Week of Nov. 14-18

Happy Thanksgiving break!  I hope you will all have a wonderful time celebrating with family and friends!

This past week we focused on expository text about bats in language arts.  The students now know many facts about bats.  I hope you enjoyed their bat video that they made with the Chatter Kid app on their iPads.  As we learned about these nocturnal creatures, we discussed the various features of expository text.  During writing, we continued to work on writing captions.  The students chose a topic that they are experts at and wrote captions for pictures they illustrated.  

In science, we learned all about patterns of movement.  We used vocabulary words such as above, below, in front of, behind, beside, zigzag and between.  We made our own marble movement art and it is displayed in the hallway.  Ask your child how we created this art!  

During math we focused on numbers that were more or less than a given numeral.  The students identified how many items were in a given set and then decided if another set was more or less.

For social studies we continued to learn about culture and traditions.  We focused on Thanksgiving and the traditions and celebrations surrounding this holiday.  The Monkeys had a great time discussing what they are thankful for and made some super cute turkey hats!

We enjoyed learning about our superstar student Sophia D.'s life and interests this past week!  

Week of November 7-11

It was another great week in Kindergarten!  We were super excited about our class turkey!  It looks fabulous and it is always great to see the wonderful diversity in all of the feathers.  

It is SO hard to believe that we only have one more week until our Thanksgiving break!  The students are ready for a nice break and so are the teachers.  We are looking forward to spending quality time with our family and friends.  

Our class got a wonderful surprise on Friday during the morning announcements.  We won the Golden Spork award!  It is a weekly award given to the class with the best behavior at lunch in the cafeteria!!  Yay Monkeys!  Great job!

During language arts this week, we really focused on nonfiction text vs. fiction text.  We read a lot of nonfiction text about turkeys and learned many facts about them.  Ask your child facts that they now know about wild turkeys.  We then made some awesome turkeys that are displayed in the Kindergarten hallway.  Make sure to come and see them!

We also worked on making lists during writing.  We thought about things that we are good at doing and could teach someone else to do.  We began writing facts about a topic from our lists.  We are going to work on drawing and coloring pictures about our topic and writing captions.

During science the students worked on learning all about relative position.  We focused on many position words such as above, below, in front of, behind, between and beside.  Make sure to watch your child's video on Seesaw that they made with the Show Me app on their iPads.  They had a lot of fun showing what different position words mean.

In math, we focused on measurement.  The students learned about capacity and weight.  In kindergarten, we focus on comparing capacity and weight.  For example, a bathtub holds more water or has a greater capacity than a kitchen sink.  Also, a truck is heavier than a table.  Work with your child to compare various objects at home.  Use the terms "holds more", "holds less", "greater capacity", "less capacity", "heavier than" and "lighter than". 

The Monkeys really enjoyed comparing the capacity of various containers and measuring tools in class.

During social studies, we worked on learning about voting and elections.  We learned what a ballot was and we got to vote!  The students voted on their favorite fruit on Tuesday.  They were about to choose between watermelon, apples, bananas and grapes.  They marked their ballot and put it in the ballot box.  Apples won!

It was so much fun learning all about our superstar Alice this past week!

The Monkeys look forward to learning about our next superstar, Sophia D.!

Week of Oct. 31-Nov. 4

The Monkeys had a VERY busy and fun-filled week last week!  We started off on Monday (Halloween) with many exciting Halloween and pumpkin themed activities.  The students had a blast with the help of wonderful parent volunteers during pumpkin math!  They counted the lines on the pumpkin, measured how tall it was with unifix cubes, tested if it would sink or float and carved the pumpkin.

The Monkeys also had fun doing stations of "Halloween" math activities.  They matched an amount of pictures of spiders with the numeral; counted how many spiders fell in their web, on top of their web and off of their web; graphed different types of Halloween erasers and gave Frankenstein the number of hairs (straws) that was written on the card.

We then jumped right into 50th day of school activities on Tuesday and Wednesday.  We did A LOT in those two days and the kids learned and had fun!

How many times can you hula hoop in 50 seconds?

How many times can you bunny hop in 50 seconds?

How many bubbles can you blow in 50 seconds?

How high can you count in 50 seconds?

How many times can you twist in 50 seconds?

We also made a graph of who could blow a bubble with bubble gum and who could not.

Here is our 50th day of school class photo!

We really worked hard on making inferences during reading last week.  We read This Is Not A Fish and Ring? Yo! and had to work on inferring to understand the books.  We also read a poem together called What Is It?  We had to infer what animal the poem was talking about and then draw it in our reading response journals.  

We also continued writing personal narratives about something in each of our lives.  We will keep working on them this week and then publish them.

In science, we finished up our learning about magnets.  We began learning about relative location and using words such as above, below, in front of, behind and beside.  We will work on some fun activities to learn this concept.  

In math, we finished learning about length and compared our various lengths when we were born.  Many of us were either longer than our friends as babies, shorter and some were the same length.  We will work on learning about capacity and weight this week during math.

We were excited to learn all about our superstar student C.J. and his life and interests this past week!

We are ready to learn about our next superstar, Alice!