Language Arts in Action:  We've been reading, reading, reading!  I've purposefully increased the difficulty level of all the baggie books and added an additional book per week for most of the students.  They have risen to the challenge and are gaining confidence and independence in their reading efforts.  Way to grow, Kelly kiddos!  In writing, we completed our unit on writing "how to" stories, and have been busy choosing non-fiction topics for informational stories.  We enjoy being "experts" when writing!

Math Star Minutes:  We've been enjoying some "math mysteries," in which we have a story problem to solve.  We need to understand the operations of addition and subtraction, and we've been challenged to show our work with both pictures and numbers.  We've benefitted from sharing our story problem solutions to learn different strategies from each other.  We've played games like Roll and Record 3 and Double Compare to add different number combinations to find a total number.  In Build And Remove, we had a starting number and had to subtract a given number and record the result.

Super Scientists:  We've learned the three states of matter:  solids, liquids, and gases.  We've done some fun sink and float experiments with water.  We learned about the concept of surface tension when we floated a metal paper clip on water, and when we watched black pepper disperse across the surface of water when we broke the surface tension with dish soap.  We filled a balloon with air to see what would happen when we released it.  Earth Day was a great jumping off spot to begin some environmental awareness.  Thanks for saving all your re-usable trash for us to create our cool Trash Can Art Sculptures.  We learned about the concept of recycling, and we buried a plastic lid and an apple core in our class "land fill" (a bucket filled with dirt).  We plan to dig them up periodically to observe the differences in them over time.  We are super excited to have live caterpillars in our room!  We recorded our observations of them in butterfly journals and will keep our eye on their development.

Social Studies Scene:  Our unit on maps led to some great multi-cultural explorations.  We read "We Are All Alike, We Are All Different."  Then we partnered up with a class friend and found ways we were alike and different.  We added our ideas to some great self-portraits.  We learned some facts about the Phillipines,  and painted volcanos, as the Phillipines are home to several volcanos.  We also discussed the country of Russia and counted to ten in Russian, as we learned about that country.  We saw pictures of St. Basil's Cathedral and made our own colorful Russian cathedral pictures.  We also had fun making our own set of Russian nesting dolls, and singing the Russian song, Tumbalalaika.  We took an pretend excursion to Germany, and learned about some notable German contributions including German sausages, german shepherds, German castles, and The Brothers Grimm.  We read the Grimm's fairy tale, Rapunzel and created our own Rapunzels in her tower.  We counted to ten in Spanish and created our own silver cuff bracelets as a tribute to the beautiful jewelry native to Mexico.  We each got to paint the flag from one of our countries of ancestry and they make great banners as they hang in our hallway.

Happy Happenings:  Happy birthday to Maeve in April!  We loved meeting authors Tom Watson and Bob Staake in the library.  We also got to interact with real artists during  Art-in-Action Day on April 19th.  A big thank you to the PTC for sponsoring such a hands-on, interactive day celebrating the arts!

Language Arts in Action:  We practiced the short e sound.  We stamped words in the -et word family and illustrated them.  Then we read a funny story called Pet Show and practiced making inferences, which involves answering questions in which the author does not provide all the information.  Our baggie books were If You Want A Pet, and We Want A Pet.  We practiced reading short e words and our new sight words: "we" and "want" in them.  Our new writers workshop unit is writing "how to" stories, so we kicked off the unit by writing "How To Catch A Leprechaun."  It was fun "publishing" them with a cute cover.

Math Star Minutes:  We completed our shapes unit and began more investigations into how numbers can be constructed and de-constructed.  We played Quick Images, in which we had a short time to view a 6-tile arrangement on the Promethean board, then had to recreate the arrangement.  We discussed all the different ways we could construct the number six.  We played Toss Six Chips to find different combinations of red and yellow chips.

Social Studies Scene:  We read Map Keys to learn how features are illustrated on maps, then we worked collectively to add map keys to our small group classroom maps.  We read As The Crow Flies, to gain an appreciation for how maps are a view from above and can help us chart a path.

