Learning literacy through apples

We had a great time doing literacy stations and learning about apples... what a sweet week!

Observing Apples

Labeling the parts of an apple

Johnny Appleseed Craft

Reading with a friend

We have learned this week how to read to someone in our reading workshop time. We did a great job!

Johnny Appleseed

Look who came to visit today. .. Johnny Appleseed.  The students said that he brought the juiciest and sweetest apples ever!

Happy Birthday

We celebrated our first birthday today. It is great to be 6!

Station Workboard

This is a peek at our station workboard for last week. This week we will be going to 5 stations, with 3-4 students at each group. The students go to the green literacy station before recess, the red reading workshop station after recess. They also each go to one math station a day that has multiple activities at each station.

Apple Picking in Pictures

Apples and Math

We are off to math stations this week. Many of our stations have an apple theme to them. We are working on reading and writing our numbers to 5, matching a number to a set of objects, and counting on from a number.

Apples Roll and Cover

 

Apples up on top!!

Caterpillar Counting

Matching Sets

Counting on/ find the missing number

Tracing numbers

Matching Caterpillars and Leaf Numbers

Chrysalis, writing partners, handwriting oh my!

On Monday (9/9) our Monarch caterpillar went into a chrysalis. We learned that it can also be called a pupa. We are now anxiously waiting for chrysalis to darken and for the butterfly to emerge.

In writing workshop we have started to work on our writing partnerships by learning how to share our stories with a peer. We do this before we write our stories and after we write our stories.

This is a peek at what it looks like when we are doing wet, dry, try to learn all of our capital letters. Some students like it so much that they asked if we could also learn our lowercase letters this way too.

Hopping into Learning

In writing workshop we have been learned that we are all authors and that authors think, draw, and write. We have been working on telling a true story that has happened to us. It would be great if you can talk about some of the fun things you have done over the weekend (or any time) with your child so that they have a story to tell when they come to school. We have also been working on handwriting without tears (HWT). We have learned all about the capital letters that are Frog Jump letters this week. We do tracing on the chalk boards using a  "Wet, Dry Try" approach to learn how to make the letter then work in our workbook.

In our literacy time we have started to learn about how stations will work and have been working on learning how to do the following stations: handwriting, phonics, science, craft, read to self, listen to reading, read to someone, word work, and teacher table. These will be our stations for the whole year, the activities at the stations will change each week. We have been working on learning a variety of poems. This is one that we have recently learned:

 

During our math station time we have been able to explore some of the tools that we will be using so that when we start to use them as math tools there will be a little less playing and more mathematical thinking happening.

 

Connecting Cubes

Sorting Buttons

Attribute Blocks

                                                        

Oh Where Are the Monarchs?

Mrs. Gray had to search high and low to find one. They are not as plentiful as they use to be. If you happen to find any more we would love to welcome more into the classroom (but only Monarch Caterpillars please). This week we have had a chance to observe our Monarch Caterpillar! 

 

We have also been reading fiction as well as nonfiction books about Monarch Caterpillars

 

Off to a Running Start

Our first four days have flown by!

We have jumped right into learning this week- both the classroom routine and academics. This year we are going to be working on discussing our learning targets (LT) and behavioral goals (BG) each day so that students know what we are working on learning and how they can accomplish the targets/ goals. This week we have started just with a behavioral goal " I can be respectful and use a quiet voice in the classroom". Each morning we discuss the goal, what it looks like when we are working toward the goal, have multiple reminders of the goal throughout the day, and then debrief about how we did achieving the goal at the end of the day. We will be doing a similar process with the learning targets, but they will be for a specific learning goal. I will be posting the writing, literacy and math learning targets that we are working on. Some of the targets and goals will take a day to achieve, while others may take much longer. We also had our first community meeting with all of the kindergarten students. We learned a song about the 3 be rules, listened to a story, and colored a bee coloring page. Next month our class will be presenting something at our community meeting. I will let you know what we are doing and when we will be doing it as soon as I know.

Mr. Sincerbeaux read Knuffle Bunny to the class 

 

Mr. Manjourides read  Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons

 

First Day X 3

Our first three days were wonderful. We talked all about our 3 school rules (be safe, be respectful, be responsible), the clip-up chart, and practiced what to do during a fire drill or lock down. On Friday we had our first of 10 fire drills.

We also had a great time reading Pete the Cat Rocking in my School Shoes and taking a tour of the school by following all of the notes that Pete left for us. It also helped us remember that we shouldn't worry about starting school. We will read a lot of Pete the Cat books over the year.

I am excited to have all 17 of our friends together next week. We will begin doing Handwriting Without Tears, meet our Alphafriends, and start to learn how to do our literacy and math stations. We will also begin our writing workshop. We will learn our first two word wall words a and I. Specials will start next week as well so please make sure to send in sneakers for our Physical Education class. Enjoy the long weekend!

Our Alphafriends