Note from Sra. Gourley

Dear Parents,

 

To enhance our current study of animals in Spanish, I am looking for donations of pre-loved stuffed animals.  These are wonderful, motivating tools that help develop oral and written fluency.  If you have any extra stuffed critters (small to medium-sized), we would welcome them gratefully to our school zoo. :)

In particular, I am looking for elephants, butterflies, ducks, fish, spiders, horses, rabbits, giraffes, lions, mice, tigers, turtles, whales, gorillas, hippos, caterpillars, birds, penguins, chicks, sharks, and foxes.  Any creature, however, is most welcome.

 

Muchas gracias,

 

Senora Gourley

March 22nd

This week we are studying Leo Lionni books. Today we read "Inch by Inch". After making a rectangular garden out of links, we estimated and measured how many medium, large and small worm cutouts it would take to fill the garden. We noticed that the smaller the worm was, the larger the number turned out to be. Tomorrow we will use worm clipart to measure things. Other Leo Lionni books include: Alexander and the Wind-up Mouse, It's Mine, Frederick, The extraordinary egg,  Cornelus, The Alphabet Tree, A color of his own, Nicholas where have you been, Mr. McMouse, and Fish is Fish.

In math we are comparing attributes of two shapes. How many ways are these shapes the same or different? Examples include: how many corners or sides, straight lines/ curved lines, size/color of shape and lines. We also are using pattern blocks (hexagons, trapezoid, triangles, etc.) to fill in a shape.

The kids are using author's language to make their own books. Using Leo Lionni's "A color of his own". They are completing their own sentences and making illustrations. Some students are creating their own books at home and bringing them in to share.

Class photo this Thursday, March 24th
Send in choice of pose for individual photo

No School on Friday- Vacation Day:)
April 1st- teacher workday
April 8th- early release
April 18th-22nd Spring Break

Scholastic Book Order Due Thursday, March 24th
Class Wish List
See Saw- #67 April CD/library
                #50 Night before Mother's Day (2 copies)
                #51 Pigs to rescue (2 copies)
                #69 Sitting duck (2 copies)
                #43 Looking for Easter (2 copies)
                #25 Great Estimations
                #48 My Hippo has hiccups bk/cd
Firefly- #40 Happy Easter Mouse (3 copies)
              We're going on book hunt (4 bk pk) $9
               Whoosh went wind (4bk pk) $12
               Mother's day surprise (4bk pk) $9
Watch for parent conference sign up list- coming soon.
Also- sign up list for spring scavenger supply list
Curriculum:

IB Planner:Rhyme Time (expressing ourselves)
Writing: All Capital Letters, lower case letters c, s,
Letters and Sounds: all letters, capital and lowercase
Sight Words: I, like, my, see, the, can, am, we, will, go, to, he, she, went, is, in, on, have, said, love, here, are, they, look
Shapes: circle, square, triangle, rectangle, trapezoid, hexagon, rhombus, octagon, cube, sphere
Math Concepts: graphing, story problems, writing numbers 1-30, sorting, making shapes, modeling numbers, tally marks, sharing equally, using the number line.
Writer's Workshop: sounding out words and writing the Kindergarten way, pictures match the sentences, label pictures, Start with a capital letter only! Use spaces and periods. Spell sight words correctly.
Reader's Workshop: Take a picture walk; Look for patterns. Use the pictures to help give you clues. Look at the first letter in the word you don't know. Make the sound. Point to each word as you read. Remember the title.
IB terms: respect, risk-taker, tolerance, empathy, caring, appreciation, principled, cooperation

Mackenzie's 1st Christmas 2010

Mackenzie's 1st Christmas 2010

Nana wants to show off her first little Christmas Angel!

March 11th- part 2

We are having so much fun doing author studies and exploring ways to express ourselves! I think this is my favorite IB study. If anyone has copies of Laura Numeroff books, I could use extra copies next week. These include: If you take a mouse to school, If you give a mouse a cookie, If you give a moose a muffin, If you give a cat a cupcake, If you give a pig a pancake and I especially need If you give a pig a party.
One of her books- The Jellybeans and the Big Dance is about cooperation which is our new IB attitude and topic for writer's wall of fame. Can someone send in a bag of regular, non-spicy jellybeans on Monday?
I was not able to upload our class version video of The Very Busy Spider on this blog. Does anyone know how to do  this? It is a flip video. Would love to have someone stop by school early next week to show me how. I have my own flip camera and want to do more videos.

