Brown Bear, Pete the Cat, Mouse Paint, and More!

We have been working hard in kindergarten!  Here are some of the fun things we did last week:

We practiced writing our numbers the correct way.  We took a break from doing it on paper and used play-dough to make the numbers during center time.

We are continuing to review each letter of the alphabet.  Alphabear hides his alphabet friends for the day around our room and we have to find them.  We also figure out how many people have that letter of the alphabet in their name.

We also practiced writing our names the correct way.  We are making sure that there are no capital letters in the middle!

The kids LOVE reading around the room during center time. 

We practiced writing our letters in gel.  They kids liked smelling the gel bags as much as they liked writing in them.  :)

The kids got to read to a stuffed animal this week.  It was very exciting!  They are learning that they are all readers...even if they don't know how to read with words yet.  We talked about how to be a good reader using the pictures.

We went fishing for letters.

And we made sentences using the word wall words we have been learning.  If you would like to have a fun pointer at home for your child, I just bought some fun pre-painted shapes at Hobby Lobby for 59 cents each.  Then I used a glue-gun to glue each shape to a dowel.  For about $1, it will be a fun thing for your child to use to read around the house!

We read the book, Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin.  The kids LOVE this story!  Here is an online video with the author telling the story that we have seen in class.  I told the kids I would share the video so they can watch it at home!   

We even made our own Pete the Cats and picked which color of shoes he was wearing. 

 

We went on a color hunt around the room.  The animals from Brown Bear, Brown Bear were hiding all over and we took a clipboard around the room and searched for them.  The kids practiced writing the color word on their paper when they found an animal.

They were great little detectives!

We also read the book, Mouse Paint.  The kids had fun retelling the story on our white board.

Then we danced in our own mouse paint and mixed red, yellow, and blue paint to make 3 new colors!

Titan was our first Star Student of the year!  His mom came in and helped Titan share his memories with the class.

Everyone liked hearing about Titan's pets.  He even used to have a goat!  Thanks for sharing your fun memories with us Titan!

Enjoy your break and I will post again when we go back on track. 

Book Orders are Due on Friday!

Our first book order will be due on Friday.  Remember, you must order online.  Just go to:
https://orders.scholastic.com/L469D

And then you will need to do a one time registration.  Our class activation code is:  L469D

Let me know if you have any questions!

Our First Full Week!

We have had a wonderful week in kindergarten!  I have been so impressed with how quickly everyone is getting the hang of being in school.  We have been learning a lot of new things!  We are still working on reviewing the correct way to form our letters.  A lot of children came into kindergarten knowing all of their letters, but were not making them the correct way.  That is why we review it so often in kindergarten.  We have a little saying we recite for each letter of the alphabet.  You can find the sayings I like to use HERE and use them at home with your children. 

We will continue to work on colors and color words this next week.  Most children already know how to recognize all of the colors, but we are working really hard on learning how to spell and read the color words.  We read the story "A Color of His Own," about a chameleon that is tired of changing colors everywhere he goes.  The kids picked a color for their own chameleon and decided where he could hide to be that color.  We now have them on display in our hallway. 

We also started centers this week.  Centers is a time where the children work in small groups and practice concepts we are learning in class in a more hands-on way.  This week, the students had to learn how to find their center group, find their center, do their center the right way, cooperate with their friends, listen for a signal to change centers, and clean up centers.  They are doing a wonderful job with it!  Here are some of the fun things we did this week:
 

We also had our first round of specialty classes on Friday.  We started off our morning by going to the library.  We learned how to take care of library books and met the Shelf Elf!

We also went to PE and computers...and my camera broke.  :(  So I don't have any pictures of our class doing that.

I am looking forward to one more great week before we go off track!

Our First Day!

We had such a great first day of school today!  The kids all did so well with following directions and listening.  It will be nice when we have our rules and routines down and we're all a little more used to school.  Today we read some stories about the first day of school and drew some pictures of three of our favorite things we did. We also read a book about the importance of following rules and listened to a story about a monster who came to school and was really naughty.  We talked about what rules the monster needed to follow so he could stay at school. 

We also drew our faces to show how we were feeling about school today.  I was happy to hear most of our class was happy or excited!

We'll see you all tomorrow!