Learning letters

Today in class, we learned our 3rd HMH lowercase letter along with the sound it makes. My kindergarten friends are having so much fun learning the letters by learning the HMH motions and seeing the adorable little Alphafriends videos that go along with each one. So far we have learned all about the letters: Mm, Tt, and today we learned Aa. The motion for these letters are: For Mm you pretend you are a mouse eating cheese and say m, m, m, m. For Tt, you pretend like you are holding a taco with one hand and eating it saying t, t, t, t, t. For Aa, you pretend you are eating an apple with one hand and say a, a, a, a, a. Aa makes the short Aa sound NOT the long Aa sound. It makes the short sound like in apple, ax and astronaut. They are loving learning the letters and sounds and with these three learned letters, they were able to read a few words such as: a, as, am. To solidify the knowlege of these newly learned letters, they practiced writing how I taught them how to form the uppercase and lowercase letter correctly on the alphabet letter mats. On the back side of the mat, they had fo find things on the page that began with the new letter sound and circle them. If they finished early, they could color the things they circled. Next, we glued the letter we learned for the day in their soundbook and drew four things that began with the letter. They are excited to show you their work they did with learning these new letters and show off how well they can identify the letters and tell you the correct sound it makes. They even want to teach you the motion for the letters too. In the lesson today with the letter Aa, we learned two new heart words that we added to our word wall in the classroom. The new heart words we learned are: a, the. We practiced chanting the letters and we practiced using the heart word in a complete sentence. They all did such a great job learning both words and we added them to their heart word bag that contains all the color words too. Please practice these heart words and having your child say the letter name/sound with your child each day. The more they practice, the easier it will be for your child to recognize them quickly when they are reading and writing on their own. This helps build fluency and comprehension the quicker they are able to decode a word. This homework should only take a few minutes. Today, it took 7 seconds to run through all the heart words in their bag and say the letter name and sound of the letters we learned. Practice, practice, practice! Practice makes. better!

in math, we are continuing to learn all about numbers 6-10. Yesterday we learned all about 6 and today we are going to focus on learning about number 7. They are understanding the quantity of the number and how to count objects correctly so they get the right total. They are also learning how to form the numbers the correct way from top to bottom with cute rhymes I teach them! They are having so much fun in math and learning so much! Way to go, K-1!

In reading, we have been reading a few read-alouds from our HMH curriculum that are about school. The one yesterday was a poem book called Kindergarten Kids. This book contained many poems and we read a few of them to learn about what a poem is. They thought they were fun to read and some of them were silly. We learned that poems often have rhyming words, they don't always have complete sentences, can be about anything and often use the 5 senses when written such as how things look, taste, feel and smell. We also learned that poems can have a rhythem and you can have a beat on your knees as it is read out loud. They thought that was fun! With this book, we also learned about what context clues are and we practiced using that skill when reading some of the poems. We used the pictures to help us understand some words in the poems and we also look for words inside of words to help us understand a newly learned word. They loved this book and we had a great lessons with it this week! We are learning so much and I am blown away! In writing, we got our first journals where we have begun journaling. I have been doing directed draws with the class where I teach them how to draw something and they draw it in their journal following my step-by-step direction. They LOVE these! When we are done drawing, I ask them to add their own detail with pencil and color it with realistic colors. They are so creative and have such wonderful imaginations. As they draw in their journals, I walk around and I write down a sentence they dictate to me that goes with their drawing. They are learning that their complete sentence has to match their picture. They are having so much fun being authors and illustrators in their monthly journals. Today, I asked two boys and two girls to share their journals with the whole class where I projected their drawing on the whiteboard. When they were done sharing, they got to call on a boy and a girl to give them a compliment about their journal entry. Then we all clap for the person that shared! I love hearing the cute compliments they give one another and seeing my kindergarten frineds amazing work. They are also getting great practice sharing in front of the class so they are learning that talking in front of a group of people isn't scary! Yay, K-1! They are loving kindergarten and each day, they are growing more and more as independent learners while having so much FUN!

Wow! What a week we have had in K-1 and I cannot tell you how very, very proud I am of all 20 of my kindergarten friends. We had math MAP testing on Tuesday and reading MAP testing on Wednesday. They did such a great job navigating on the Ipad with my step-by-step directions to get to the testing site and trying their very best on both tests. It was a "tricky" process for new kindergarteners to do and wow, they did great! I was SO PROUD of them!

In structured literacy, we wrapped up learning how to write all the uppercase letters with the correct formation and now we have moved on to our first lowercase letter with learning the sound it makes. Yesterday we learned all about the letter Mm and the sound it makes along with the HMH motion that went along with it. The motion for the letter "m" is to pretend you are a mouse eating cheese and say, "mmmm,mmmmm, mmmm." They did a great job learning how to form the lowercase letter m on the lines the correct way and we did a few activites to practice it on their own. On the back of the Mm letter mat there were pictures and my kindergarten friends got to practice finding things that began with that letter. If it started with Mm, I asked them to circle it and color it with crayons working hard to try to stay in the lines. They all did such a great job! To finish learning about Mm, we glued that letter page in our sound book and we drew four things that began with that letter too. They had a lot of practice the last two days learning about the letter Mm sound, how to write both the upper and lowercase letter Mm the correct way on the lines and naming things that began with the letter. Way to go, K-1! In reading, we have been reading "Squiggle Story" and "One Happy Classroom" where we have been learning about: what an author and illustrator do, what the setting of a story is, identifying the characters and retelling the story by sequencing. We have also learned all about singular and plural nouns and my kindergarten friends are doing a wonderful job identifying them in a sentence. Way to go!

In math, we finished Chapter 1 where it focused learning all about the numbers 0-5. We learned about the quantity, how to write the numbers the correct way from top to bottom with cute rhymes and how to show each number in different ways. We also talked about "ordering numbers 0-5" in order. Counting up to 5 in order and counting backwards from 5 in order. They did a great job with our math chapter and yesterday, I gave them a math test to see what they learned. They all did fabulous on it! Way to go, K-1! Next week, we will be learning about numbers to 10. We are plugging right along in math and they have loved learning all about numbers!

The class is learning so much and are having so much fun playing with one another at outside recess and during our purposeful play block. I love their imaginations and all the creative things they make together. We are building a class family and working hard to ensure we treat eachother with kindness, love and our room is full with lots of fun! Have a great weekend, everyone!