Week of December 6 - 10

Next Thursday is our Field Trip to the Noble Horse Theater! Permission slips and money were due today, Friday, December 10. Ms. Juanita will be calling the final numbers in on Monday.  Please submit your permission slip and money on Monday morning!!!
The children are looking forward to seeing this spectacular event.  Thank you for those that have volunteered to accompany us.  Please remember to pack a lunch for your child to bring with us.  We will eat after the show at the theater.  Please remember to have your child wear their Roycemore T-shirt for the field trip!  We will return to Roycemore at 1:30.  


Outside Information and Life Lessons for Cold Weather!

We will go outside when the weather is above 20 degrees!  It is very important that the children in JK get a break in both their morning activities and their afternoon activities.  We will be taking the children outside to play on most days.  Some days, like all activities, it might take us longer getting our gear on but our goal is to keep working on this skill during the winter months.  Zipping, buttoning, snapping, and tying are all important life skills to have:)

Please when you bring your child into the room, instruct your child to put their hat, gloves, and scarves in the sleeve of their coat.  Instruct them to hang up their snow pants and jackets on the hook inside their cubby.  Please instruct your child to put their indoor shoes on and leave their boots near their cubbies.   These routines established in the morning will help us get organized for our outside activities!

Please label all of your child's things with their name on the inside.  We are mixing lots of their clothing up because their things look similar!

The children need to bring the proper outside attire to school everyday.

Indoor shoes

Snow pants

snow boots

snow jacket

snow mittens or gloves

scarf

hat

These are things the children will change into!  We are teaching them the order to put their clothes on.  Please talk it over with your child at home and instill in them independence getting themselves dressed.   

First, get all of your outdoor gear to your sit upon (or one open space).

Second, take off your indoor shoes.

Third, put on your snow pants.

Fourth, put on your snow boots.

Fifth, put on your snow jacket.

Sixth, put on your snow mittens or gloves.

Seventh, put on your scarf.

Eighth, put on your hat.

Finally, you are ready to go outside!

When we come in from outside, we encourage the following steps and we have opened up the cubby areas so the children have space for their things.  

First, take off your snow boots near the cubbies and tables.

Second, leave your snow boots near your cubby.

Third, go to your sit upon and take off your gear.

Fourth, gloves, hats, and scarves go in their coat sleeves so we can find them the next time!

Fifth, put on your indoor shoes.

Sixth, take your things and hang them on the hooks in your cubby.

Fairy Tales Galore!

We continued on with our fairy tale unit this week.  We have been having so much fun reading different versions of The Three Little Pigs.  One version in our Five Minute Fairy Tales book and one version by Steven Kellogg.  Even though these versions were very different, the children found the foundation of the stories were similar.  We made a Venn Diagram comparing these two stories.  The next day we read another version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  The children were experts comparing these two stories.  Then they enjoyed retelling the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears with Teddy Grahams and an activity page.  (Some enjoyed the tasty treat and some glued their Teddy Grahams to their paper!)  

The children have been enjoying "Fairy Tale Land" in the balcony of the classroom.  They have been exploring with masks(both homemade and pre-made), and puppets retelling the stories that they have 
heard over the past couple of weeks.  The children also have been excited to watch the beans sprout and we are looking forward to witnessing our first beanstalks!       

We read two versions of The Gingerbread Man this week.  The children were actively involved in the readings repeating the familiar text and using their comparison skills to say that is different or that is the same as the other story.  We played a rhyming game.  Also, the children are predicting what might have happened to the Gingerbread Man if he would have gone into the river and swam across by himself and not with the Fox that ended up eating him.  

Next week, we will put on our scientific hats and test our theories!  We plan on reading more gingerbread tales next week and at the end of the week we will build gingerbread houses.  

In the fine motor center the children have been practicing letter formation using the Handwriting Without Tears language.  They formed letters in trays of flour.  Using a variety of materials to write letters using our fingers will be continued throughout the school year.

In the math center, the children measured beanstalks with unifix cubes.  starting at the bottom of the beanstalks to the top, then counting out how many unifix cubes high each stalk was.