Happy Happenings:  On Friday, we celebrated St. Patrick's Day by wearing green.  Our classroom leprechaun left us glittery green clues to follow and some "gold" candy in a pot at the end of our hunt.  We danced an Irish jig using our rainbow streamer tambourines.  We read The Leprechaun's Gold at storytime.  We had fun with Lucky Charms math, in which we had to sort, count, and graph the marshmallow shapes in our bags of Lucky Charms cereal.  We were excited to take our leprechaun planters home.  We also got to help Max celebrate his St. Patrick's Day birthday.  Happy Birthday, Max!

Nuts and Bolts:  You should have received (or be receiving very soon) your child's report card in the mail.  Please sign the parent signature page and return it to school as soon as possible.  You are free to keep the remaining pages.

Language Arts in Action:  We met Jen the Hen, our letter friend, who reminds us of the short e sound.  We brainstormed and wrote short e words we know.  Our newest sight words are "up," "down," "we" and "want."  We practiced reading them in the baggie books, Fix It Up and Will Ron Fix His Rig?.  We are gaining skill in sounding out words, using context clues, using picture clues, and using patterned language to read books independently.  Each week we have guided reading sessions to introduce each book and multiple re-readings to gain fluency in reading the stories.  I'm proud of my Kindergarten readers!

Math Star Minutes:  Our math workshop activities this week included making three dimensional shapes with play doh, making shapes with rubber bands on geoboards, and matching faces of three-dimensional shapes with two-dimensional shapes in a game called Matching Faces.  We used great problem-solving skills to try and recreate larger 3-D blocks using different combinations of smaller blocks.  We also recreated three dimensional connecting cube structures, which involved paying close attention to the number of cubes, directionality, arrangement, and dimension.  We counted and recorded 15 objects from our counting jar.

Social Studies Scene:  We learned that a map gives us a picture of a place with a view from above. We read Mapping Penny's World and saw maps of lots of different places including a park, a bedroom, and a yard.  We worked in cooperative small groups to create maps of our classroom.  They look great!

Happy Happenings:  We were fortunate to be able to be an audience for the 5th graders who acted out Jan Brett stories for us in the library.  Great job, 5-ers!  Happy Birthday to Jillian on March 7th!  Zach is our current Rock Star Student!  Last week, Mrs. Kelly caught a leprechaun who gave her some "magic" seeds!  We made fun leprechaun planters and planted our seeds.  Today we were so happy to see our leprechauns growing lots of green hair!

In celebration of St. Patrick's Day, I've asked each kindergarten kiddo to wear something green to school on Friday, March 15th, if possible.

Language Arts in Action:  We practiced reading words in the -ot, and -op families.  Then we put those words to use when reading the baggie book, One, Two, Pop, Pop, Pop.  Our newest sight words are:  one, two, and what.  We read lots of ocean stories, both fiction and nonfiction.  We especially loved learning true facts about fish, jellyfish, and coral.  We wrote some facts we learned during Writers' Workshop.  On Beach Day, we read At The Edge of the Sea by Betty Paraskevas and wrote about what we like to do at the beach.  Then we sponge painted fish onto our beach pictures.

Math Star Minutes:  We've been busy investigating shapes.  We read Shapes, Shapes, Shapes by Tana Hoban and created our own shape class book to share.  We used geoboards with rubber bands, and playdoh to recreate shapes.  We had some ocean animal puzzles that we completed by filling in the empty spots with two different combinations of pattern blocks.  We played "Fill The Hexagon," in which we rolled a shape die and had to fill in the hexagons on our gameboards with a variety of shape combinations.  We are getting really good at remembering shape names, and the problem solving aspect of the shape puzzles and games keeps us thinking!

Social Studies Scene:  In our Second Step social/emotional program, we are focusing on managing feelings like anger, frustration, and disappointment.  Techniques like telling ourselves to stop, naming our feelings and practicing deep breathing really help.  I'm also super impressed at how well the class has applied using I-messages to problem solve conflicts.  In keeping with our ocean theme this week, we read How I Became A Pirate, complete with treasure map, which is a great way to kick off our upcoming social studies unit on maps.

Super Scientists:  We have lots of real ocean artifacts in our science exploration station and we enjoyed being able to see and feel real (preserved) seahorses, puffer fish, conch shells, starfish, etc.  At the end of the week, on Beach Day, we each got to take home a real shark tooth, too!

