Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Walk-a-Thon on Thursday

     We are having a walk-a-thon on Thursday at school.  Please be sure that you send your child to school wearing sneakers!  This event is the kick off for the Bayview School Walking Club, which will be held on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings.  Please see the Virtual Backback on the Bayview website for more information!

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Last Week in Review

     I would like to begin by saying thank you too all of the parents that came to our back to school night.  It was so nice to see everyone and I look forward to working with everyone this year!

     We had a great week in school!  The kids are learning the routine and are doing so well adjusting to Kindergarten.  This week we began learning all about how to make predictions when we are reading.  We started by taking a picture walk through a book and then we make our predicitions based on what we saw on our picture walk.
    We worked on centers this week.  In the Work Work center, the students traced, rainbowed, stamped, and wrote our star words.  In the Listening Center, they listened to Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and drew their favorite part from the story.  In the Read and Write Around the Room center, the kids wrote words they found around the room.  Before we did that, we labeled different items in the rom together as a class.  In the ABC Center, the kids used letter tiles to show the letters that are in their names and not in their names.  Then they worked on letter puzzles.  In the Creation Center, they made rainbow names.  In the Poetry Center, the class matched the words in the poem and then glued their poem and picture in their poetry journal.  They must look for their star words, sentence stoppers, and commas in their poems and circle them.  I am completely impressed at how well the students are working in centers and how quickly they have been able to adjust to the rigorous routine in Kindergarten!
     In Math this week, we learned all about left and right, which can be quite confusing.  Please work on that with your children at home.  We also learned about top, middle, and bottom.  Math has been whole group, however as time goes on, the students will be broken up into small Math groups and centers to learn their Math strategies. 
     Again, thank you so much for coming to back to school night. It was so nice to meet everyone!  I hope you had a great weekend!
 

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Back to School Night

I am looking forward to seeing you all on Back to School Night tomorrow!  It starts at 6:30.  I hope to be able to give you a detailed overview of our Kindergarten classroom and curriculum.  See you tomorrow!

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Our Week in Review

Our Morning Meeting Area
Our first art project
    

    
















     Well, we finished our first week of Kindergarten and I have to say, the kids did great!  Everyone has adjusted well and they seem to be enjoying their time in school.  I am having a great time getting to know everyone and am looking forward to the rest of our school year.
     This week, we learned so much! We learned all about our class and school rules and how to make good choices.  We learned about what happens when we make good choices and what happens when we make poor choices.  Our behavior clip chart has been a great success so far!  I hope you got a chance to see the letter I sent home explaining our behavior system.  We learned about how to be bucket fillers also.  I will explain the bucket fillers program at Back to School Night on Thursday. 
     Each morning we begin with a small bit of morning work and then we meet on the rug for our morning meeting.  We start with our morning message, which is a message that I write to the class to let them know about our day.  We circle the sentence stoppers (punctuation), star words, and commas.  Have your child show you our star words or sentence stoppers in a book you are reading!Then we work on the calendar and math concepts.  We learn about our star words, letter of the week, and new poem for the week. 
     We began our first chapter in Math and we will be learning about sorting and different position words, such as over, under, and on.  Math homework may be sent home during the week, but it might not be every single night.  Please look in the homework section of your child'd BEE book each night to check for Math homework.
     We began learning how to complete some of our literacy centers this week.  The kids learned how to work in our poetry center first.  In this center, they match the words from each of our poems with their group members.  Then they put a copy of the poem in their poetry journals.  The kids then look through the poem and circle our sentence stoppers (punctuation) in red, star words in green, and commas.  We do the same thing during our morning message.  The next center we learned was Read and Write Around the Room.  The students get to choose a pointer and a marker and they look for words around the room and write them on a paper.  We also learned how to work in the Creation Station, which is where they complete an art project for the week.  We will slowly be learning how to participate in each center for the next few weeks and then all of our centers will be up and running!
     This week I sent home our first homework calendar.  Please have your child complete the homework each night.  I know the week can get busy, but having them be responsible for work each night is very important.  It will prepare them for the later years in school. The calendar must be handed in each Friday.  I also sent home the reading minutes and reading minutes pledge.  Please read with your child each night.  Write down how many minutes you have read and send the log in at the end of the month.  This is a school wide program and I would really like to have our class participate.  I will also be placing our star words on index cards.  The ring of index cards will be in their homework section in the BEE book.  Please review the words with your child each night.
     I know this was a lot of information to take in, but I hope to keep you informed of all of the happenings in our classroom.  I am looking forward to seeing you all at Back to School Night on Thursday at 6:30.  Have a great weekend!   
    

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Twas the Night Before Kindergarten

YAY!  It is finally here!  The first day of Kindergarten in tomorrow.  I am very excited to get this year started.  I hope you are too!  Make sure you get to bed early tonight.  I have a fun day planned tomorrow! 

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Our Classroom


I took some pictures of our classroom.  The classroom is almost complete, but most of it is ready to go for the newest Kindergarteners!  Enjoy!

Our home center and coat closet

A view of the back of our room.  Our bucket fillers are on the left closet, name wall on the right closet, and birthday board on the green door.

Word Wall...soon it will be full of new "star" words

Our morning meeting area

Our reading area

Our reading area

Our class rules

Our reading strategies behind the guided reading table

A view from the door

Morning meeting area

Birthday board...pictures will be added soon!

Name Wall.....pictures to come!

Bucket Fillers.....not completed yet.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

School Time!

Today was the first day of school for me!  I am working hard to make sure our classroom is ready to go!  I can't wait to see all of my new students and parents at our Kindergarten Orientation on Thursday.  I am eager to get this year started and can't wait to meet everyone!  I will try to post some pictures of our classroom tomorrow!