In the Language Arts center, the children learned about "popcorn words" and the game Blast Off!  Popcorn words are words that the children will see "pop-up" in books as they read.  The game Blast Off is a great kinesthetic game to help the children read, spell, and recognize popcorn words.  Have your child practice the game Blast off with our words, "and, you."  At the end of each spelling you say, Blast off!  Then you jump as high as you can.  We read a story titled, My Dog and searched for our popcorn words in the story after we read.  The stories that we are reading in Language Arts Center are full of text that matches the pictures in the story.


In the art center the children worked on fairy tale finger puppets.  They had templates to cut, glue, and color.  Following these simple steps helped develop their fine motor skills and listening skills.  Following one to three step directions is a task that we will work on throughout JK.

The students were able to choose between Leap Pad or the computers this week in the Independent center.  They are learning to track words while listening along on the Leap Pad games and they are working on their phonics skills and math skills on the computers.

We celebrated Harry's birthday on Wednesday!  Happy Birthday Harry and thanks for the yummy cupcakes:)

 

Seventh Grade Reading Buddies Returned today!

  

A Peek Ahead

Next week we will finish up the centers that we did not get to this week.  Your child will be measuring a bean stalk, reading a sight word book, creating a finger puppet, writing letters in flour, or working on the computer on Monday or Tuesday.  Wednesday and Friday centers will be focused on Language Arts, Independent, and Math.  Because it is a week with a field trip we will not have centers on Thursday.  

During Free Choice in the mornings, I have been able to read and work with children individually or in small groups to strengthen their reading skills.  I plan to keep this up during their independent center work on Wednesday and Friday and also in the mornings all week.

Please have your child to school on time everyday but especially on Thursday.  We need to be loading the buses at 9:15.  You will need to pack a lunch for your child with his/her name on it.

We will be exploring the Gingerbread books all next week and also reading books based on the Nut Cracker.  On Friday, we will be making Gingerbread Houses to take home!  Please make sure that your child's house goes home or we will have to throw it out.

Week of November 29 - December 3

Fairy tales are a great way to experiment with language, retell stories, explore characters and settings, and compare different points of view.  Those are all things that we have delved into this week with our fairy tale unit and will continue to work on until the winter break.  We made a chart to discuss what is real and make believe.  We have read Jack and the Beanstalk and used our imagination creeping through the Roycemore halls that have magically transformed into the castle in the clouds... we haven't wanted to wake the sleeping Giant but would love to get our hands on his gold to keep our bellies full for the winter!  We've been experimenting with kidney beans, lima beans, and pinto beans to see if any of them will sprout into a beanstalk.  First we wrapped them in a wet paper towel and put them in plastic.  Once we see a sprout, we plant them in soil.  We hope that these we will be fruitful experiments!  We read Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Hansel and Gretel.  We've made a comparison chart on what characters we've seen in each of these stories.  We have discussed the settings in Fairy Tales and colored a castle mural.  Each student worked on a cottage and imagined someone inside their cottage.

Our center activities have continued to be full of engaging academic activities.  In the math center, the children used the geometric shape blocks that they have been experimenting with over the past few weeks and created pictures such as trains, animals, and plants.  This activity reinforces beyond basic shape knowledge and helps the children to see shapes in other objects.  In the language arts center we worked on beginning letter sounds through drawing pictures and playing a beginning letter sounds game.  The children work together to find pictures that match their letter card.  This activity is a review for some and a continued reinforcement of letter sounds, identification, and understanding of phonemic awareness.  Each lesson was differentiated for each child's needs and their skill set.  These are the skills we will continue to reinforce throughout the school year to help the students become readers.  In the art center, the children used their imagination to create their own masks to use when recreating and retelling the fairy tale stories we have been listening to this week.  The students explored magnetic letters in the fine motor/writing center moving letters around and pushing letters together to create words.  The independent center had the students working on the leap pads and listening to a book on tape. 

We celebrated Macy's Birthday this week with yummy, yummy brownie treats!  Happy 5th birthday Macy!  

