January 18-21, 2011

Whoa! What a crazy two weeks we've had! I can't believe kindergarten wasn't in session for an entire week due to snow!

Once again, this week everyone earned a 100% on their spelling tests. I am so lucky to have a class full of smart little cookes!

I hope to see everyone at Open House next Wednesday to discuss the plans for next year's Kindergarten and First Grade multiage class. I've already started a blog for that class as well: http://legacyacademymultiage.blogspot.com.

This week, we started an in-depth study about Polar Regious. We started to learn a little bit about the Inuit people and their customs. We also made a K-W-L chart to organize our learning about Penguins. Next week, we will create a K-W-L chart about Polar Bears, and on Friday we will use a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast these two fascinating animals.

In Math, we learned all about coins and their values. I hope your child sang the coin song for you! We practiced counting pennies and next week we will begin learning to count nickles. Please help your child practice counting by 5's at home (for now, we'll only be going up to 50).

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!

January 3-7, 2011

My New Year's resolution is to get back to keeping this blog current! We've been so busy learning that I haven't really had a chance to get on here! But it's now one of my top priorities, and i hope you enjoy an inside glance at our class in action.

We came back from Christmas break and hit the ground running. Our literary theme right now is "winter" and our story this week was "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats. The children really enjoyed making predictions about this story, particularly about what happened to the missing snowball. We also enjoyed writing winter words in the writing center.

To go with our literary theme, we made "Winter Out my Window" projects during Art time. We used blue paper and white chalk to make a snowy scene, then used black construction paper to separate the "windows" into "panes". Check these out in the bulletin board in our classroom!

We had our very first spelling test this week and I am so proud to announce that every single student earned a 100! They are so proud of themselves. We prepared for this test during work centers by playing "Sight Word Memory" with partners. They really enjoyed this activity.

We worked with graphing concepts this week, making class pictographs and bar graphs and then making our own. These are hanging on the wall in our classroom as well.

In Social Studies, we are learning about American Symbols. Each student made their own American flag as part of this unit. Check them out in the hallway window!

I hope everyone had a fantastic week!