Fantastic First Day!

Today was a successful day! The children were kind, helpful, and attentive.
We read The Kissing Hand and talked about our first day feelings.
We are learning Hey Diddle, Diddle this week. We will be visiting different places in the school
to find the dish and spoon. This will help the children get a better sense of the layout of the school.
I introduced caring for the IPad today and the children learned how to scan a QR code! The QRCODES took them to a talking animal that told them
about something important in the room. We will be doing this again in small
group time.
The children are working on practicing writing their names. We are learning how to grip our pencil and how to write our last names too.
It is our goal to work daily on listening carefully and raising our hands without calling out. You can give gentle reminders about this at home.
Today, the children participated in calendar math. We practiced counting to100 and will continue this daily. During this time we are going over the months of the year, days of the week as well as many other important math and language arts concepts. Calendar time
is an important time of day.
This week and next week we will focus on the sight words I,love, you, the.
We will also revisit/introduce letter sounds during calendar time.
At home, please read daily and practice name writing.
Names begin with an uppercase letter and have lowercase letters inside of them.
I will update our blog as often as possible.
Please remember to sign up for mystery reader!
If you need the QRcode for the Google document,
please send me an E-Mail as soon as possible.
If you have any paperwork at home from the office, please return it.
Have a happy day!

I am learning!

This is what authors and illustrators look like.

We  have been learning about making connections and retelling stories using vocabulary from the stories.  Instead of saying he or she, we are using the characters' names.

Sharing about graphing on the calendar

Thinking and learning

Our story! Ask your child to share any connections that they made. 

Our new word!

We are building fluency, practicing one to one pointing, and finding words and letters that we know during big book time.

Peacemakers Rule!

The class continues to work on learning about being a class citizen and leader.
Today we did our first independent writing activity.
We are encouraging the children to carefully write the letters that they know and the letter sounds.

Calendar math/language arts time is a great time for all!

Tomorrow your child will come home with their weekly citizenship and behavior report.

Please sign it and return it.

Your children are developing proficiency each new day. :) 

Math, math and more math! Everyone in our class CAN count up to 10 objects. 

Please continue to make counting a regular part of your at home routine. Ask your child to begin counting from various starting points.

Kindergarten Kids Can Think!

Wow! What a week filled with thinking, creating, and learning.
The children were excited to see our new interactive calendar for October.  
During this time we cover many language arts skills and math skills. 

Learning high frequency words! Ask your child to read their words and spell them.

Shapes- Ask your child their names and the attributes.  As you are out and about ask your child to find these shapes in their world.

As we read this week and last week we discussed the attributes of a book.  Author, illustrator, cover spine, title page, title, and fiction verses non-fiction.   As we read we are discussing the characters in the story, the setting, and the events.  The beginning and end seem very simple for this class.  The middle, well, we are working on remembering those events.  As active listeners and readers we are learning to develop the skills of retelling events in the middle. 

Fiction/Non-Fiction Anchor Chart

Having Fun In Rainbow Valley!

Where is the love? In Rainbow Valley Of Course!

Parent Connection

Happy Monday!
Today we revisited our calendar math skills. While we have calendar every day, today our focus was on telling time to the nearest hour and identifying the hour hand and the minute hand and identifying coins and their values.
The children enjoy singing songs that help to reinforce these skills.
You can view these songs by going to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2I9AlYp2zk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biann2PWqIA

Happy Happenings In Rainbow Valley!

The children are really enjoying learning about new skills and topics through song and dance during calendar time.

The students have also really enjoyed some new songs. Check out these links to use them as practice at home when writing words and reading words.

We are really working very hard on reminding our kindergarten friends that words contain vowels and that is what makes them words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g43EfOXvpG8

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnVhx3vk1Jg&feature=related

March 17th was a lucky day in Rainbow Valley!

Our First Day of March Was Tons Of Fun!

Today we introduced many new songs and concepts during our calendar time. 

Today we also enjoyed competing with hundreds of thousands of children from all over the world during World Math Day!  The children can continue to play tonight as well.

Last week we started our unit on Forces in science.  Today we activated our schema and shared what we alread know about magnets and we shared what we want to know about magnets.

The children enjoyed free exploration time of the many types of magnets and the items that are attracted and repeled.

After exploring I asked my kindergarten friend what they discovered during their exploration and here is what some of them had to say.

Counting On...

Please make sure that your child is practicing counting as often as possible. It is important that he/she is not skipping or leaving out numbers. Please ask your child to count from various starting points.

Also, it is important that your child is pronouncing the numbers correctly. For example, we say three, four, five and not "tree" or "free" four, five or twelve, thirteen, fourteen, not tweleve, "furteen," fourteen.

October News...

Singing Into Learning

Many of you have asked about the educational songs that we are using to promote learning in our classroom.  Please visit Jack Hartman's website: at http://www.jackhartmann.com. There are many cd's to chose from.  
 We also use other educational songs from Dr. Jean:  http://www.drjean.org/  
During our writing time we often turn on our writing lights and listen to classical music and the Curious George sound track.  

Calendar Time

We are really enjoying our calendar time! 
Please remember to review with your child the following math skills:
Counting from 1-10( Make sure that they are not skipping any numbers.)  Please practice counting beyond 10 with those who are ready.
Creating and identifying 2 and 3 part patterns
Saying the days of the week and the months of the year
Does your child know his or her birthday?
Writing tally marks for the correct number of days we have been in school.  (Today was the 13th day!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally_mark
Identifying numbers 1-30 (Try naming them out of order.)

Plan Ahead

It is important that your child arrive to school each day on time.  
Morning Kindergarten begins @ 7:45AM and ends @ 11:10AM.
Afternoon Kindergarten begins @ 11:10AM and we begin dismissal @ 2:15PM.


Planning a vacation? Please check out our school calendar.


http://www.vbschools.com/calendar/index.asp