Friday, August 31, 2018

First Week of Kindergarten!!

Welcome Kindergarteners!!
We are so excited to start our year with all of your kids. What a great group!


This first week of school has been about focusing on school and classroom rules, routines and getting to know each other.  We have a big class of 22 kids, we are looking forward to getting to know each other and creating lasting friendships.  This blog will be updated regularly. Feel free to share this with grandparents, aunts and uncles. It is an opportunity to see what your child has been doing during the day and see some pictures of your child interacting with others. This blog will be a resource for reminders of important dates such as Open House, Parent/Teacher Conferences, field trips, needed snacks, etc. Don't hesitate to contact us if you have questions (questions received best by emailing).

Please make sure your child has a water bottle all the time! It is super easy to have a water bottle that they can use rather than stand in line at the water fountain. Kids are welcome to leave a pair of sneakers in their cubbies for gym class. It's also very helpful to make sure your child has extra snacks! We have a morning snack time and there is an optional afternoon snack time. We do carry extra snacks with the help of parents. We will be asking families to send in extra snacks (via this blog), to share with the kids who may not have brought in a snack. Pretzels, goldfish, granola bars, cereal, popcorn are great snack options to send in as extras. We really appreciate the extra snacks.

School starts at 7:40. If you drop off before that time, your child need to stay in the front lobby of the school until 7:30. Please do not send your child in earlier. This time is important for the teachers to get   organized and get the classroom set up for the day. Thank you for understanding, we appreciate your support on this. 

End of day schedules are so important to your child and us. Help remind them daily if they will be picked up, ride the bus or stay after school. If you need to change your child's schedule please contact us and Heidi by 2pm at the latest. There are a lot of kids to organize at the end of the day. The earlier you know your child's schedule the easier the end of day transition is. 

Morning Activities.....

Each morning the kids have to come in and report to Beth what they will be having for lunch, "hot" or "cold".  Then they meet Connie over at the chart and she reads the chart with the kids and then they have a question to answer or an activity to do. A lot of the chart focuses on writing their names. There will be times when the chart will focus on something else like drawing a picture, writing numbers, etc. But for a while, we work on writing our names. This picture above is of our morning chart on the first day. We will keep it and bring it out on the last day to see how different our names look from the first day to the last day of Kindergarten.




MATH.....
Believe it or now, we did math every day this week!


Shoe game. We put a shoe in the middle and talked about what we know about the shoe in the middle of the circle. "It's big. It's blue. It has holes in it. It's a crock. It has a bottom."
Each day we have added more shoes to find things that are the same and things that are different about the shoes in the middle of circle. We have found that some are the same color. Some have laces. Some have velcro.



Free play exploring with manipulatives. 

Learning about money and counting to 10. Taking pennies away, how many are left. 

Language Arts.....


Matching pictures with the rhyming partner. Everyone gets a puzzle picture piece and then when the bell rings everyone finds their match. Then we go around the circle and tell what the two pieces that matched are.  Matches included "boat/goat" "yarn/barn" etc. 

Some highlights this week......

Evan- "Guys, come back to the house."
William- "Its Octagon! Its going to crash, mashing again."
Griffin- "Let's go! No! That's not what he says. I'm ready to take this out."
William- "I have to take this with me."
Griffin - "Oh yeah! You can take the gup. Oh no, something is bad. It goes here."
William - "Just put it back."
Evan - "Octonaughts!"


Griffin and Jared Block building!
"It's bigger then us!"

Libby, Pretending to be the teacher.

Corrina giving Beth a hair cut.


 All the girls were taking some time up in the loft to read quietly. 

Waverly checking out the princess castle. 

Davern, Evelyn and Hunter playing with Diago set.


Gabe and Sizer playing with marble maze!




Hunter "Here's the jump ski."
Davern "Go Diago!"
Hunter "Davern, come back to shore."
Davern "I'll rescue you!" Evelyn, are your friends here?"
Evelyn "NO. Yeah. Good guys are over here and the bad guys are over in this."
Hunter "Ahh, a hurt person."
Davern "How about this is the boat."
Hunter "Pretend guys this is the pontoon boat." (Holding up a hat)
Davern "We're in the ocean! Cannon Ball!!!!! Guys I see a Shark! Get in!!!!!
Evelyn "I'll take a ride."
Hunter "Ok, I'll save them!"


Wiki sticks were pulled out to play with during free choice.


Libby "Connie, make some flowers."
Connie "Ok Libby! I will write your name with wiki sticks too."
Libby "How did you do that?"
Hunter "Wiki sticks! I know these."
Davern "These are at restaurants."
Hunter "And movie theaters."
Libby "Who wants a necklace?"
Eveleyn "I do!"(Libby brings her a wiki necklace she hust made.
Lucy "Libby, I think I need to make a bracelet for you. I'm going to give you a bigger one"
Libby "Lets try this. (She tries to put a necklace on Evelyn.) I need to make more.
Hunter "I made the letter H!" 

Hopefully you enjoy reading the blog. Have a fabulous three day weekend. We will see you on Tuesday!