Busy Owls!

 We have been busy owls this week learning so much throughout our fun days together in full-day kindergarten! The class is doing AMAZING following the school routine and getting used to one another and having me as their kindergarten teacher! We are building a nice little "school family" and I am so impressed with all of their hard work, kindness, and efforts in always "trying their best" and knowing that is OK to make mistakes along the way! Making mistakes help them learn and grow! They are developing cute friendships with one another. It is so fun to see my more quiet friends feeling comfortable to take risks and try new things and all of them just enjoying being with one another throughout our day together!

In literacy, I have been doing a few read-alouds where the class is learning about a lot of important things:

-what an author and illustrator are

-learning how to identify characters in a story

-learning how to identify what a setting is in a story

- they have learned how to make connections to what they have read in the story to something in their real lives.

-They have learned about book orientation and concepts of print such as how letters make up words and words make up sentences. 

-We have learned about the different kinds of punctuation such as the period and exclamation point and why an author adds a specific one at the end of a sentence. They LOVED learning about the exclamation point and reading sentences that had an exclamation point at the end so they could read it with joy or excitement. It was so cute!

In writing, we have learned how to write various uppercase letters on the lines the correct way with correct line placement. We learned all about the top line, middle line and bottom line previously and practiced making various lines on them to ensure we go used to them. They are doing a great job holding their pencils with the right grip and pressing down on the pencil with enough pressure to write legible letters on the lines. They are doing great breaking the habit of making letters from the bottom up. Here at Olive, we  ALWAYS make letters from top to bottom!!!! They are doing a great job in handwriting and making good growth!

In phonics, we have learned all about the letters Ss, Aa, Tt, and Ii. We learned about the sounds the letters make and we applied what they learned in finding objects that began with each sound. They have also begun putting the sounds together to read words that contain those letters such as: as, at, sat, a, it, is. I was blown away how well they were able to decode the words by saying the sounds and blending them together! Way to go, K-1!

In math, we are learning all about the numbers 0-5. We have learned about what the number looks like and how to write the number correctly from top to bottom. I have taught them a cute rhyme to help them in forming the number the correct way. We have done a lot of hands on activities to help them in learning the quantity of the number too and I think they are all number experts now in recognizing and writing the numbers 0-5!

Playtime has been the BEST! I am amazed with all the creative things they are building together! I think we have some future engineers or architects in K-1! Wow! They have also loved the dress up clothes and have enjoyed making a doctor office in our room or a vet! We have also loved doing puzzles together which has taken a lot of team work but such a sense of pride when the puzzle is all put together. It is so cute to see the interactions amongst one another and the joy they are all finding in playing with one another to develop some lifelong friendships they are creating in our class! These little ones bring me so much joy!

 

We are Hungry for Learning!

In class yesterday, I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. As I read the story, my kinder friends did a great job chiming in on the repetitive parts of the story and helping to tell me what day of the week came next. They LOVED hearing the story and participating as I read it out loud to them! To go along with the cute story, we made a caterpillar project. The caterpillar that I asked them to make had a read head like the hungry caterpillar in the story but I told them they could use any two colors to create the body as long as it was glued together in an AB pattern. They chose the two colors they wanted and took three of each one to create the body of their caterpillar. To create the caterpillar, they had to turn each square of construction paper into a circle. I showed them when they want to turn a square into a circle, they just need to cut a little piece off the four corners and round each one out. Then they will have a circle. To finish their caterpillars, I showed them how to follow my step-by-step directions by making a face and adding antennaes and legs to it too. It was fun seeing what two colors they all picked and walking around the classroom to see all the hard work they were putting in to create their caterpillars! I was so impressed with how wonderful they all did on this activity! Especially how well they followed my step-by-step directions! I hung them in the hall for all of Olive to admire!

In math today, we learned about the numbers 3 and 4. We learned about the quantity of each, how to write them with the correct number formation from top to bottom and we showed what we learned in our math workbooks. I was so impressed with how well they did! 

Since the class did so well with our math lesson, I did a little extra where we also learned about patterns too. I gave them some counting cubes and they practiced making all different kinds of patterns such as AB, AAB, etc. They did such a great job!

In literacy today, we read a book about a character named Keisha and her kindergarten class. Through reading this story, we learned about what an author and illustrator are and we practiced making some connections with the main character of the story on how our school is like hers or how we do some of the same things she does in her school. We learned how to work with a partner and practiced doing "Think, Pair, Share" to talk about certain parts of the story as I read it to the class. 

In writing, we learned about the lines on a paper such as the top line, middle line and bottom line and why each line is so important. We practiced making vertical lines, horizontal lines, and slanted lines on some lined paper. Next we learned about the capital letters L, H and I. We learned the correct letter formation for each letter and we practiced writing them in the air. Next we went to our seats and practiced writing them with a pencil in our HMH workbooks. I was very impressed with how well they all wrote the letters with the right formation and how well they followed my step by step directions. Way to go, K-1!

Have a great night, everyone! I can't believe it's already Friday tomorrow!