Shapes!

This week we began our unit on shapes in math. Our work this week served as an overall introduction to 2-D shapes. Next week we will focus on shapes in our environment. Look how much fun we are already having exploring shapes!

The ABCs of Our Class

Every year, I read a book called the ABCs of Mrs. Smith to my class. This book helps introduce myself to the class and also helps introduce the class to the alphabet. Students are able to see things that relate to my life that begin with each letter of the alphabet. I am able to informally assess students' familiarity with the alphabet and I'm usually simply entertained by their reactions to the book. I never knew how funny my life was until I shared it with a group of Kindergarten students. :)

After reading this book last week, the class created a chart listing the letters of the alphabet. We worked together to come up with things in our class or words that could describe our class that would cover each letter of the alphabet.

Then, this week, students worked to illustrate the different pages, thus completing our book. Originally, I wanted to make a copy of the book for each student, but in the interest of conserving resources (and allowing you to see the beautiful colors) I am posting each page of the book here. I hope you enjoy our class masterpiece!

Picture Module

This week in Reading/Language Arts we worked on many different skills. We tackled a little handwriting and worked on perfecting our ability to write our own names. We read many books to increase our knowledge of how books work and who creates them (authors and illustrators). We spent a great deal of time with rhyming words and their families. We even wrote stories about our houses and moving when a student shared they would be moving soon. Above it all, however, our favorite new thing was picture module.

Picture module is a somewhat "old-school" Kindergarten activity. It involves analyzing a picture by describing things seen, applying a title, and composing a sentence about the picture. Then, as a group we analyze our analysis. This can be done in many ways by counting the number of words, counting the letters, counting colors describing the picture, etc. As students get more advanced, they can analyze their work by counting the occurrence of a certain letter, counting nouns vs. adjectives, or perhaps even writing a poem instead of a sentence. The possibilities are endless. The part the students love best about this activity is the "mystery word". Prior to their dissection of the picture, I select a mystery word. The kids love trying to guess it and the student who does gets a small treat. The mystery word will then be noted by a star. It's amazing how much something as simple as this motivates them to participate.

A picture module is super simple to create. I just take a picture from an old calendar (or magazine), paste it to chart paper, and away we go! If you have any old calendars around the house, feel free to share! Take a look below to see our picture modules from this week!

August 10 News

Rain, Rain, Go Away... But wait! The Kinders want you to stay!

On Friday morning, many of us arrived at school in the rain. At first the students were frustrated because they were wet, but once they settled in, they were fascinated by the rain. Students were crowding around the windows fighting for a good view of the downpour. So we shifted the focus of our morning and shared rainy day stories. Each student illustrated a memory of a rainy day and shared their experience with the class. Check out our stories in the hallway some time when you drop off your child!

By the end of the day Friday, the sun was shining bright outside our window. The kids were amazed at the drastic change. We talked about how plants need both rain and sunshine to survive. Our day was a perfect example of both! We decided to visit the grade-level gardens planted last year to see if the soil was wet, how the plants were doing, and what is currently growing. Students loved connecting rain and sun in this way!