Heartfelt Week!

Love was in the air this week in kindergarten!   We had “sweet filled” valentine centers. We practiced our estimation skills by estimating candy hearts.  We also played valentine rhyming games, made valentine patterns and created a valentine ladybug.  We also did a Chalk Talk on LOVE!

     We also have been learning about the different parts of letter writing.  We have been writing valentine letters to friends and family at our kindergarten post office.  We also wrote “I love….” sentences during Writing Workshop.

All the valentines your child received this week provide a wonderful opportunity to practice literacy and math skills!  (I can’t resist the opportunity to make something educational!)  Here are a few ideas….

·         See how many valentines he/she can read.

·         Sort them in a variety of ways (valentines with dogs on them, with 1 heart, with the word LOVE,etc.)

·         Choose a word wall word and count how many times it can be found in their valentines.

 

Valentine Thank You!

I want to give a heartfelt thank you for the amazing Valentine’s Day party.  The kids had so much fun!  Thank you for all the fun valentines and treats too!  The Kinder-kids are so fortunate to have wonderful parents like you!

 

Reading Workshop

 

 

Reading Workshop this week focused on Visualizing. Good readers create pictures in their mind during reading to better understand, remember, and enjoy books. 
Visualizing personalizes reading, keeps us engaged! 

We used Jane Cabrera’s colorful book Cat’s Colors to practice the comprehension skill of visualizing.  We read Jane’s lush descriptions of color words without showing the pictures, and the children practiced closing their eyes and visualizing pictures of their own.  Her description of yellow as “the sand on a sunny beach” was a very welcome thought to us!

To help your kindergartner visualize while reading, try having your child draw or describe what they see in their mind (without seeing the pictures in the book).  We call these “mind pictures.”

We are getting settled into our guided reading groups.  I am meeting with small groups and getting to know individual reading strengths and areas of growth.  Our main focus right now is learning what a reading group should look like and sound like.  We are learning how good readers sit up straight.  We put one hand holding one side of the book, and the other hand using one finger to point and slide under the words as we read.  We are learning how to “whisper read” so I can hear all the wonderful strategies that all the readers in the group are using.  We are also learning what good readers do when they come to a word that is not familiar...

·       They “get their mouths ready” and make the beginning sound of a word that looks unfamiliar to them. 

·         Good readers also look at the pictures and think about what’s happening in the story.

• They point to the first letter, and slide their finger across the word while saying each letter-sound out loud.
• They cross-check by looking at the picture and the word. Then thinking about what looks right and make sense.
• We are also talking about reading for understanding.  What they read needs to make sense.

We also read the book, The Little Snowflake.  We did another thinking routine called Headlines.  This routine helps students capture the main idea of the story.  Then we had so much fun learning how to make snowflakes!

Math

Thank you for making our 100-Day celebration so wonderful!  All the projects made our 100^th day of kindergarten very special!  Over the past week we shared our 100-Day projects, raced our way to 100, wrote what we would like to have 100 of, practiced recognizing numbers to 100 and created pictures from the number 100.  We also made 100 tally marks and counted to 100 by 1s, 5s & 10s.  We worked together to assemble a 100 piece puzzle too.   WOW!  It is so much fun learning! 

 

We took 100 steps!



 

Look what we made with the number 100!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We Are Readers and Writers!

Reading Workshop

The focus first semester has been reading skills and behaviors using a shared reading approach.  Shared Reading is exactly what it sounds like – a time for sharing a story, poem, rhyme, etc. and reading together!  Shared reading in our kindergarten includes echo reading (students echoing the words after the reader), choral reading (students reading at the same time as the reader), or “fill in the gap” reading (reader reads the majority of the text and then pausing for students to fill in and say rhyming words, word wall words, etc.).

 

Shared Reading has helped your child to:

·         Enjoy and participate in reading

·         Attend to Concepts of Print (Track print from left to right and word by word, punctuation)

·         Learn the elements of books (cover, title page, dedication, author, illustrator, etc.)

·         Make predictions and inferences

·         Expand their vocabulary

·         Find letters and sounds in context

·         Strengthen comprehension skills by sequencing and retelling the events of a story

·         Focus on story elements (characters, setting, problem, events, and solution)

·         Read word wall words in context.

·         Practice fluency and expression

·         Develop phonemic awareness and phonics skills

For the second semester, we will begin Guided Reading.  This approach has many of the same components as shared reading; however, it is conducted with a smaller number of students and focuses more on the individual reading needs of each child.  During guided reading, I will meet with small groups of children, guiding them through books at their level, developing successful reading strategies and habits.   These “leveled” texts will gradually become more challenging as students learn to apply all their strategies.  Some children will be ready to move quickly, while others need more time and support.  My goal is to work together to ensure a successful learning experience and improved student achievement for all my kindergarteners.

 

Next week the children will start taking home their “reading bag.”  There will be more information and guidance in their bag on how to support your child at home.  Please let me know if you have any questions.  Most importantly, the children will be so EXCITED and PROUD to bring home their guided reading books.    Praise your kindergartener for all their hard work!

 

 

Writing Workshop

The children are really enthusiastic writers.  We are starting a new, but familiar unit of study.  We are diving back into small moments.  Small moments are focused, true stories that have specific details, and are written in a sequential order.  In this unit students are moving from writing a whole story to writing about a particular small moment that mattered most. 

Math

We have been working with another “thinking strategy” called Claim Evidence.  The children make a claim, such as, 2 + 3 = 5.  Then they have to show us evidence that their claim is true.  The children rose to the challenge and used a variety of ways to prove their claim.  They used 10 frames, tally marks, pictures, fingers, number lines and our 100 grid.  Our brains were hard at work!

 

 

 

 

 

Art

It's definitely winter in kindergarten!  We did a SEE, THINK, WONDER on Pointillism.  Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image.  We used Pointillism to created snowflakes and snowmen.