March 11th

Eric Carle Study

Monday we read Eric Carle's "10 Little Rubber Ducks" and learned that he got the idea for that book from a true story. He found an article in  a  newspaper about a real ship that was carrying a container of bath toys. The container was lost at sea and the bath toys drifted to many places like Alaska, Greenland and eventually to the British Isles. During the afternoon we did a "Where are the rubber duckies?" activity. The class had to walk around the room without talking or touching the rubber ducks and record each duck they saw.  Then we compared the methods and how many each student found. Here are some of the chosen methods of recording: tally marks, smiley faces, checks, lines, x's, writing numbers and drawing where they saw the duck. We learned that some methods were more efficient and made counting how many we found easier. There were 36 rubber ducks in many interesting places.

As we read more Eric Carle books like " Today is Monday","The Mixed-Up Chameleon" and "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", we noticed the artwork and illustrations. How did Eric Carle create the inside cover designs and his pictures. Today we explored his website that showed some of his techniques with paint and tissue paper. Each child created four pieces of artwork in red, orange and yellow. We marble painted, watercolor painted design, print with object painting and tissue paper art with glue solution. On Thursday we will cut out shapes from the art to create fish for the kindergarten Eric Carle-like mural.

Today we read "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle. Then we made character hats and acted out our version of the story. We made a flip video which I hope to put on the blog this weekend.

            Next week we will study Laura Numeroff and her books.

Week of March 14^th – 18^th

IB Theme: How We Express Ourselves

Author Study: Laura Numeroff

Monday

Bring a stuffed/toy ANIMAL to school for the day.

We will read, If You Take a Mouse to School, take a picture with it, and create our own stories about what our animal does at school.

Tuesday

Wear the color that represents your favorite flavor of jelly bean. If grape is your favorite, wear purple.  If cherry is your favorite, wear red, and so on.

  We will read, The Jellybeans and the Big Dance and write about cooperation.

Wednesday

Wear your favorite Sneakers. 

  We will read, Chimps Don’t Wear Glasses and Dogs Don’t Wear Sneakers. We will make a class book of animals doing some silly things. 

Thursday

  We will read, What Grandmas/Grandpas Do Best and make a digital storybook about what our grandmas and grandpas do best.   

Friday

Wear your JYJ apparel.  If you don’t have any, wear blue and yellow!

  We will read, Sometimes I Wonder if Poodles Like Noodles and make a video story about people in our school community.



March 4th- Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

Hat Day

W

We love sharing Dr. Seuss with the Chickadees!

What a busy, crazy week we've had! Monday we wore green and read "Green Eggs and Ham". A great day for reviewing rhyming words. Tuesday we wore crazy socks. We read "The Foot" book and "Fox in Socks". In our Foot Report we wrote what our feet can do and measured our feet with paper clips, cubes and noodles. On Wednesday we came dressed as our favorite things or activities. We read "Horton hatches an Egg" and wrote our own version of something sitting on an egg. We created our own Cat in the Hat characters in art center. Today we became a Chickadee in a Hat with our hats, bow ties and whiskers.

Our Reading Buddies- Mrs. Thompson's First Grade Class
Today Mrs. Thompson's class joined us for Reader's Workshop. Our kindergarteners sat with their first grade buddies and took turns reading books and poems from our reading boxes. Our Chickadees did a great job and had fun with their new buddies. We plan on doing more activities together on Friday mornings whenever possible.
First we practiced reading by ourselves as we waited for our buddies to arrive. Then we paired up and took turns reading to each other.



This week in centers we worked on: l blend sounds and r blend sounds, the sight words: get, got and some, filling in a shape outline with pattern blocks, sorting season pictures, Dr. Seuss computer story and games, completing sentences with our target or "snap" words and reading poems.

Next week our IB unit "Rhyme Time" will continue with the study of the author Eric Carle. During this week the children will create fish for a kindergarten mural using 4 painting techniques. Please send any Eric Carle books you may have like: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Home for a Hermit crab, etc.

I am doing reading and sight word assessments now. I am amazed on how much the children have grown in their reading skills and sight word recognition knowledge! Third quarter ends at the end of March then we will schedule parent conferences.