Week of September 16th

We are moovin' and groovin' again this week! Lot's of new stuff happening in Mrs. Schultz's classroom.

Volunteers!

First things first. Thank you to everyone who volunteered this week! It was so great having a few extra hands in and out of the classroom. I sent another sign up genius for next week. Incase you did not get the email, here is the link to the sign up genius for next week: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0C4FA5A82BA4FF2-week

Let them play!

Leslie Tomko found this phenomenal article and passed it along. I thought it was too great not to share! It is about the importance of "play." Please take a moment to read this and truly soak it in. It literally brought tears to my eyes! It's why we do what we do in kindergarten. I am truly working on building more time into our day where kids get to be kids and do what they do best...which is play! 
**The link is: http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/29/christakis.play.children.learning/index.html

Literacy

We jumped into a new genre this week...fairy tales! Although we were sad to leave nursery rhymes, we were excited to begin studying fairytales. We studied the different characteristics of fairytales and elements of this genre. So far the elements we have discussed are as follows: villain vs. good guy, happily ever after, once upon a time, animals talking and conflicts that end up being resolved. We focused on Goldilocks and the Three Bears this week and really enjoyed it! We visited four different stations where we really got to know the story. We also read several different versions of Goldilocks and voted on our favorite. The stations we visited were: Book making, "Wanted" poster, acting and retelling and sequencing. Each station was purposeful and meaningful to us. We began acting out Goldilocks to prepare for our upcoming play that will be coming up in the next couple of months (date TBA). It was by far my Mrs. Schultz's favorite station! We really enjoyed acting out our part of the "play" that day.

We also played several new literacy games and began our daily habit of quietly reading alone. We played roll and keep with letters and sight words. We also began discussing sounds of letters and how those sounds get "smooshed" together to make words! Such a neat discovery. We even got to play alphabet/site word bingo! What fun! This week we started to use word study notebooks and began with a sorting activity. The more we play with words, the better we become at reading!

Math

This week we jumped into a few new math games but also got to continue our oldies but goodies. We learned about estimation. To estimate means to make a guess! We got to make estimations and then check our answers. We also learned about one more strategy for accurate counting. We used ten frames to count our items this week. We learned that each ten frame has ten squares. We are counting quicker and a lot more accurately with all of our strategies now! We also started to write the number on a slip of paper after counting. Just one extra step to really connect the amount of items with that concrete number. (Devleoping number sense is key at this stage!) All of these math games are helping us discover how numbers work.

Bus Safety 

I am sure you have already heard from your little one, but we also got to go on a real bus on Tuesday! The bus was never turned on and we did not take a ride, but sitting on the bus was still way cool. We learned about bus safety and what to do if we ever needed to evacuate the bus. We learned about bus safety because at some point this year we will go on a field trip and it's important to know how to be safe. 

Rest Mats

We will do our best to send home rest blankets and towels each Friday. If you ever want me to send home the actual rest mat, just send a note and I will. The vinyl ones can probably be sprayed and I am thinking the cloth rest mats (with the attached blanket) can be machine washed. As we approach the season of lots of yucky germs and sickness, it's important to make sure we are staying as clean as possible! Just remember to send the blanket, towel or rest mat back. :)

Porridge Taste Testing

Tomorrow we will be tasting "porridge" like the 3 bears from our story! We will vote and make a graph about who likes it and who does not like it. We will then analyze our data and discuss how graphs can be used in the real world. We cannot wait to see the results and taste something new!

Have a great weekend!
Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz