iPads!

We started using our iPads today! What an exciting day it was! We learned the rules for using the iPads (see if your child can tell you what they are) we also learned how to turn the iPads on and off, how to swipe up and exit out of an app to save the battery, how to project or "mirror" our iPad up onto the projector screen for the whole class to see what we made on our iPad. We also learned all about the app "Drawing Pad" which we will use several times a week now to do our "write along".

During write along the students have to recall the morning message from the previous day that I wrote on the whiteboard (typically will have something to do with what Jack and Annie are up to in our Magic Tree House book). On Thursday, it was "Jack and Annie see a castle." The students then repeat the message out loud several times with me as we count on our fingers how many words are in the message- that way we know how many lines to draw. Then we go ahead and start drawing our lines- one line for each word in our message. This can be tricky for some- especially some longer words some students draw a line for each syllable instead of one line for the whole word. "_____ ____ _______ ____ __ __________." After we draw our lines we always go back and point and read while saying our message (sentence) aloud and pointing to each line saying the word that will go on that line. This way we can catch any mistakes we may have made like not drawing a line long enough for the word, drawing too many or too few lines. Then we point and read it again to a partner to double check. Now finally we are ready to write some letters! Some students are writing beginning, middle and ending sounds in words and some are still writing just beginning sounds with the help of our sound map. All are just fine! If a student is independently writing beginning sounds the teachers will scaffold and help that student to try and hear one or two ending sounds in their message. Eventually, the student will get more comfortable with this and try to write an ending sound on their own!


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Dramatizing

Here we are dramatizing the story "Goldilocks and the Three Bears". One group was using blocks to dramatize the story another was using headbands and puppets, masks and a feltboard. Each day your child's group for that week will go to a different center and get a chance to use different props to dramatize the story. The groups have to dramatize the story two times. Each group has a "table captain" who has to hand out the role cards to their group members and then the student write their center plan and draw a picture of what their role is going to be and then write a sentence at the bottom of the center plan that says "I am going to be..." and they write their role.

Fun Friday Art Project

Every Friday we have "Fun Friday" this means we do lots of fun things that we only do on Friday's. We start the morning with "Open Door" where the door adjoining the two kindergarten classrooms is open and students in both classrooms can go in either classroom for choice time in the morning. We also always have an art project that we do that morning. Today we made these beautiful fall trees. We used corks to stamp in paint and decorate the tree to look like the different colors of the fall leaves. We will hang these up on the bulletin board in the hallway for everyone to enjoy!

Graphics Practice

We have been working hard practicing different graphics that will eventually lead to letters!

We started level 2 of graphics and practiced "bagels or donuts" pictured below. One of the rules during graphics practice is that we can only write while the music is playing. When the music stops we have to put our hand that has the dry-erase marker in it up in the air. That's another way we practice self-regulation. Even though we may want to keep writing we have to control our bodies and stop when the music stops. While we write each graphic we have "private speech" that we quietly say to ourselves that tells us how to form the graphics. For example, for bagels or donuts we say "around close" when we make the circle shape we always start making the top of the circle first. We made all of the bigger circles first then when the music stopped and started up again we went back and made the smaller circles inside the bigger circles, being very careful to make sure the smaller circle didn't touch the bigger circle. It's tricky! Try it at home!

Math Centers

This group was using the "Storyboards" to create a story with the unifix cubes and tell their study buddy what they were pretending their cubes were. One student said that she was pretending the cubes were horses and she had "4 baby horses and 1 momma horse in the corral."

At another center we used pattern blocks to fill in a shape...

These students were practicing sorting at their center...

This group worked together to put this number puzzle together...

This group was using color tiles, I saw lots of great things happening here. Some students were sorting some were building and some made designs with their color tiles.

Welcome class of 2028!!

I'm very excited to meet Aadi, Amalia, Arun, Colby, Cora, Deep, Elena, Ella, Emelia, Halle, Jimmy, Jayden, Kayla, Maddie, Magdalena, Natnicha, Ollie, Riley, Sunday, William and Vincent!! I can't wait to meet you all on the visiting day in Wednesday, September 9th!! Check out our countdown to kindergarten! That will start this Friday the 21st!! 25 days to kindergarten!!

Class Supply List

Click here to view our class supply list

Graduation Songs

We have been working hard this week practicing our songs for graduation! If you have any free time this weekend you can practice singing our songs at home! The first one is "Bye Bye Pizza Pie"

Here is our second song "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe":

Our third song is "If You're Happy and you Know It"

ABC Countdown to Summer!!

We will be having an ABC Countdown to countdown the last 26 days of school!! Please  check the calendar to see what the letter & theme of the day is!

Please help support the kindergarten playground update!

