Thursday

The 100th Day of School is Feb. 7, 2014!  We are asking that your child bring in a collection of 100 things displayed creatively! This is due on Feb. 3, 2014.  

ALSO...we are asking that your LITTLE dress up like he/she is 100 years old...(possibly something like 

Ms. Guy...who is turning 101 this year <wink>)

BUCKAROO:
C.J. got to eat with the PRINCIPAL today for his special lunch!

Looks like BOTH "boys" are having a good time!! Love those SMILES!!!

LOOK AT THIS WRITING...

Just love how this is ONE small moment at the water park.  She gave us some good details!!!

This little one was just drawing pictures the other day!  And now....I love "DFeT" defeated!  Great vocabulary and using phonetically correct spelling!!!

This little came to me and said..."But I don't know where to put the periods!"  WOW, WOW, WOW!  So, we color coded her paper...we underlined the subject in green, the verb (we call it the connector) in blue and the information in red...once we got to the red we knew there was nothing else and we could put a period!  After we did this throughout her paper...we noticed that instead of periods she was trying to use AND!!!

This little loves to write about her and her sister! WELL...her papers often started...ME and my sisters!!! UGGGG So, each time she brought me a paper like that I would gently say, "When we are talking about ourselves and someone else we need to let the other person go first and call our self 'I'". Today, I was SO excited that she tried to do what we have been talking about!!

This buckaroo brought his paper to me like this!!! It doesn't get MUCH better!!!

Wednesday

I didn't have lots of time today to take videos or pictures...So I have one from home I'll share!!! My sweet, sweet Beansli...She is so PROUD (or embarrassed, I'm not sure) of her new jewels!!!

She definitely makes life at home more FUN!!!

Today we continued to talk about SHAPES!

Plane shapes have 2-Dimensions, sides, and vertices.

Solid shapes have 3 -Dimensions, faces, edges and vertices.

Rocks, Attributes (of ROCKS) and more ROCKS...

We talked about attributes and decided...colors, shape, texture, and size are all good ways to describe our rocks.  Then we played a little game...we "meandered" around the room with our rock and when the music stopped we had to compare our rock with another friend's.  We found that it was easier to talk about heavy and light when we had at least two rocks!  

After discussing with others about their rocks we then drew ours in our journal and described it.
My rock is...bumpy, smooth, big, small, shiny, dull, purple, clear, heavy, light, round, rough...

Have a wonderful evening!

Tuesday

REMINDERS:
Sight words should be practiced OFTEN!!! We are beginning to see more and more of them in our reading books and still struggling with them.  I am noticing a lot of buckaroos using the word wall more when writing! YAY!  SOOO...I am sending home a list of our sight words broken up into the 9 weeks.  You can post these somewhere your child is likely to see them and maybe where he or she writes!  You can have a mini word wall at home! The bathroom mirror or even the refrigerator would WORK!!!

Don't forget to start practicing numbers! Parents ask your child to tell you what the speed limit is...have them count to you often.  Counting to 100 and writing numbers to 20 is an expectation!

BIRTHDAY BUCKAROO!



We enjoyed the princess cupcakes and everyone LOVED the birthday girls "GINORMOUS" cupcake!  Thanks for letting us celebrate!

Passing out treats to our friends is always FUN!!! BUT we ALL wait for that FIRST bite to be taken by the birthday girl or boy...so we can DIG IN!!!

Everyone is working hard on their penguin writing!  We have some GREAT beginning writers here in room 313!  Be sure to ask your child what they are writing about these days!!!

Rocks, PROPERTIES of Rocks and MORE Rocks!

Hard, soft, smooth, rough, bumpy, sparkly, dull, dusty,shiny, big and small, HEAVY and light, flat and round...

BUCKAROO!

Math: HOMEWORK ALERT!!!

We are talking about the attributes of SOLID shapes this week (3-d)  Please help your child identify these shapes around your house! 

Sphere, cone, cube and cylinder

As you identify them in your home talk about what/how many of the following you see!

Vertices (corners where two or more edges meet), Faces/base (flat sides), edges (where two faces meet) and points! Please be sure to use the 3-D solid names!

