We had a Busy Friday!

It was a busy Friday in Room 101!  Mrs. A came in to practice our letter writing on the iPads using the Drawing Pad app.  Mrs. Parnell lead a math group and Mrs. Gordon lead a letter board activity.  Students still used the work board during the morning and completed a body book page, they worked on the Numeral Song book, they did roll and record for numbers, and they did the work hunting on the first page of the weekly kindergarten news!  It was a very busy morning!  We had time in the afternoon for our Number Corner, a quick video about bats and we went to the library!

Mrs. A. was showing us what we would be doing on the iPads!  We practiced writing our letters!

We used our finger as a pencil to practice our letter writing today!

Mrs. Parnell lead a math group.  We compared two groups of linker cubes to figure out which group had more, fewer, or an equal amount and then the students needed to tell how they knew the answer to the question.  We had to think really hard!

Mrs. Gordon lead a letter board lesson with all the letters we have learned so far- t, f, b, n, m, i, u.  She played a find the letter game with the students to practice our phonological skills.

We Finished Sorting the Beanie Babies!

Last week we completed the Beanie Baby sort.  The students were excited to sort and count the animals but they are really looking forward to drawing, writing and building houses for the animals in the next few weeks.  We also just completed a book about animals- I can Roar Like a Lion.  This book was illustrated by the students and they were all very happy to see the finished book and read and highlight the book in our reading group.  The students discovered that most of the animals in the book were mammals- the lion, dog and pig.  There were two birds- the duck and the owl.  The last page was tricky.  It was a flower, not an animal.  Please have your child read this book to you!

We started the lesson by counting the animals in the bird family.

Here are the 5 other animal families.  The students were surprised how many more mammals there were in the bucket!

Animal Families

We sorted the rest of the Beanie Babies today.  The breakdown for the other 5 animal families is below.  The students were able to use some of our math terms to identify which animal family had the most- Mammals with 148, which family had the least- the fish family with 4, which groups were equal (or the same as)- the amphibian and insect families with 5 each.  We were also able to compare an the students told me that there were fewer reptiles than birds.  We did a lot of grouping, 1 to 1 correspondence, counting 10 100 by tens and we also categorized the animals based on the animal characteristics. There was a lot of math and science happening in this lesson!

There were 5 insects.

There were 5 amphibians.

There were 7 reptiles.

There were 31 birds.

There were 4 fish.

Mammal Sort

Today we started learning about animals to prepare us for our zoo field trip.  We learned about the mammal family today.  There are more than 5,000 species of mammal.  The students did a great job choosing a mammal out of a container with over 200 different beanie baby animals.  After going over the characteristics most understood which animals would belong to the mammal family.  We counted by tens to help us count more efficiently.  The students were amazed that there were that many mammals in the big container.  We will look at the bird, reptile, amphibian, fish and insect families in the coming days.  

We started learning about the mammal family.

We counted 148 mammal beanie babies (only 143 are shown in the picture).

First Week of Homework!

The first week of homework was sent home this afternoon.  The red homework folder is sent home on Fridays and they are due back to school the following Friday.  Today we spent some time going over the directions for the homework and what work would qualify for a check plus.  If students earn a check plus on all 5 homework sheets they will earn a prize!

The third edition of Room 101's Kindergarten News came home today.  The first page of the news was completed at school.  The students are word detectives and hunt for some of the high frequency words that are learned in kindergarten.  The students use a different color marker to circle each of the news high frequency words. The Kindergarten News was addressed at Pine Glen's Open House and information was given to parents about how to read the news with their child.  Please refer to the packet if you have questions about the news.  The students were challenged to complete the news over the weekend the way we do it at school and an additional prize can be earned!  We hope we have some students complete this challenge.  The completed news should be sent back to school on Monday.

Week 1- homework sheets.  There was a letter to parents in the folder too!

Being GREAT Word Detectives!

Notice the word list.  These are the words we hunt for in the news and the colors we use to circle them.

We Sketched and Labeled Our Animal Drawings

After Miss P. brought us the new animals we went to work sketching our visiting classroom pets.  The students did a great job using scientific observation and sketching what they saw.  They went a step further and labeled their drawings.  All students worked very hard at this project and they were proud of their work.

The Creepy Crawly Animals Have Arrived!

The corn snake is one of the creepy crawly animals that we have visiting from the Burlington Science Center.  We have these animals come visit during the month of October to prepare us for Halloween!  This is a very exciting time to be in kindergarten! 

The students were able to learn about the snake and touch the snake while Miss P. was in room 101 introducing the animals to us. The snake is a reptile. We will be learning more about the animal families to prepare for our field trip to the Franklin Park Zoo.