February 7th

It was a busy week in Nicholls' Kindergarten classroom.  

Literacy:
We learned uppercase letters G, H, I and J.  We continue to practice segmenting and blending words to hear, read, and spell words.  In Writer's workshop we we are wrapping up our narrative unit (writing true stories about something that happened or something you did.)  This week we will begin learning about writing informational text.  During readers workshop our lessons focused around using patterns to help us read, what super reading powers (sound powers, picture powers, etc) can we use to help us figure out the breaks in patterns (tricking parts), and taking time to think about what the story is really about (reading is about more than reading words...What's the message of this book?).  Ask your reader to tell you about our super reading powers!

Math:
Focus concepts in math this week were around the idea of "enough".  Are there enough pencils for all the children?  How many more pencils do we need.  This will lay the foundation for comparing numbers which we will be moving into this week.

Students also worked on making their 100th day projects.  This made for a busy week.  On Monday (our 100th day) we will share our projects with a museum walk. Students will display their projects and then we will have a chance to visit all the other Kindergarten classrooms to see their projects!  In the afternoon we will celebrate our 100th day by eating 100 snacks!  Thanks you to all who have contributed to the snack!  If you signed up to bring an item and have not brought it yet, please bring it tomorrow morning.  Thanks you so much!

Science:
We learned about animal gaits and how different animals make: Straight walkers (dear, moose, foxes, bob cats), hoppers (squirrels, chipmunks, snowshoe hare, mouse), waddlers (raccoon, skunk, bear), and bounders (otters, weasels).  Students practiced moving like animals!  We discovered it's not easy for humans to move like animals move!

Students had great fun celebrating Beach Day on Wednesday!  We enjoyed having our beach towels to sit / lay on, wearing sunglasses, shorts, and flip flops, we played in a water table, sand table, explored shells, and dot painted fish. We also enjoyed playing with beach balls.  Several students said "this is the best day ever!".

Our next ECO is scheduled for this Friday, Feb. 14th.  Our focus will be Owls!  Please let me know if you would like to join us as a parent volunteer.

We will also exchange valentines on Friday afternoon!