Happy Happenings:  Happy birthday to Olivia and Ryan - our February birthday kiddos!  Madi is our current rock star student!  I'm looking forward to the Avoca West Fun Fair this Sunday, Feb. 24th and hope to see you there!

Language Arts in Action:  We learned that the sound for K is the same as the sound for c.  We listened for the k sound at the beginning and ends of words.  We also met Dr. Bob, the letter friend who helps us remember the short o sound.We practiced reading short a, short i, and short o words.  We played a rockhopper penguin game to practice all our sight words.  We learned to write lowercase t, lowercase a, and lowercase d.  During Writers' Workshop, we began a unit on writing pattern books and used our sight word "where" to write some Where Am I pattern book stories.  We read the book Snowmen At Night, then wrote our own snowmen at night stories and illustrated them.

Math Star Minutes:  We were introduced to the plus (+) and minus (-) signs and used them in our game One More, One Fewer.  We acted out more story problems and focused on noticing whether the ending total was more or less than at the start.  We played Double Compare in partners, in which we needed to add the total of two playing cards and compare the total to our partner's total.  We got to choose our favorite changing quantities game to play at the end of the week and got to choose from those above, as well as Racing Bears, Collect 15 Together, and Roll and Record 2.  We explored measuring weight using balance scales.

Super Scientists:  We used our sense of touch to reach inside the mystery box, try to guess the objects inside, and to record our results.

Social Studies Scene:  We participated in a team teaching unit about Martin Luther King, Jr.   Each day, we switched classrooms and had a lesson about Martin Luther King with each of the other kindergarten teachers.  In our class, we opened birthday presents for Martin Luther King's birthday.  We were disappointed to find some dinghy rocks inside the present that was beautifully wrapped, but there was a sweet candy treat inside the box that was plain.  This helped us realized Dr. King's big idea that it is not outside appearances that are important, but inside qualities that really matter.  Then we each came up with a personal inside quality that we possessed and we decorated a medal received for being beautiful on the inside.  In Mrs. Roh's classroom, we discussed how many different colors make life interesting and beautiful.  We had fun coloring giant crayon boxes filled with the colors of the rainbow.  In Mrs. Crispin's class we saw a great Brain Pop, Jr. video on the life of Dr. King, and created portraits of Dr. King.  In Mrs. Rosic's class we listened to Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech and created a beautiful one world art project.  Additionally, we read Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches which also featured accepting differences and painted some colorful Star Belly Sneetches ourselves.  The highlight of our unit was performing our two Martin Luther King, Jr. songs in front of the entire school at our January Spirit Assembly.  We were shining stars!

Happy Happenings:  Happy birthday to Sammy this week!  Aubrey was our rockin' rock star student!

Language Arts in Action:  Last week we learned the sound for the letter Bb and had fun singing Baby Beluga, about a little white whale on the go.  We then grabbed our whale watchers' guides and learned some other facts about real whales.  We painted blue whales and we wrote stories with facts about whales. Our arctic explorations next led to penguins.  We read a non-fiction book about real penguins, and then a fiction penguin tale called Pinky The Penguin.  We brainstormed ideas for things real penguins do and do not do.  We illustrated our ideas and put up a delightful penguin rookery filled with penguin dos and don'ts on our large bulletin board.  We learned to read our newest sight word:  for, and practiced it when we read the baggie book called Birthday Map. We're taking a big step in handwriting, by learning to correctly print our lowercase letters and orient them on lines.

Math Star Minutes:  We've begun a new unit on changing quantities, with focal points on modeling the action of combining and separating situations, combining two amounts, separating one amount from another and will move into addiing and/or subtracting numbers up to 10.  Thus far, we've played games called Racing Bears, One More One Fewer, and acted out story problems.

Super Scientists:  We unraveled a kite string that was the same length as a real blue whale...100 feet.  We were awestruck to "see" the length run as long as the entire hallway outside our classroom!  It was perfect timing to see some photographs of real penguins, seals, and orca whales sent to our class by Mrs. Kelly's mom and dad, who just returned from a December trip to Antarctica!  We put up a life-sized emperor penguin poster and measured up to see if we are as tall as an emperor penguin.  We also began a unit to explore our five senses and how we use them to discover the world around us.  We closed our eyes and used our ears and noses to listen to, smell, and guess some popcorn popping in our microwave oven. Then we tasted and brainstormed describing words for how our popcorn looked, felt, smelled, sounded, and tasted!  We used our sense of taste for another popcorn lesson, in which we tasted plain, cheese, and caramel popcorn and graphed which kind was our favorite.

