work on the sounds and letter formation. We will revisit these letters again after our initial "letter boot camp". Math: We continue to work on procedures during math stations. We have had "number talks" using the numbers 0, 1, and 2. We will continue number talks with 3 and 4 next week. We introduced the mystery jar, which uses items for patterning, estimation, counting, sorting, etc. Social Studies: Last week, the gingerbread man got lost in our school! We had to look for clues all over to find him. In the process, we met some of the people who help us in our school and how to find those special friends (like the nurse, librarian, principal, etc.) if needed. (Sadly, we never found him, but he did leave us some special cookies in our room after we "cracked the code" to find him!) We are now on our All About Me unit and look forward to sharing our posters over the coming weeks! Science: We completed our Science safety unit and our introduction to science. We will begin working on the 5 senses and how scientists use their senses to learn new things about the world around them. Color words: We have enjoyed learning how to recognize and spell color words for red, orange, yellow, and green. We will work on blue, purple, white, black, brown, pink and of course, Aggie maroon next week! Sight words: I, see; next week: me, my Phew! What a super awesome fun first week of Kindergarten! We were busy, busy, busy and by the end of the week, both students and teachers were TIRED! But, it's the best kind of tired because we were working hard, having fun, and loving every minute of it. :D This week, we worked on establishing rules and procedures in our classroom. We strive to provide clear and consistent expectations for our students, so this means spending plenty of time covering every procedure or routine we may see this year. This means we EXPLICITLY teach everything from how to wash hands, what "voice level" to use in the hallway, how to use school supplies, how to use the cafeteria line, and MORE! Students became "certified" to use scissors, markers, pencils, playdough, crayons, etc. after the rules and procedures were taught. Ask them to tell you about how they use these things! Reinforcing those rules, procedures, and expectations from the beginning is extremely important to how efficient our classrooms run throughout the school year. In addition to establishing rules and procedures, our focus for the rest of August includes: Reading: Establishing Readers Workshop time and building stamina for indepdent reading (This can mean different things for different kids, for example some children may read by looking at the pictures and some children may read by actually decoding words, but all can do this for short amounts of time.) Writing: Establishing Writers Workshop time and expectations for writing; illustrations as a form of writing; PERSEVERE in writing (keep trying, even when it is hard--writing IS hard for many Kindergarten students!) Math: Establishing Math Workshop time, begin number talks and learning proper number formation, begin mystery jar (used to estimate, count, sort, pattern, and more) Phonics and Handwriting: Pencil grip; introduce letters Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd Social Studies: Begin All About Me unit Science: What is Science? What does a scientist do? What tools does a scientist use? Science safety. Things to know: All About Me projects will go home Friday, August 31 and will be due Friday, September 7 NO SCHOOL on Monday, September 3 (Labor Day) Color days begin September 4 (see the calendar in your child's daily folder for the color to wear each day! A note will go home in folders with the color days, too!) Thanks for stopping by! Please check us out by clicking on the buttons above. Pictures and information will be posted here throughout the school year. Please bookmark this and check back often. Welcome to Spring Creek Elementary!
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AuthorHello! We are the Kindergarten Team at Spring Creek Elementary. The purpose of this website and blog is to effectively communicate what is going on in our Kindergarten classrooms. Thanks for stopping by! ArchivesCategories |