We currently have a small kindergarten playground with one play structure that has a slide, tunnel and monkey bars and the playground also has two swings. This would be perfect for a small group of children, unfortunately we can have 50+ children out on on playground just between the two kindergarten classes. This means that most children are having to spend their recess waiting for a turn on one of the two swings or waiting for a turn on the monkey bars or slide. We've tried to supplement and buy jump ropes, chalk, skip-its, etc. but those only last so long. I am hoping to get some stationary musical instruments, a large chalk wall, a play house and boardwalk to offer more choices to those eager-to-play kindergartners! I wrote a innovation grant to the AEF (Arlington Education Foundation) in hopes that they will fund part of this project. We are waiting to hear back if they have accepted our grant! The Peirce PTO has so generously donated $3,000 to help get us started. If we do get the AEF grant that will be another $3,000! We are reaching out to the community to help with the rest of the cost. Please consider making a donation and please share the GoFundMe page with all your friends, neighbors, local businesses and family! We are hoping to have phase one and possibly phase two completed by August 2016.

100th Day of School

We had a great 100th day of school! We did lots of activities revolving around the number 100. We counted out 100 pieces of snacks to make a "100th day of school trail mix", we counted our collections of 100 objects that we brought in from home, we made a picture out of the number "100"

One student brought in100 Legos...

 

Another brought in 100 pieces of macaroni...

100 googly eyes...

One student glued 100 pom poms onto a poster and made a picture out of them!

This student turned their number "100" into balloons!

This student turned their "100" into the American flag!

This student turned their "100" into a horse and buggy!

 

This student turned their "100" into a butterfly!

We tried to build something out of 100 cups!

Some 100 year old lady came to visit us!

We all had a fun time walking through the "100 banner"!

Mystery Reader

We had a special guest "mystery reader" come and visit last week! It was Mr. Lloyd! He read us the story "Silly McGilly" which was about a mischievous little leprechaun named Silly McGilly who likes to play tricks!

We love having mystery readers come visit us! If anyone has a relative that lives far away we could do a Skype mystery reader if they are interested! You can sign up on our class volunteerspot.com page

Greater Alligator!

We have been learning about the concept of more and less. When comparing two numbers we talk about which number is more and which number is less and how much more/less it is then the other number. This is a great skill to practice at home too with a deck of cards or simply by just having two people pick a number up to 10 then when your child gets comfortable with knowing which number is more or less within 10 you can move up to numbers up to 20! Here we are playing with the "greater alligator" we learned that the open alligators mouth always wants to eat the bigger number. For example: 2 < 4

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Tasting Mangos!

We all got to taste a mango today! The mango fruit played an important role in the "Afternoon in the Amazon" book that we finished today. Jack and Annie had to find a mango in the rainforest in order to help Morgan Le Fay!






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Earth, Moon & Sun Song

We learned a new song today called the "Earth, Moon & Sun Song" it is sung to the tune of Farmer and the Dell. It goes, "The earth turns around, the earth turns around. Once a day, every day, the earth turns around. The moon goes 'round the earth, the moon goes 'round the earth. Once a month, every month, the moon goes 'round the earth. The earth goes 'round the sun, the earth goes 'round the sun. Once a year, every year, the earth goes 'round the sun." Thank you to My Montessori Journey for the cute idea! See us singing it in action:

April 28th-May 2nd Breaking News!!

Our weekly newsletter is now going to be in the form of a short video! Please check out our
"Breaking News" video from this week right here on our blog or you can also go to our YouTube channel to watch it as well!

Egg Experiment

We did a science experiment today with one brown egg and one white egg. The class had to make a prediction at what they think it will look like on the inside once I crack it open. Will the brown and white egg look the same or different on the inside? Our class was divided about half thought they'd look the same and half thought they'd look different. Some children said that the brown egg would be brown on the inside and the white egg would be white on the side, others thought one would have more yellow than the other.


We then made connections to some stories we read last week about Martin Luther King Jr. and how he stood up for black people and wanted them to be treated equal to white people. Even though some people may look different on the outside, we all have the same feelings on the inside. If someone does something mean to us we all feel bad on the inside. If someone makes fun of us we all feel sad on the inside...it doesn't matter what color skin we have.




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Stackers

We started a new math game today called "stackers". One partner was the "architect" and the other partner was the "builder". The architect had to look at the picture card and give directions to the builder on how to stack the cubes to make the structure on the picture card. (The builder can not see the picture card, only the architect can) we were focusing on using positional vocabulary like next to, on top of, to the right, to the left, beside, behind, etc.

Here is the architects view...






Here you can see the board that the builder has to stack the cubes on...






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Night of the Ninja

Here is our backdrop and scenery we used to dramatize the Magic Tree House story "Night of the Ninja". We made these beautiful cherry blossom paintings to decorate around Mount Fuji!





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Moonbear in Seattle!

Checkout the "Moonbear" page to see what national landmark Zachary took Moonbear to visit over December vacation!

Making Props for Mummies in the Morning

We worked together to color in a scene from ancient Egypt that we used for our backdrop while dramatizing the Magic Tree House book "Mummies in the Morning." We had to talk with our group members to figure out who was going to color what and what colors we should use. This was great problem solving practice!

Another day we worked with our group members to glue yellow bricks to the pyramid shape that we used as a table top prop to dramatize the story...

Reading Rockets talks about Tools of the Mind

Reading Rockets talks about Dr. Blair's study on Tools of the Mind- check it out here!


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