Social Studies Scene:  We participated in a "We Feel Feelings in our Bodies" and brainstormed what we can do to feel better when we feel uncomfortable feelings like sadness or worry.

Happy Happenings:  Happy Birthday to Kirsten last week!  So happy to help you celebrate!

Nuts and Bolts:  I am still collecting gluesticks.  If you are able to purchase a few and share them with our class, it would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Kindergarten Families!  I hope you had a wonderful winter break.  I'm excited to see my kindergartners tomorrow morning!  By the very nature of their youth, I know they will be returning to school taller and smarter than they left just a couple of weeks ago!  Thought you might like a recap of the festive week we had on the week before break.

Language Arts in Action:  We compared and contrasted many different versions of the classic folktale, The Gingerbread Man.  We read stories in which the Gingerbread Boy ran through a school, through a city, was swallowed by an alligator, and even was sneezed to safety due to his peppercorn eyes!  We created and/or read our own versions of the story appropriate to our different reading levels and we loved "performing" our stories for our classmates at the end of the week.  We each made a large gingerbread man and decorated him with words from the -an word family.  We read The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett, then decorated our own gingerbread baby cookies and graphed which part of the cookie we bit first.

Math Star Minutes:  We used gingerbread man playing cards to turn four cards and order them from smallest to largest.  We played a gingerbread count and sort game.  We played a gingerbread man roll and cover game, in which we counted the total of the roll of two dice, and colored the corresponding numbers on our gingerbread man.

Super Scientists:  We talked about what habits we can develop to help us stay healthy.  Then we wrote prescriptions for staying healthy and had a turn to get our photo taken wearing a doctor uniform holding our prescriptions.

Happy Happenings:  We saw a the classic Rogers and Hammerstein musical version of Cinderella at the Marriott Theatre for Young Audiences in Lincolnshire.  Thanks to Mr. Fogelson and Mr. Lepley for helping chaperone our trip.  Thanks also to our room moms, Mrs. Quezada and Mrs. O'Donnell, for coordinating our fun winter break party.  We had a winter wonderful time and appreciate all the families who provided snacks, games, and crafts for our party.  Wishing you all a bright and beautiful New Year!

In light of the sadness of this day due to the school shooting in Connecticut, please hold your little loved ones close, and know I will do the same.

Language Arts in Action:  We unscrambled sight word cards to create sentences.  We used letter cards to create -it family and -ig family words.  We put our skill with sight words and short i words to work when we read our baggie book about Rip the dog.  In Writers' Workshop we discussed how to go back and reread to see if we are missing words in our writing.  We also talked about how to include feelings to stretch out our small moments stories.  We continue to visualize stories read during storytime, and to predict outcomes in those stories.

Math Star Minutes:  We had fun tracing our shoes and measuring each other's shoe prints with cubes.  We even got to measure some Avoca teachers' shoes!  We also used popsicle sticks to measure long lengths of ribbons and we counted and recorded the number of popsicle sticks in our counting jar.

Super Scientists:  We compared and contrasted how we might feel and act when we are sick vs. when we are healthy.

Nuts and Bolts:  It's report card round up time.  If you haven't already done so, please sign and return the parent signature page that was mailed with your child's report card.  Thanks!

Happy Happenings:  Happy birthday to Andrew and Ethan this week and thanks for the most delicious treats!  Sammy was our Rock Star Student.  Thanks for sharing, Sammy!  We had so much fun creating our holiday gifts and gift bags for our moms and dads.  We hope you enjoy looking at them as much as we had creating them!

