Dear families,

My husband and I welcomed our son, Paul James Roh on May 16, 2013 at 3:40am. He came in weighing 8lb 4oz. and 21.5 inches long. Thanks for all your encouragement and support this year! Have a wonderful end to Kindergarten and enjoy your summer break!

The class has started learning about the life cycle of butterflies.  Currently, we have 5 caterpillars living in our classroom.  The kids are very excited to observe them and then write about what they see in their Butterfly Journals.  They are also listening to non-fiction books about butterflies.  In math, we are learning about “teen” numbers and how to make them by adding a one-digit number to 10.  In writing, they will be starting a second informational book which will focus on adding important details to help their reader better understand their topic.  Mrs. Straussman has started working in the classroom in preparation for the arrival of baby Roh!  Enjoy the beautiful weather!

We ended our week with Art in Action Day!

It’s always a day I look forward to as a teacher. I love the excitement and joy as our students get the opportunity to try something new and be creative. Here are some pictures from the day!

We are moving forward in our math unit by looking at all the combinations that can add up to 5. Some of the students came up with great ideas and thoughts. I am impressed with the deeper thinking that the students are demonstrating. We also spent some time writing words that rhyme and noticed the patterns in those words.

The class has made so much progress this year! We recently re-read a story that we originally read about 3 months ago. However, this time around, the students were able to read it on their own. It is such a delight to see the smiles on their faces and to recognize how much they have grown in a short amount of time.

We are finishing up our unit on solids, liquids and gases. We have been learning to recognize what is a solid and what is a liquid. The class also conducted various experiments to learn that a solid can be come a liquid and vice versa. We will be spending the rest of this week learning about gases.

We introduced the last vowel sound “u”. Students quickly recognized that now they can read any simple word because they have learned all their vowel sounds. We have also been busy working on little writing projects rather than a book this month.

It’s exciting as an educator to see the pride beaming from students’ faces when they can tangibly see the growth they have made this year. There’s still a lot of learning to do and the class is excited to keep growing!

We have been very busy here in Kindergarten!

We are working on our informational books. Each of the students picked a topic they felt they knew a lot about. They are writing down everything they want to teach the class about their topic. When we get from break, we will be organizing our pages and putting our books together.

In language arts, we worked hard on our short e words and learning new short e word families. Each of the reading groups have been working hard on reading with fluency and with expression. We are noticing different parts of the text like the quotation marks, question marks, and exclamation marks. Some of the groups are trying to visualize a picture in their head as we read and also make appropriate connections to their lives with the text.

In math, we started a new unit on numbers. We have been playing the game, “Racing Bears” and adding different numbers together. Some of the students are also playing the game in such as way that they can strategize whether to add or subtract in order to make things harder for their opponent. We’ve also been investigating the various ways we can add two different numbers to equal the number 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. Some of the students are really excelling and finding all the possible combinations.

Please enjoy the spring break whether you are staying here or going away!

The students have been writing “how to” books this month. We have topics ranging from how to build a snowman to how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. On top of the writing skills that we have been practicing on, students need to think through what they are going to say on each page and in which order. Some of the students are using transitional words such as “then”, “first”, and “last” even though we didn’t teach them yet!

We’ll be finishing up our books next week and sharing them with one another. Ask what topic you child chose to write on and look out for their books next week!

We started our new unit in Social Studies on maps and directions. We have been learning directional words and using them to locate objects and direct one another to a specific location. We are also practicing knowing our left from our right. This is very practical each morning when we say the pledge.

We are learning that there are many types of maps. We created a map of our room and shared with one another what our rooms look like. In the next couple of weeks, we’ll create a map of our classroom. Be on the lookout to see what your child creates!

In math we have been making “arrangements” of tiles. In this activity the children use square tiles to make arrangements of 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 tiles. The rule for this is that all of the tiles must be touching each other in some way. They then make paper pictures of these tile arrangements. When the children share their pictures with the class, it helps them understand that a fixed amount of tiles can have many different configurations. It also helps them work on their accuracy in counting and creating the arrangements.

Following this, the children play a game with these pictures called “Quick Images”, in which they show a classmate one of their tile pictures for a short amount of time and then that classmate must recreate the arrangement from memory using the plastic tiles. This is very difficult and the children are allowed to look at the picture again and then copy it while looking at it if they have not been correct in their recreation.

Toss the Chips is another game in which children explore set amounts of an object. Chips that have two different colored sides, red and yellow, and a recording sheet were used in this game. The children take a specific number of chips, for example 5, and then toss the chips. They then record on their sheet how many are red and how many are yellow. They do this several times so that many different combinations can be found. For example for 5 they could have 5 and 0, 4 and 1, 3 and 2, 2 and 3, 1 and 4, and 0 and 5. The children do this for different numbers and thus begin to learn the idea that there are many ways to make a number. At the end of math time we all sat down and used our sheets to record on our Promethean board, all of the ways we had found to make 6. This idea that many different combinations can make a number is the basis for computation.

We have been very busy these past few weeks!

We are now reading consonant-verb-consonant (CVC) words with the short a and short i sounds. Students are also recognizing their sight words quicker and starting to read sentences. We’ve also been writing books this month. We shared our books with each other in the author chair. I can’t express enough how proud I am of each student. They worked so hard. In fact, they worked quietly for 35 minutes straight on their writing. They were excited to share their hard work with each other. Look out for their books in their folders today.

In math, we finished up patterning and started our unit on measurement. We are emphasizing how important it is that we line up our measuring tool to the object. We are discussing each day how it is important that we know what we are measuring with. An item that is 3 paperclips long is very different from an item that is 3 cars long!

In Science, we started our unit on the five senses. We have been playing games each day to use one of our senses and come up with words that help us to describe the object. We’ve also been discussing opposite words during our science unit. For instance, an object is hard or soft.

Listening to one of our authors.

Enjoying the story of another author

An author sharing their finished work.

Everyone has been working so hard these past two weeks. We learned the short a sound and have started blending sounds together.

Here are the sounds we have learned so far: m,s,r,t,n,p,c, and the short a.

Here are the sight words we have learned so far: I, A, my, the, go, and to.

We have also started writing a new story. Everyone has a beginning, middle, and end to their story. It is exciting to see the students realize that they can put their thoughts on paper. They really want to make it nice so that they can share their stories with each other.

In Science, we continued our study on ants and made our own model of the ant farm together. We built tunnels and ant chambers.