A Great Week!

We had a great week in Kindergarten Plus!  There were lots of changes in our schedule, like starting Specialists, a fire drill, two days of inside recess due to rain and school portraits...but we were really flexible and made it through!

On Wednesday, we made a school bus.  We used our scissors, glue sticks and crayons and they turned out great!

   

Our Math unit has been focusing on shapes.  We have been exploring triangles, squares, circles and rectangles.  We have learned about the attributes of each shape.  We have been sorting the shapes, creating and expanding patterns and next we will use shapes to make a quilt.

We have also been using our Math Work Places.  The work places enable the students to apply skills they learn in Math through participating in games and activities that utilize the Math skills we learn.  This week we introduced Polydrons, Geoboards and Geobands and a Basket of Bugs to go along with the Unifix Cubes and Pattern Blocks we have already learned about.  Be sure to ask your child about our Work Places!

   

   

    

Be sure to check Friday Folders to complete the homework for this weekend.  Have a good weekend!

Writing Workshop

We started Writing Workshop today!  Our lesson was really fun, too.  We started by learning about labels.  We learned that labels give readers information about pictures.  We weren't exactly sure what this meant, so Mrs. Kurt helped us.

We started out by labeling the picture of Mr. Bear on the chart paper.

Then Mrs. Kurt had a funny idea...she told us we were going to label her!  We weren't sure how we were going to do this, so she helped us out.  When we named a part of her, she wrote the word on a post it note.  Then we got to put the labels on Mrs. Kurt!

   

We sure giggled a lot while this was happening!

Mrs. Kurt did look a little funny wearing post it notes!  But then, we each got some post it notes and a black flair marker.  We started making labels for things all over the room.  We learned that it is O.K. if we don't know how to spell something.  We can just stretch out the word and write down the sounds we hear.  We also learned that we can use the alphabet chart to help us with this.  We labeled all kinds of things in our room and had a great time while we were learning something new.

   

   

   

So if you need any help labeling things, be sure to ask us.  We are pretty good at making labels!

Have You Filled a Bucket Today?

Today, Ms. Arboe taught us an excellent Social Skills lesson on bullying.  She read us the story "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?" by Carol McCloud.  This story talks about how everyone has an imaginary bucket.  When people say or do nice things, they fill your bucket.  When people say or do things that are not so nice, our buckets get emptied.  It is a great story!

   

Following the story, we participated in an activity.  Ms. Arboe drew a picture of a Kindergarten friend named Sam.  Whenever something not nice was said to or about Sam, we had to crumple up the paper that he was drawn on.

Being all crumpled up did not make Same feel good.  His bucket was empty.

   

Then we had to think of nice things to say to or about Sam so we could help to flatten him out and make him feel better!

   

We all worked together to fill Sam's bucket.  We realized that when we do nice things to fill other people's buckets, we feel good and we actually fill our own buckets, too.

What a great lesson this story and activity taught us.  In Kindergarten, we are going to work hard to be bucket fillers.  :-)

New Routines and Names

We are still busy learning even more Kindergarten routines.  We are now doing our lunch count in the mornings using the SMART Board.  We find the circle with our name on it and we move it into the ten frame that matches what we are having that day.  Our choices are School Lunch (or Hot Lunch), School Sandwich (this is where we get a sandwich instead of the main entree but we still get the other choices that go along with school lunch), or Lunch From Home.  During our Morning Meeting we figure out how many students are choosing each option and the helper brings the lunch count to the kitchen!

This morning we worked on an activity that goes along with our Social Studies unit called "Who Am I?".  We had to draw a picture of ourselves and a special talent that we have.  When we finished our pictures, we shared each of our special talents then we did a museum walk so we could admire everyone's drawings.  We are a very talented bunch of students!

   

We are so busy learning the names of all of our new friends!  Ms. Arboe read the story "Chrysanthemum" by Kevin Henkes.  Chrysanthemum has 13 letters in her name...wow!

   

After the story, we made our class name chart.  We will leave this up all year so we can use it to help us figure out who the helper is each day and to help us learn the names of all our new friends!

The End of a Busy Week!

We have made it through the second week of Kindergarten Plus at Northview!  It has been a very busy week.  In the past few days, we have done some guided discoveries using pattern blocks, glue, white boards and white board markers.  We are doing such a good job at listening and learning the proper way to use and take care of all of these school tools!

   

  

   

We also had the opportunity to use our scissors.  Mrs. Kurt could not believe what a great job we did!

    

 Ms. Arboe read us another gingerbread story called "Gingerbread Friends" by Jan Brett.  Each day this week, after we read our gingerbread story, we helped the teachers make a list of the characters from each story.

 It was very interesting to see how the stories were alike and how they were different!

Then we had to think about which gingerbread story was our favorite.  We made a graph to see which ones we liked!  Did you know that a graph actually helps to organize information?  Looks like the most popular gingerbread story this week was "The Gingerbread Girl" by Lisa Ernst.

Our last gingerbread activity was trying to list some gingerbread adjectives.  We learned that adjectives are words that describe something.  We came up with some good adjectives for our gingerbread boy!

It really was a good week!  Have a great weekend.

Bus Safety and the Gingerbread Boy

Today we learned about bus safety.  We watched a video in Library yesterday with Mrs. Hemsey and then this morning, we got to practice on a real school bus!

   

Ms. Arboe read us the story "The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School" by Laura Murray.

   

 Then it was time to head to the lunchroom to pick up our delicious snack for the day.  However, there was one small problem...the gingerbread boy we made for our snack wasn't there!

 

 So we went back to our classroom to make a plan.  We decided to make a sign telling others that our gingerbread boy was lost!

  

We decided to look around the school for him.  He wasn't in the bathrooms, lunchroom, or the office.  But we did find him in Mr. Ball's office!  Thanks to the third graders in Mrs. Watters' class for the great hints!

 We decorated our gingerbread boy with frosting, blueberries and raspberries.  Then we ate him for our snack...YUM!

   

We were so glad we found our gingerbread boy.