 E.D.P Fun!

We enjoyed the beautiful and cold weather this week.  The children are working hard on getting themselves dressed with a little support from the teachers.  We reinforce basic skills such as zippering their coats, pulling on their own boots, and getting their hats and mittens on. 

Now that the weather has dropped so much we will continue to go outside!  The children will need to bundle up.  If you send boots, snow pants, coat, scarf, hat, and mittens, we will ask the children to wear everything that you send in to school.  We do our best to check the cubbies and the children to see that they have everything on their bodies.  We have made a visual list for the children to check off that they have the proper winter attire on.  Please help your child stay organized and independent with their winter things.  Hats, gloves, and scarves should be put in their coat sleeve.  Their coats and snow pants should be hung on their hook in their cubbie.  Their boots or change of shoes should be put inside their cubbie.  Please do not leave their outside clothing articles in their backpacks or we might not see them. 
Please label all of their things with their names on them!  If they don't have their names on their things then they will get lost or mixed up with other peoples things. 

A Peek Ahead

Next week, the students will be working on sight words in the language art center by playing a sight word movement game and reading a book that focuses on the words "is, and, the."  In the math center, the children will be using unfix cubes to measure bean stalks.  In the art center, the students will be making fairy tale finger puppets.  They will practice scissor control, gluing, and express their imaginative ideas in this fun activity.  In the fine motor center the children will be practicing letter strokes and writing in flour trays.  This is a tactile way of practicing letter writing and strengthening their fine motor skills.  In the independent center the children will be able to choose between the computers or leap pads. 

We will continue to explore the growth of our bean stalks through scientific investigations.  We will compare and contrast fairy tales written by different authors.  We will continue retelling the stories and investigating ways to act out a story.

Roycemore's Scholastic Book Fair is this week!  If you can stop by please do.  If you can't stop by the Scholastic Book Fair and you want to order books please visit the Scholastic Books website and place your order under our class page.

Week of November 22-23

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!  

Thank you all so much for sharing your family and friends with our JK class!  We had a fabulous Tuesday and it made our week terrific.  The JK class should be very proud of themselves.  They were so energetic and well prepared!

In the classroom, the JK class finished our 4 centers from last week on Monday morning.  We competed our questions about What is a Grandparent!  The JK kids had some very insightful answers including, grandparents have arms and legs, grandparents are babysitters, and grandparents love pictures like suns!  :)  

Monday was our rehearsal for Grandparents Day!  We were able to watch the Middle and Upper school students perform their songs and then we practiced with our K friends.  

Tuesday was so much fun!  The children all came dressed in their best clothes and with their best behaviors!  We started our day with our morning meeting.  We went in the gym to perform for soooo many people!  When they JK kids left the gym they had a quick free choice time, then helped prepare the classroom for our guests, and finally Mr. B came in to do some stretching with us!  

Finally after so much anticipation we were able to share with our Grandparents, special friends, or parents!  We had a great time making our pine cone turkeys and we hope that you all enjoyed them too.

Happy Thanksgiving!  

A Look Ahead: 

Our centers for the week of November 29 - December 3 will be the Language Arts center, where the children will be working on beginning consonant sounds.  The Math center, where the the children will be using their knowledge of shapes and patterns to create animals.  The Fine Motor center, where the children will be building their muscles by creating letters with magnetic boards and letters.  The Independent center, where the children will have a choice between the computers, listening to a book on tape, or working on the Leap Pads.  The Art Center, where the children will be making puppets for our Fairy Tale theater.

Our theme study for the next few weeks will focus on Fairy Tales including Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, and The Three Little Pigs.  We will be reading a variety of versions, comparing and contrasting them, retelling and sequencing of the stories, and lots of hands on projects!  

Week of November 15 - 19

This week was packed with lots of learning and energizing activities!  To begin the week, we completed our center activities from last week.

