Listen to this

We have been listening to great stories at our listening station.  Thank you for our recent donation.

Rain....no problem!

If the weather is frightful, no problem!  We try to get into the gym to run around.  On a recent trip we played Messy Back Yard.  The kids cleaned up the gym wonderfully.  We are sure they can be of great assistance cleaning up their own yards from the recent storm.

Computers are up and running!

Our "Bob Cart", classroom computer station is up and running.  We have a 4 person station that we can now use every day along with our ipads.  We love using them!

Big Math Measurements!

Room 101 has been doing some big math measurments.  We have compared the length and width of dinosaurs (pictures that is).

Great Day at the Zoo!

We had a wonderful day at the Franklin Park Zoo on Friday.  Animals from all the animal families were on display for us to view.  Scroll down through the pictures below and ask your child what animal family these animals are in.  Be sure to ask why........they know the characteristics of all the families we learned about.  

Thank you Pine Glen PTO!

The kindergarten families, staff and students would like to extend a big thank you to the Pine Glen PTO!  We are heading to the Franklin Park Zoo today on our first field trip of the school year.  All students and teachers will be wearing our green t-shirts identifing us as Pine Glenners!

A few of us posed for a phtotograph to show our appreciation and smiles!

Kindergarten News

Your child will arrive home with their kindergarten news today.  Students have been working diligently at school to learn how to read and highlight the news.  Each week they are asked to read the news with family at home.  Your child may need help with the process.  Please note the link along the top bar of this blog.  The page will give you information on how you can help your child with their assignment.

The news does not need to be returned to school.  We suggest storing the weekly news in a 3 ring binder.  Your child can go back and re-read it during the course of the school year.

Room 101 spent the day at the LTC!

Much of our day was spent in the LTC.  Mrs. Parnell and Mrs. Hoyt took us to the reading room to use the Smartboard so everyone could participate in an animal family sorting activity.  We loved it and are looking forward to using a Smartboard in our classroom soon.  Next we went to the library where Mrs. D'Elia shared some books written by Mem Fox.  We really enjoyed them because we were able to figure out what the words on the pages were by looking at the words and the pictures!  Mem Fox puts lots of details in her pictures, just like we try to do in room 101!  Finally we visited the computer lab and worked on creating a colorful zoo scene using Kid Pix.  We are really getting good at using the program and controlling the mouse.                                                                                                      

THANK YOU!

Thank you Estes Family!  In honor of his grandfather's recent birthday, Henry and his family made a contribution of books and cds for our listening station.  We will be enjoying our new stories!  Happy Birthday Mr. Healy!

Beanie Animal Sort

Room 101 sorted Mrs. Parnell's collection of Beanie Animals recently.  There were fish, birds, reptiles and mammals.  After sorting we counted how many of each kind there were.  We counted 135 Beanie mammals.

How did we know how to sort them?  Good question!  We have been learning about the various characteristics of each animal family.   Quiz your kindergartener at home.

Supplies Needed

From time to time we will be asking for contributions of supplies.  As we prepare for some of our November and December activities we find we are in need of brown paper grocery bags (such as the kind Trader Joe's uses).

If you have a few that you could donate, we would be most appreciative!

Thank you.

Help Wanted!

Many parents graciously volunteered to help with classroom prep throughout the year.  We have a project that requires cutting materials for future lessons.  Please be sure to check your child's backpacks in the coming week as we will send home the material.  Thank you in advance for your continued help and support! 

Good Bye Jayliegh

One of our classmates has moved.  We will miss Jayliegh and wish her well. 

I Can .......

Room 101 can do a lot.  In our journals we have been writing about what we can do.  Many of us can do gymnastics, karate and more!  Mrs. Parnell and Mrs. Hoyt are please to report we can also write many new letters the fundations way and we can sort objects by attributes.  We have been practicing with various objects including buttons, blocks and cubes.

We can also learn on the ipad!  Tuesday we each listened and read along to a story in the morning and then explored an assortment of mathematics acitvities in the afternoon.

Room 101 can also Roar Like a Lion.  As we prepare for our trip to the zoo next week, we are learning about animal families and their various characteristics.  Tuesday we started to create a new book with many animas in it!

Wow! Cool!

Wow and cool were some of the comments we heard this morning as we began our day with a visit from Ms. Pavlicek  of the science center!  We have begun our study of animal families, and Ms. P was kind enough to bring some creepy crawlies to spend some time in our classroom.  Our visitors include Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches, a Tarantula named Hairy-ette and Twitch, the Cornsnake, a farmer's best friend.

In addition to learning about their habitats and diets, we discusses the various animal families.  We also learned that we are animals in the mammal family.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that Mister Bones the skeleton will be visiting us later this month when we learn about our bodies.

Learning to read the News!

We have been learning to read the news!  Throughout each we week write the news. By week's end it is published for us to read and study.  On Friday we begin to highlight the news and encourage everyone to read through and finish the highlighting over the weekend when it is read at home.

Ipads in Room 101

Recently Mr. Callahan was in to visit room 101 with a set of ipads!  He spent an hour with us and introduced us to all the many apps. that we willl be able to use.  Each of us worked on an ipad and explored math, science, ela and art apps.  It was very exciting!

Now our class has 4 ipads to utilize daily to help us learn!