Week of October 17-21

We're enjoying the season of fall and the many Halloween activities we're squeezing in. We hope you enjoy some of our projects displayed in "The Pumpkin Patch" outside our door.

Math skills covered this week:

*Tricky teens- played games with teen numbers scattered over floor to find when called out...passed out teens and assigned "Simon Says" type directions to students with a particular number...introduced concept that explains a teen number as 10 + ___ more. For example 18 is really 10+ 8 more. Below you'll see a photo of partners practicing this idea.

*Using number lines & number charts to complete a number fill-in grid.

*Estimation introduction-Main concept was that it's easier to estimate larger items and/or fewer items. It's not easy for us to estimate how many candy corns in our treat jar.Writer's Workshop mini lessons

*Pattern introduction

Writer's Workshop mini lessons:
*Writer's keep ideas and work organized. For this lesson students were given their writer's folders which we call our Writer's Notebook. We keep all work presently in this folder. As the year progresses and we switch writing units these will come home.
*"When I'm done, I've just begun". This will be our slogan during each workshop. As children finish a writing piece they have 3 choices...draw more details, write more words or start a new piece. I explain our Writer's workshop as it compares to soccer practice or dance class. During soccer you only practice soccer skills and so forth.
*Writer's use tools. The photo below shows a sound phone we use to speak a word and hear its' sounds more distinctly. There is a spaceman (wooden clothespin dressed in space suit) used to help us leave spaces between our words. We also use date stamps, staplers, alphabet charts, vowel helping hands and more.

Over the past 5 weeks we have been reading many titles by Kevin Henkes. We have compared and contrasted these books along the way. We discovered that Kevin Henkes wrote many of his books with mice as characters and some characters are in several of his books. We noticed that his books without mice sound very different and are shorter stories. We also noticed that in these books without mice the characters don't talk with one another. Finally, we learned a bit about the author personally. He grew up in Wisconsin and had written/illustrated most of his life. We were somewhat surprised to read that he writes his stories before illustrating. In kindergarten it is more likely that we draw our story and then write the words. Drawing helps us get our ideas and details.

Reader's Workshop: Our mini-lessons were

*Reader's understand that there are different types of books. We made a list that included, story books, informational books, poetry books, concept books (such as shapes or colors) and more.

*Reader's use words they remember from stories to help them reread. We practiced this with several books including our big book, "Dan Goes Home".

*Reader's take care of books and put them away properly. The photo below shows Kaitlyn and Kathryn holding the a basket they had just organized to return to our library.

Below you'll see students at work during work stations. Thanks to all the moms who came to help this week. Students are keeping on task for the most part, but need reminders to use quiet voices. Beginning next week during work stations I will be working with with small groups with guided reading.

Friday we celebrated a Dublin kindergarten tradition by planting a Maple tree on the school grounds.
Earlier this week we read about trees, built puzzles of different types of trees and took time to go meet "Mr. Maple" before he was planted.
As we planted "Mr. Maple" on Friday we sang songs and took part in shoveling the dirt & watering the tree. A big thanks to Mr. Gilmore, our custodian for doing the heavy duty work for us.

Thank you all for the donations for our Halloween party. We look forward to seeing everyone there on the 31st. Just a warning it will be crowded in our classroom!

Upcoming Dates:

*October 31st- Halloween Party 2:30 pm parade begins

*November 8th- Teacher Professional Development day, no school

*November 17th - No school, parent/teacher conferences

Wednesday mornings 8:50 AM- bagel day, $1 (you'll want to arrive on time)

Fridays- popcorn day 50 cents