Picture Day!

Wednesday, September 30 is Picture Day! Please return your picture packet filled out and payment (or submit payment online) by Wednesday.  Our class will get our pictures taken a little before 9:00 that day, hopefully before we have time to mess up hair and clothes!

Here is my kindergarten school picture!

What are they doing?

As I was walking around during Literacy Center time, I noticed two children putting letters on the matching board in a strange way. "Friends, what are you doing?" I asked. "We're making the mixed up alphabet" they said.  We read The Mixed-Up Alphabet by Steve Metzger last week and these two students were recreating the story with their literacy materials! How wonderful! It reminded me to slow down and ask about the purpose or plan behind what children are working on. They usually have very clever ideas! It may look like play, but there is deep thinking going on!

If you look carefully, you can see the letters in the book are all mixed up because in the story the letters decided they wanted to be in a different order. The red plastic letters are in the same order as the book.

Zero the Hero!

Zero the Hero visited our class on Tuesday and left us a surprise in the shape of a zero: dried pineapple rings! So exciting! We watched a video clip of Zero the Hero and read his book.  We also have special Zero the Hero journals that we worked on.  In the journals, we wrote to 10, made tally marks to 10, colored in ten pennies, and filled in a ten-frame with ten circles!  What a fun celebration.  We can't wait until the 20th day of school to see what Zero the Hero leaves for us!

Writer's Workshop

We have started Writer's Workshop where children get to write about anything they are interested in, including stories they make up!  Right now we are focusing on having stamina to write the whole time, matching our pictures to our words, and having some kind of writing (even if it is just a few letters or shapes that look like letters for children who have not learned how to write all of the letters yet).

Here are a few pictures of writers in action!

Literacy Centers

We started literacy centers this week.  There are only a few things to choose from right now, but our choices will grow as we learn more literacy skills and practice putting materials back where they belong!

separating capital and lowercase letters,

then matching lowercase letters

creating letters using playdough

Sorting!

This week we have focused on sorting during math time.  We used buttons, pattern blocks, unifix cubes, colored insect counters, and attribute blocks to sort by color, shape, and size.  Here are some pictures of our hard work!

Collaboration at Work!

Although we are focusing on Responsibility as our character trait of the week, I couldn't pass up sharing these awesome pictures of collaboration!  Our kindergartners are working together so well.  Everyone is practicing using their words when wanting to join a group and when they are frustrated!

Welcome to Kindergarten!

Welcome to a new year of school at Springville! Our kindergarten class is off to a wonderful start!  I am excited to share our learning with you through this blog, as well as through newsletters that I will send home.  Please let me know if you have any questions.  I know this year will be great!