Match It Up

It was hard work but with cooperation, teamwork and perseverance these kindergartners found all 26 letter matches! This activity is a choice during reading workshop time.

Reading Workshop

We opened browsing boxes today! Browsing boxes are a collection of books that each student is able to read independently. We are very excited about learning to read!

Sharing

We read a funny book today about a kindergarten classroom and sharing called "We Share Everything" by Robert Munsch. This read aloud sparked a discussion about sharing in our classroom, specifically what is ok and not ok to share. The list you see here are things we decided to share during our year together. We decided that sharing follows our school rule of "Be Kind" much like belonging.

Pick For Your Neighbor

The kindergarten picked 6 bags of apples as a community service project. All of the apples will be donated to the VT food bank. Thank you to all of the families who donated!

Hackett's Orchard Field Trip

Morning Message

Every morning we read our message together and then practice or are introduced to a new skill. Today we read together (practicing directionality, one to one matching and other concepts about print) and then completed the initial phoneme sort on the bottom. The chosen sounds/letters are the ones we are practicing during Fundations. The message then goes home with one student (name picked from a bag) for continued practice at home.

Rice Table is Open!

Meet the Kindergarten

Belonging

We are leaning about what "belonging" means! We have talked about how we are alike and different but still belong together as a class. Just like the pieces of this puzzle, we all fit together.

Geoboards are Open

We opened geoboards today! After a guided discovery where we talked about how to use them safely, kindly, and responsibly, we were ready to begin. There are so many opportunities with theses boards to practice kindergarten math skills. Some I saw in our classroom today include using positional language, using ordinal numbers, and naming shapes and their attributes.

Our Classroom

Since I am still waiting for a few Internet usage permission forms and cannot post pictures of students yet, I thought I would put up a few of things around our classroom. Then parents, grandparents, siblings, extended family and friends can get a little glimpse into what we have been up to the last couple of weeks :)

The first is a picture of the bulletin board we made right outside our classroom door. We are learning about how we are alike and different, but still belong together as a class family. You will notice its true! The people (us) on our board do all look different but are all together!

The next two pictures are of our number corner. Number corner is a huge part of our math program. We use it for basic calendar information (days, months, year, birthdays) and so much more. This month we are using the September calendar to identify and describe shapes. We also keep track of the days we have been in school with a rainbow number line, links and pocket chart.

The last is a shape sort we did. It was interesting to discover that some shapes could fit in more than one place. For example, a triangle has straight sides and 3 corners. E had some great discussions around shape attributes!

Welcome

Welcome kindergarten class of 2014!!! We have been very busy during our first few days together. You can use this blog to check out what we are up to. In take-home-folders today are forms I need returned to school so I can post pictures of our activities throughout the year. Until then, here are some shots of our pattern block designs we made today.