Fun week and WOW...my kindergarten friends are learning so much!

We have been busy owls this week and I am amazed with all my kindergarten friends are learning! I can't believe it's already September...time is flying by! I am have been so proud of ALL of my kindegarten friends and how well they have adjusted to full-day kindergarten following directions, sustaining stamina throughout our long day, being kind and respectful while at school to everyone around them and getting all their work done. They have learned SO MUCH in the past 10 days of school! I am so proud of them! In structured literacy, we have finished all the uppercase letters that use straight lines and are now moving on to letters that have curved lines. Today, we practiced making curved lines with proper line placement and ensuring they were making the shapes from top to bottom the correct way. We practiced on whiteboards first and then they showed me what they learned by completing a workbook page with the same shapes. Way to go, K-1!

In reading, we have been learning all about nouns. Today we learned about the difference between singular and plural nouns. We practiced this skill together and then they showed me what they learned by completing a workbook page. I am so proud of how well they can identify nouns! What smart owls I have in K-1!

In math, we have been learning all about the numbers 0-5 understanding how to write them the correct way from top to bottom and understanding the quantity of them. We have also been working on one-to-one correspondence to ensure they are counting things correctly. I have taught them to cross things out while counting on paper. They are doing such a great job learning all about these numbers and the cute rhymes that go with forming the numbers correctly!

Besides curriculum that we have been working on all week, we made our first class calendar yesterday. When it is a new month here at school, we make a calendar that has all the events happening here at Olive and in our classroom. Each month will have a theme to go along with the month. For our calendar today, it was a school house for September since it is the beginning of school. To make this calendar, I first handed out a school house color by number to the class. I showed them how to read the color key at the top and I showed them that they look at the numbers on the picture and color that part the color it says in the color key. They had so much fun coloring the school house yesterday! When they were all done, I gave them the Septemeber calendar and we talked about all the important dates on it. THey were excited to see Iris and Jayden's 6th birthdays on the calendar. We will be excited to celebrate with them here at school. I showed them how to trace the numbers 1-30 with a pencil and to ensure they traced the numbers correctly from top to bottom. Next, I gathered them on the rug and I showed them how to put the whole calendar together. They glued the calendar on the bottom first, their cut out school house on top and then I asked them to add some fun detail with crayons. Their calendars turned out great and they were all so proud to show me their finished products and they couldn't wait to hang them up at home!

Hare are some other things we did the past few days moving right along in curriculum: Math- continuing to work on understanding numbers 1-4 and how to write them from top to bottom the correct way. We are also talking about different comninations of ways you can make each number and practicing our one to one counting to ensure we are counting correctly.

HMH Structured Literacy- We are contiuing to learn how to write some capital letters on the lines the correct way getting used to line placement to ensure we start the letters at the top line and that they sit nicely on the baseline. They are doing a great job learning how to write on the lines and writing from top to bottom is hard for some of my kindergarten friends. A lot of them learned to write bottom to top so I am working on breaking that habit. We will get there with more and more practice!

In our HMH reading, we have been learning about what an author and illustrator do and we studied a story called Kiesha Ann Can! In the sotry, we discussed who the main character in the story was and what the setting of the story was. They did such a great job identifying both and we dida brochure to document what they learned. We also learned all about what a noun is. They learned a noun is a person, place or thing. We watched a short video about what a noun is and we practiced identifying all different types of nouns. Then, they did an activity where we had to sort pictures of things by identifying what type of noun it was. Was the picture a person, place or thing? They did a great job learning all about nouns today and I will be taking the lesson a step further on Monday to practice learning it a bit more.

My kindergarten frineds are doing such a wonderful job learning the kindergarten routine and I have been so impressed with all they are learning already! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Today in class, i am continuing to work with my kindergarten friends on learning the classroom routine, class/school rules and how to use school supplies the correct way. Today we learned about the Do's and Do not's of using scissors. Using scissors in the beginnning of the school year is always "tricky!" Please practice this at home too so your child is getting "extra" practice so they can use scissors easily at school. We will be using scissors a lot in the classroom. Please make sure they have the correct scissor grip when cutting. The class did a wonderful job with the lsson and I was impressed on how well they did on the cutting activity I gave them!

I did a school scavengar hunt today where I gave them a sheet of paper of things they needed to find that were hidden all around the classroom. They were pictures of school items and when they found each item, they had to mark it off until all 10 items were found. They LOVED this activity today!

We also did a school mini-book today too. This book was all about things they see in school. On each page, I taught them how to read the words by frog hopping word to word until the whole sentence was read with their "reading finger." We also talked about how many words were in the sentences on the pages. They did a great job reading the book with me and when we were finished, they got to color it on their own ensuring they were using their best coloring making sure to get all those "peek-a-boo" spots!