Language Arts in Action:  We continued our fun with farms unit and enjoyed the stories, Mrs. Wishy Washy's Farm and Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash.  We continue to practice asking questions as we read, making predictions, and visualizing the story as we hear it.  We had fun creating our own Mrs. McNosh pictures and hanging some funny things on her clothesline.  We listened to Cows In The Kitchen at our story station and painted some cute cows for a classroom cow quilt display.  We like singing and acting out the words to the song, In My Garden.  We met Gary the Gopher and Fannie the Fan, who help us remember the sounds /g/ and /f/.  We listened for the g and f sounds at the beginning and ends of words.  During writer's workshop, we learned how to connect ideas from one page to another to create a story with multiple ideas about one event.  We also practiced going back and rereading or telling our stories to see if we need to add more to the pictures and/or words.  We cut out words and unscrambled them to make and illustrate sentences using our two newest sight words:  "this" and "here."

Math Star Minutes:  We learned how to play "Break The Train" with pattern blocks and two color counters.  In all those activities, we create a pattern, break it into it's repeating units, and count the units.  It is tricky, but we are learning how to look back to see if our units are the same to check our thinking.  We also played "How Many Cars," in which we drew a card with a basic unit on it and then rolled a number cube to see how many of those units we needed to make a train.

Super Scientists:  'Tis the season...of coughs and colds, so we began our unit about ways to keep healthy.

Happy Happenings:  We enjoyed our trip to the Book Fair.  Thanks so much for your support of the fair and of Bernie's Book Bank.  Our school collected over $1600. for books for underprivileged children!  Luke was our Rock Star Student and we loved hearing his Metal Mutz story from home.  We were lucky enough to attend two assemblies this week.  We heard the older students perform their orchestra concert.  This was great exposure, as your children will have the opportunity to play a string instrument next year in first grade.  We also heard Wilmette community member, Mr. Mark Stephan, speak about his experience of riding a bike across American after being paralyzed in a biking accident.  Thanks to our PTC for sponsoring this inspirational program!

Language Arts in Action:  The introduction of two short vowels:  a and i, means we can begin to blend sounds to sound out short consonant-vowel-consonant words like tap, Dan, rip, and sit.  Segmenting words,  or breaking them apart into their individual sounds, is a precursor to blending, so we've been working hard on that skill, as well.  Our newest sight words are "he" and "come."  Comprehension skills we've been practicing include predicting outcomes in stories and visualizing a story to help us remember and understand it.  We've are also learning to ask ourselves questions about stories that we are reading.  It is very exciting to see the kids make connections in their learning, and apply these skills as they are reading to themselves or when reading and discussing a story together at the rug.

Math Star Minutes:  We are currently exploring patterns.  I'm so impressed at the children's willingness to challenge themselves in their thinking and I've seen their patterns grow in length and complexity from the simple A-B patterns that most began with.  We made patterns with all kinds of materials and are compiling our pages into a patterns booklet.  We also made pattern block snakes and arrow patterns.  One-two patterns helped us understand that we can look for patterns outside of color attributes, as well.  We even had some fun with calculators and learned how to press the buttons to create number patterns in the calculator window.  This week we learned to play "Break The Train," in which we created patterns, broke them into their repeating units (train cars) and counted the units.  A challenging feat and the kids did very well!

Social Studies Scene:  We spent most of November reading If You Sailed On The Mayflower to learn some history of the first Thanksgiving.  The unit was capped off by our fabulous kindergarten kid-friendly feast!  Thanks to so many of you who contributed.  Click on the blue arrow below for some feast pics.

Thanksgiving Feast 2012

Super Scientists:  We have concluded our unit on ants.  The kids had fun dramatizing scout ants collecting food and guard ants defending their nest.  We drew pictures of an ant's body.  The kids were amazed to look at their post-unit ant body pictures and compare them to the pictures of ants they had drawn when we started the unit.  I loved that they were able to appreciate their own progress!  The culminating project were some ant colony murals.  The kids needed to put all their knowledge of ant life to use in creating their pictures of ants collecting food, laying eggs, defending their nest, tending their young, etc.  Enjoy the slides from that activity below, as well!

Ants!

Happy Happenings:  Happy birthday to Aubrey this weekend!  Olivia was our star student this week, and we enjoyed Ryan's Rock Star week prior.  Thanks to all for helping collect coins for Bernie's Book Bank.  The Avoca West Book Fair begins next week, and we hope you can support the Book Fair, as well.

Nuts and Bolts:  I've noticed several of the bags of extra clothes you sent at the beginning of the year have only summer wear in them.  Please make sure you send in a set of extra clothes appropriate for colder weather.  Thanks so much!