One was so excited to tell me that his refrigerator was a RECTANGLE...So, we had to talk about the FACE of it was a rectangle but the the object itself was called a rectangular prism!!!

(Behavior) Color UPDATE:
We have entered the 2nd half of our year. There are some classroom/school/hallway expectations that we have worked on since day one...Raising our hand, using inside voices and walking in a quiet line.  Since we are going to be first graders in the near future I will not be giving out 2, 3 sometimes more warnings for not doing the above! I believe my little buckaroos can control themselves enough to remember those few rules!

HOMEWORK REMINDER:

100th Day projects  Due Monday!

Dress like you're 100 FRIDAY, Feb. 7!

Have a great evening!

Okay...

Well...I'm hoping next week is better than this week when it comes to the "talking"!  We thought it was a PARTY all day everyday this week.

Speaking of parties...we did have a BIRTHDAY celebration today...

 Kyon's family came to surprise him for lunch and then after specials we celebrated with YUMMO cupcakes!

This morning we started our day by revisiting The Mitten.  We made a circle map that included everything we remembered from the book. Then we colored our animals and laced a mitten.  Our animals were able to snuggle in!!! We took these home to work on our retelling!

BUCKAROO:

It was an extra special day for this little one! Not only did she get to bring her FAVORITE princess doll BUT mom and dad came to have lunch with her!!! She was a GREAT buckaroo...going to be tough to fill her shoes.

MATH:  Tell me how!!!

The MOON...

I'm not sure what phase our moon is in right now...(and that is something we don't expect our Kinders to know) But let me tell you we were loud and busy, busy today!

I'm not going to write a lot today but have some video and pictures to share!
Math:

Problem solving...it's not good enough to just get the right answer anymore...I'm always asking, "are you sure, can you show me how you got that answer, why did you do it that way"  and I just loved how RIGHT ON this little was today!  The problem was..."I had 4 red mittens, 2 blue mittens and 4 green mittens. How many mittens did I have altogether? YES...you are reading that correctly...KINDERS and THREE addends!  But boy, did they get down to it solved it...using several different tools (I might add)...some started with their number sentence and didn't need anything else, some drew pictures and some used the cubes! But everyone told me something about counting them all, or joining the groups together, or adding the groups!! WOW
Writing:

This is our workshop time.  You can see that all the littles are working hard to complete their 3 complete sentences on topic, with a capital letter, spaces and ending punctuation.  You can also tell from the video and pictures that we are all working with the support we need.  Some are copying right from our class map...some are completing the sentences on their own!  Some need some guided instruction and others just need me to check in!!! I am so proud of each of these little buckaroos!

We complete this map as an example. The littles are COMPLETELY in charge of how we finish our sentences.  Today, it was NOT good enough to just put swim, waddle and lay eggs.  We had to add all of the other detail to our map! I LOVE IT!!! They are becoming so much more descriptive!!! Everyone is working at their needed level of support.  I even gave them a choice of paper today...Some that I didn't think would choose the "easier" of the two did. When I sat with them I didn't question them but someone came up and said, "_______ said if you chose the easy paper you had to stay in kindergarten.  The one of the ones I was sitting with said, 'That's not true.  I chose this paper so I wouldn't have to erase so much and it would be neater!"  I loved hearing her reasoning!  

Science:

Science night was  a few weeks ago but I found this video of one of our buckaroos on my phone and thought I would share!  Our curriculum specific nights are a lot of FUN...be sure to come out and see what Literacy Night is all about in February!

Well, we've talked about the Stars (including the sun), the clouds and now THE MOON.  We read Papa Will You Get the Moon For Me?   We discussed what we knew about the moon.  We drew a picture and recorded what we knew or thought we knew about the moon in our journals... What little scientists...I love THESE...everyone did a fantastic job these were just some I pulled....

 Just a picture but look at the details! LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!!

It gets smaller. It's big.  The moon is fat and round.

 The Phases:  We get phases because of the sun.

 The moon is big and gray.

This one makes me SMILE!!! A wolf moon is for a wolf to howl .  It is bright.  (It took me awhile to figure out what a wolf moon was...but when it clicked...my heart smiled!)

And with that...good evening!