Patchwork Quilt and Good-Bye to a Friend

It has been a busy week in Kindergarten Plus.

We finished (and delivered) our service project for the Augustana Emerald Crest Memory Care Unit in Burnsville.  We made placemats for their Thanksgiving dinner.  We made hand print turkeys, added details and colored in the background.  It was a good experience for us to do something for others.

We also finished our patchwork quilt that we created for Math.  When it was all done, we could not believe how many patterns we were able to find in the quilt!  We hung it up in the hallway and next week we plan to write about it.  We learned how important it was to work together to finish this project.

We made special handprint turkeys to go with a Thanksgiving poem.  Today we added the details and hopefully you found it in your child's Friday Folder.

We also had to say good bye to a good friend.  Danica and her family are moving to Texas.  Although we haven't known each other that long, we are all going to miss Danica, her big smile and her excitement to learn.  We made her a special book to take along and put our pictures in it so she could remember us.  We wish Danica and her family the best as they start this new adventure in their lives.  Keep in touch!

Guest Teacher, Mrs. S.

Today we had a guest teacher.  Her name is Mrs. Schissel, but we call her Mrs. S.  Mrs. S. was with us today while Mrs. Kurt was busy working on our literacy assessments.  She tested us on Concepts About Print and did our text leveling assessments so she can start our Guided Reading groups.  Mrs. Kurt said we all did a great job!

While Mrs. S. was here, our day was pretty much the same.  We are writing stories about our families in Writing Workshop and we worked on these today.

Our Social Studies unit this week is about families.  Today we talked about how families care about each other and love each other.  We made a heart collage of each of our families to show that we love and care about our family members, too.

Tomorrow we will assemble our butterfly patchwork quilt that we have been working on for Math.  Should be another awesome day in Kindergarten Plus!

Mrs. Radermacher and Mix It Up Math

We had a great day in Kindergarten Plus today.  The snow flurries outside had us just a little excited as we arrived this morning.  We started off the day with our fine motor activity tubs, did our Morning Meeting and had Writing Workshop.

In Writing Workshop we are learning that we do not always have to write stories...we can write lists, notes and letters.  We practiced this for awhile.  During Writing Workshop, we took turns working on our service project for the residents of the Augustana Emerald Crest Home in Burnsville.  Mrs. Radermacher helped us with this.

I thought it might be nice for you to know a little bit about Mrs. Radermacher.

Jodi Radermacher is a paraprofessional assigned to Miss McGinn's K-1 CIP classroom.  She works with general and special education students.  She has been working as a paraprofessional at Northview for 8 years.  Before that, she worked in the Northview lunchroom.

Mrs. Radermacher lives in Eagan with her husband.  Her two children both attended Northview.  Her daughter is a graduate of UW-Stevens Point and her son is a freshman at the University of St. Thomas. Mrs. Radermacher enjoys tennis, working out and participating in the hand bell choir at her church.  She LOVES working with kindergarten students and the kindergarten students LOVE having her in our classroom throughout the day.

We had Mix It Up Math today.  The students who stay in my class for this participated in center activities.  It was fun and we are working hard on our forward and backward counting!

Technical Note

Dear Readers,

Thanks to those of you who brought to our attention that the comment areas were disabled, we have resolved the issue, and the comments are now open to all users.

Thank you for your patience!

- Mrs. Kurt's IT Department
aka Lindsay, Mrs. Kurt's daughter

Turkeys and Art Adventure

Our days in Kindergarten Plus continue to be busy!  On Thursday we took some time during our Writing Workshop to write to service men and women on active duty.  This is a great opportunity for our Kindergartners to do something meaningful for others.  One of our Northview fourth grade families organized this and are sending many supplies along with these letters.  Our hope is to brighten the day of a service man or woman and to let them know we appreciate the important job that they do.

We read the story "A Turkey for Thanksgiving" by Eve Bunting.

Since Thanksgiving will be here soon, we made turkeys to hang in our classrooms.  We made them out of paper plates, construction paper and LOTS of glue.  We did our best to make a pattern with the turkey's tail feathers.  Mrs. Radermacher hung them up in our classroom for us and they look really cute!

On Friday, we got to see some really cool pieces of art from the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  Our Northview PTO pays for parent volunteers to attend training for a program called Art Adventure.  These volunteers then visit our classrooms twice a year to teach us about various kinds of art being displayed at the Institute of Art.

Today's Art Adventure volunteer showed us some terra cotta warriors that were from China a very long time ago.  She even gave us a cool card (kind of like a baseball trading card) with more information about the exhibit.  The Minneapolis Institute of Art is a great place to visit, too!  A big thank you to Northview PTO for sponsoring this event to teach us more about Art.

Morning Meeting

I thought it might be fun for you to see what our morning routine and Morning Meeting is all about.

Each day when the students arrive, they have some specific jobs to do.  First, we check our backpacks and put things in our lockers.  Then we come in to the classroom to complete a few chores.  We put our clips on our behavior chart on the green "Ready to Learn" section.  We make our choice for lunch...hot lunch, sandwich or lunch from home.  

Next, we put a tally mark on our Weather Prediction chart.

Then we put our names on the milk sign up sheet to help us know who wants to have milk at snack time.

Last, we complete the morning work that Mrs. Kurt has at our table spots.

We wait for the morning news to start and when it is finished, our Morning Meeting begins!  Morning Meeting has four components:  greeting, sharing, activity and message.  Our favorite part is sharing.  We each have a special day to bring or tell something for sharing during Morning Meeting.

We also really like the activity...today we did Tooty-Ta! 

November...New Table Spots and a Veteran's Day Project

Today was our first day of school for the new month of November.  A new month means new table spots!  We took some time following our Morning Meeting to get new places to sit.  Hopefully everyone is at a table they have never sat at before with a few new people to get to know.

We spent some time in the computer lab doing Education City Math this morning.  We are getting the hang of the computer lab and we especially like using our headphones!

As you know, tomorrow is a big day...election day.  We talked quite a bit about what an election is and what it means to vote.  Since November 11th is coming soon, we also learned about Veteran's Day.  We read a story called "What is Veterans Day?" by Margot Parker.  It explained that the Armed Forces include the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and the Coast Guard.  It also explained why it is important to thank and honor our veterans for keeping us safe and free.

We made a special project to show our thanks to all veterans.  Many of our relatives are, or have been, veterans and we shared stories about them, too.  We hung our projects in the hall near the teacher's lounge so if you want to check them out, go ahead.