Our Week in Kindergarten

Well, it was a short week in Kindergarten, but a very productive one!  We introduced a new Math Workplace…A Bucket of Sea Creatures.  First we needed to count and sort them to be sure there were 100 altogether.  There were!

   

We added some new tools to our Writer's Folder.  We use this during our Writer's Workshop.  One of our new tools is our idea sheet.  It is a place to jot down ideas that we may want to write about at another time.  Whenever we think of something, we can write it down and when we are finished with our current writing, we can look at this to help us think about what to write next!

   

One of our stations during Managed Independent Learning is an Art project.  Mrs. Radermacher assists with this and this week we worked on some cute snowmen!

   

We are learning to use another tool in our writing folders…the story map!  This helps us to organize our thoughts when we write.  This is new, so we started our first one together.  Brody retold a familiar story that we had all experienced…The Gingerbread Man!

   

Then we worked together to create a story map for this story.  We saved it to the SMART Board so we can work on it again next week.

   

 We made a loop snowman to hang in our classroom.  They turned out great!

    

    

We continue to learn more about the author/illustrator Eric Carle and to read more of his amazing books.  This week, we learned that he is married, has a son and a daughter and a cat for his pet!  His favorite color is all colors and he even still scribbles sometimes.  When he was young, he wanted to be a forester for a while.  As an adult, he dreamed about being a chef.  But he always goes back to doing what he loves most…writing and illustrating books for children!

   

   

We also learned this week that Eric Carle wrote a "quartet" of Very books.  Each of these books has a special theme or message.  The Very Hungry Caterpillar is about hope.  The Very Busy Spider is about work.  The Very Quiet Cricket is about love.  The Very Lonely Firefly is about belonging.  We are really enjoying learning about Eric Carle and reading his amazing books.