Weekly News (Sept. 19-23)

Welcome fall!! Looking forward to some cooler days ahead! We've been busy learning and growing in kindergarten. Keep reading to take a peek into our week!

All About Maddie
This week we were excited to learn all about our first Student of the Week--Maddie! We learned that Maddie is a great baker, and she loves to play soccer and do ballet. She likes to collect bugs, and she loves spending time with her family!

We were thrilled to have Maddie's Mom as our guest reader this week.
We LOVED the story Dragons Love Tacos! Thank you!!

Math
We began exploring the concept of patterns this week. Although patterning may seem like a simple task, the ability to recognize and use patterns is a fundamental math skill. To help students begin to understand the concept of patterns, we first used sounds and motions to create and extend a variety of different patterns. Then we worked on color patterns and talked about the different patterns we could follow such as an AB pattern, an AAB pattern, or even an ABB pattern. We had time to paint our dot patterns too!

We also began experimenting with the concepts of capacity and volume using a bucket of water and a collection of cups. First we discussed the question below with our turn-and-talk partners, which led to some great conversations! "It would be much faster to use the blue bucket" said several students. "As long as it's not too heavy!" added Cameron. Great thinking! Then we looked at our collection of cups predicted which cups would hold the most water and which ones hold the least. Using the smallest paper cup as our measuring tool, we filled each cup to test out our predictions. Check out our results below.

www.kindergartenkindergarten.com

We were surprised to find out that the green cup held more water 
than the white cup,but after more careful observation 
we noticed that the green cup was a little wider!

JP
We learned the sounds and motions for the following letters this week. Check out the videos below to help remember these sounds!!

/c/ as in "clock"
/k/ as in "kite"
/e/ as in "egg"
/h/ as in "hot"

Literacy
Reading Workshop
This week during reading workshop, the students began to reflect on themselves as readers and started thinking about the question, "Who Am I as a Reader?" Thank you SO much for working with your child to complete our two reading interest surveys this week. This information from these surveys will be very helpful in the upcoming weeks as the children learn how to shop for books for their book bins!

During our interactive read aloud lesson, we read But Excuse Me That is My Book by Lauren Child, which is a story about a girl named Lola who goes to the library to check out her favorite book only to find out that someone else has already checked it out. Her brother Charlie tries to help her see that there are other books at the library she might enjoy. As we read through the story and Charlie showed Lola different kinds of books, the students gave a thumbs up or a thumbs down to show their interest in a particular genre. They had some time to pick out a favorite book from our classroom library too!

In another reading workshop lesson, the students learned how to use pictures to help them read words and make meaning of a text. Using an "action rhyme" poem called Catch the Moon, we learned that good readers use pictures to help them read and understand words.

The class also loved learning about the collection of books in our own classroom library. We learned that books in our library fall into two categories--fiction and nonfiction. The students learned about the different features of fiction and nonfiction texts, and then they worked together to sort a bin of books into piles of fiction and nonfiction. I loved listening to their conversations, especially when there was disagreement about what pile to put a book into. It was neat to see students teaching each other and using different parts of each book as evidence to support their ideas!

Writing Workshop
This week our authors learned a new saying during writing workshop--"When you think you're done, you've only just begun!" We learned how authors can add to their picture, their labels, and their writing to help communicate their ideas to others. We also used our two new sight words (I and can) to help us write a sentence!

Zones of Regulation
The children were introduced to the Zones of Regulation this week. Students learned that our feelings and emotions can fall into four zones, which can be compared to traffic signs like the ones below. Our goal is to be in the green zone so that we're "Good to go!" and ready to learn. We read the book The Way I Feel and then sorted different emotions into the four zones.  Throughout the course of the year, we will practice how to identify our emotions and which zone(s) those emotions fall into, and then we will learn strategies to help us get back to the green zone when needed.

Name and Letter Centers
This week the students rotated through several centers that focused on upper and lowercase letters and activities related to our names. 

Spelling the names of our friends

Using magnetic letters to spell our names

Name puzzles

ABC Puzzle

Sorting upper and lowercase letters

Have a great weekend!