This week's math center focused on patterning with a different attribute. Instead of making a pattern using color this time the children were to focus making a pattern with shapes.  Some children worked on extending an AB (triangle, square) pattern , others created their own pattern using two parts, and others created their own pattern using three parts.  The focus was the same for each child but they worked at their own pace and the lesson was differentiated to focus on their skills.  With these manipulatives, the children are able to continue to work on counting objects as well as simple addition and subtraction problems. 

In the language arts center, the children played an alphabet matching game on a Thanksgiving turkey board!  The objective of the game was to identify the matching Capital letter with the lower case letter written on the turkey feathers.  Each child had a turn to draw a feather from the pile and make a match.  If that feather was not on their game board they put it back and the next player took his/her turn.  Once a child had matched three feathers in a row they said, "gobble, gobble!" and the game boards were cleared and the game started over.  Not only did the children work on upper and lower case identification but they were asked to review the letter sounds as well.  This game is a wonderful opportunity to continue to support beginning phonics skills and review letter sounds.

The independent center focused on the new light table in the classroom.  The children were able to freely explore the legos and build creative designs using their own imagination.

The art center was designed to help the children get in the spirit of Thanksgiving!  The created turkeys with their hand prints.  They painted their hand and thumb with brown paint and then the fingers with red, orange, or yellow for the feathers.  The children enjoyed this sensory rich project and had fun creating their turkeys.  Gobble, Gobble!

We created for centers for the children to rotate this week and they will finish them on Monday.  Tuesday is our Grandparents Day celebration.  We will be making a special center piece for each student and grandparent to take home.  We hope that they will be enjoyed and treasured! 

Our Social Studies theme has focused around Thanksgiving and Grandparents.  We read a story about the first thanksgiving and discussed the Pilgrims and the Native Americans.  After the book, we talked about why the Pilgrims and Native Americans were grateful for each others help.  We read another story this week called, The Littlest Pilgrim and how she wanted to help the people in her village but everyone told her she was too little to help until she met a Native American girl and together the two of them were able to help each other.  The class discussed ways that they help around their house!  We also read the story, The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Turkey  and then turned into a float for the Thanksgiving Day parade.  Everyone made their own favorite food for the old lady to swallow that they might bring to a holiday dinner like Thanksgiving!  Everyone learned a game that involved using oral language, listening skills, and memory recall called, "On Thanksgiving Day..."  Each child started by saying on Thanksgiving Day I will bring... and then they listed their favorite food.  The next person said, "On Thanksgiving Day I will bring..." and then they listed the person before them choice and then added their choice.  For example, "On Thanksgiving Day I will bring a turkey."  The next child says, "On Thanksgiving Day I will bring a turkey and a pie."  We rotated every three or four children so as not to make the list too long:)  Everyone also was able to fill out a booklet about the things they were grateful for.  We played a rhyming game about hunting animals like you would a turkey and then letting the animals go.  The children have been doing a super job in all of our rhyming activities which help build phonemic awareness and with their literacy skills.  To practice shape identification, the children played a game to hide a turkey under a haystack with a shape on the outside like circle, rectangle, hexagon, etc.  The children called out Turkey, turkey in the hay, Hiding on Thanksgiving Day!  Then they guessed, "I think the turkey is under the purple circle haystack."  We would peek under and then try again until the turkey was found. 

Next week on Monday we will finish the four centers from this week with the final rotation.  We will complete our books on being thankful and share those with each other.  We will focus on the grandparents day visit for Tuesday.  On Tuesday, the class will perform three songs with the Kindergarten class.  When the grandparents come to visit in the classroom, we have a special project to complete with our guests.

There is no school on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of next week. 

December will take us into our Gingerbread Man and Fairy Tale Theme Study!  We will be reading and comparing a variety of fairy tale stories and enjoying plenty of hands on projects. 

Week of November 8 - 11

What a beautiful Fall week we all enjoyed!  The students were so happy to be back from the very long weekend away from school and we spent most of out time outside.  We read a story called Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf during circle time that showed the life cycle of a maple tree.  When we went outside, we went on a hunt for more beautiful Fall leaves to display in the classroom!

On Monday, we celebrated Ally's birthday!  Happy Birthday Ally and thank you so much for the yummy cupcakes and juice. 

We had a special visitor help us in the math center and read, There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie during circle time!  Thank you to Luke's Grandma for coming in and being a part of our morning!
 







We shared a new story this week during the morning meeting titled JK Star Rules. This book helps us all to remember what the rules of the classroom are and why we need them in order to learn in the room.  We have a new job on the helper board, leader.  This job is given to many students in the room when I need help showing others what a star student looks like.  I can call on one of the leaders and they will show me and the class a safe body, quiet lips, and respectful choices.

The morning meeting helper has an added responsibility to help with the morning letter.  Not only will he/she track the words to help the class read the letter, he/she will write his/her name on the board, and he/she will help fill in the missing beginning letter sound to words in the letter.  For instance, one sentence on the board usually reads: We have music today.  But each day a new beginning letter sound will be missing so the board might read: We have _usic today.  The JK kids think this is hysterical that I would forget to write some letters on the board!  They are having a good time helping me remember what letter comes at the beginning of different words.

We began four centers this week: fine motor, listening, math, and language arts.  We did not get to all four centers this week and we will be finishing them up on Monday and Tuesday of this coming week.  In the fine motor center, students were able to work with the Handwriting Without Tears wooden pieces to make letters.  Ms. Becker talked them through the creation of the letters using the HWT language, for example saying, big line down, little curve at the top makes a Capital P.

In the listening center, the JK kids had a choice of the computer, listening to a story on tape, or working with the Leap Pad activity books.  This is an independent center where the children are able to navigate these activities on their own.

In the math center, the JK kids explored shapes such as diamonds, squares, and triangles.  The students freely explored the shapes and built objects such as trains while learning or reviewing the names of the shapes as they created.  They also continued to practice their counting skills by telling how many shapes they used to build their object.  Next week the children will build on their knowledge of these shapes and create patterns with shapes, tell simple addition and subtraction stories, and continue to count the number of objects used in the patterns.

In the language arts center, the JK children worked on the -ack family words.  We built a rhyming list of words that they would find in the story Jack.  Some students practiced beginning sounds, rhyming sounds, sight word recognition, and tracking words on a page.  Each group lesson is differentiated to meet the needs of the individual child.  When everyone has completed this center, the Jack books will go home.

Free Choice is a great time for the students to choose activities that they enjoy the most.  They build social skills, independence, and creativity every morning! 

Thank you so much to the Bach family for donating this new light table!  The children are exploring with Lego blocks during free choice.  We will be introducing a variety of color wands too so they can explore mixing colors in a different way!

The writing center is set up for the children to use a variety of tools to write and explore with with such as chalk, dry erase markers, crayons, play-doh, scissors, and all kinds of materials.

Third Grade Reading Buddies!  Every other Thursday!!!

 

We were busy preparing for Grandparents Day this week as well!  The JK kids practiced three songs that they will perform on Tuesday morning.  We encourage you to turn in your form indicating who will be here for Grandparents day as soon as you can so we can be prepared for the Grandparents to join us for the performance and in our classroom!  Grandparents Day is November 23 beginning in the gym at  9:00a.m.

Thank you for meeting with me during Parent Teacher conferences.  I hope meeting has provided you useful information on your child's academic skills.  I thank you for your insight in getting to know each of your children better too.

October's Scholastic Book Orders came in last week and were placed in your child's mailbox.  The November orders will be due on November 23.  December orders will be available beginning the week of November 29 and due on December 10 for those of you that will not be able to make it in for Roycemore's Book Fair December 6 -10.



There is no school Wednesday, November 24 - Friday, November 26 for Thanksgiving Vacation.  Classes resume on Monday, November 29.

Centers for the week of November 15-19 are language arts, math, and art.  The students will be creating turkey hand prints, playing turkey bingo (matching upper case letters and lower case letters), and making patterns with shapes.

The students will be focusing on the Thanksgiving Holiday through stories, poems, games, and art.  They will be preparing for the Grandparents Day visit as well.