Welcome Back from break

Hi Everyone,

Welcome back from break. We have a lot of new activities happening in our classroom this term. On Tuesdays the Garden Coordinator will be coming to our classroom and teaching us about the importance of composting and gardening.


On Wednesdays we will be learning about Health and Nutrition. Janet Costello will be visiting us every Wednesday to teach us about the importance of eating a rainbow of foods and good hygiene.

I am happy to see everyone back from break. I can tell that the kids really missed eachother.

Half way through November.

At the beginning of November we learned about animals and their habitats. We studied ocean habitiats, and orange grove habitats, and now we are studying animals who live in grasslands.

We have learned the names of many animals and their babies.

Do you know which babies are called calves, cubs, pups and joeys? We have read many books on this subject including: Animal babies in the Grasslands, by Kingfisher.

Your children have been writing about friendship in class. One story we read was about the unlikely friendship between a baby hippo and an old tortoise, called " Owen and Mzee, best friends."

In math we are continuing our study of patterns and we have started to sort items by size. OUr new game is called, "Take Away." The students have really enjoyed this guessing game and it has helped with our communication skills.

Your children have become great at cooperating and helping each other in class. I changed the room around and they seem to have adapted to the new environment.

Thank you for all of your help and support. Special thanks to Room 110 moms, because of your help writers workshop has really taken off. Thank you.

Your children have really enjoyed watching our fish Miracle change and grow. Lets hope we will have more animals soon.

How do vehicles help us?

This week we focused our investigations on vehicles and how they help us. We learned about: tractors, fire engines, dump trucks, diggers, cranes, transporters, and garbage trucks. Our focus book this week was Dig, dig, digging, by Margaret Mayo and Alex Ayliffe.

This week was full of opportunities to be creative. I hope you are able to check out your child's art work in the classroom. Your children are wonderful artists and great at cooperating with each other.

Many of us were ill this week please be sure to talk to your children about hand washing and coughing into their elbows.

A week of changes

Last week was full of excitement. We walked to the fire station on Monday and we walked to the park on Friday. We also had a very nice substitute teacher, named Ms. Heaton. Today we took another walking field trip to the bakery.




We read Ms. Bindergarten takes a field trip with kindergarten, by Joseph Slate, and focused a lot of attention on the shapes we find in the environment.

Your children are making leaps and bounds in their writing. For some of us sounding out words is really starting to click. It is very exciting for me to see this happen. Your children are becoming more confident with each other and in their own abilities and today felt like a great day to celebrate all of these accomplishments.

How do families cooperate?

This week we read the story "Plaidypus Lost," by Janet Stevens.

We have almost learned the entire animal alphabet song!!!

Your children have started to create beautiful journal entries with many detailed drawings some of them are even starting to put words to their writing. Be sure to talk to them about what they are writing.

They are great storytellers!!! We also read "Olivia and the Missing Toy," "Paisley," and "What Shall we do Blue Kangaroo?"

How do people help eachother?

This week we talked about how people help each other.
Your children love to help you around the house.


We read the book Fix-It Duck, by Jez Alborough.

Click here to read a great review of his work from CurledUpKids.

Here are some other books by Jez Alborough that we read in class: YES, HUG, and TALL.

How do we get to school?

We are lucky to go to a school in our neighborhood. Many of us walk, ride our bikes, or take our scooters to school. How do you get to school?

This week we read the books:

"The Little School Bus," by Carol Roth and illustrated by Pamela Paparone

"Chicka Chicka Boom Boom," by Bill Martin, Lois Ehlert (Illustrator), John Archambault.

"Duck on a Bike," by David Shannon

Get ready, get set, go...

Are you excited about starting school? I am. I can hardly wait to meet my new kindergarten crowd.

School is starting in less than a week. I am busy getting the room ready for you.

I am looking forward to meeting you and your family.

We are going to have a great year together!!!!

Our exciting field trip to Click, Clack, Moo is almost here.

We will go on our first bus field trip with the other kindergartens to watch Click, Clack, Moo Cows that type!

It is so exciting!!!

To find out more information about the story check out this great link to CLick, CLack, Moo Hyper text.

http://pbskids.org/lions/cornerstones/click/story/hypertext/

Happy New Year Everyone!!!

Dear Parents, I apologize for not updating the website during the month of December. Now that the new year has arrived I will try harder to keep you updated on the stories we read and the projects we complete.

Last week we started a new unit. The theme for this unit is growing and changing. Throughout this unit we will compare ourselves to baby animals and plants.

We will talk about the different methods of measuring change over time. For example we have a poster on our wall of the students height in November, many of them have already noticed how much they have grown.

The first story we read for this month was Little Panda. This informational text describes the first year in the life of a baby panda cub. The students had a lot of fun imagining they were baby animals. They wrote wonderful stories in their journals.

We also read many board books on baby animals and panda bears.

Did you know that the panda is the only member of the bear family to have a special bone in his hand?

This extra bone helps the panda eat bamboo.

Another interesting fact, the panda is also half the size of a polar bear.

I can hardly wait to make new animal discoveries with your children.

We have read a lot of books this week.

This week was busy, busy, busy.

Tuesday we planted a tree and made trivets.

We talked about the difference between animal fantasy and realism.

We also read a lot of books about animals who hibernate, including:



The Bear Snores On, by Karma Wilson

Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you see? By Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle.

Polar Bear, Polar Bear what do you see? By Bill Maritn Jr. and Eric Carle.

Panda Bear, Panda Bear what do you hear? By Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle.



And the Iroquois legend, The Legend of how Bear lost his tail.

Making Clay Trivets!

We collected all sorts of leaves and pressed them into clay. The clay was fired and the students will paint these trivets and you can actually use them at home. Unfortunately, they will not be ready to take home for Thanksgiving.

Our Western Cedar.

This week has been very exciting!!!

We planted a tree at school. With the help of many teachers and volunteers from the neighborhood.

What a Fabulous Week!!!

This week our class planted a western cedar on the border of the field. It was so exciting! Each student planted native strawberries around the cedar.

Life in an Ocean

This week we learned about informational text, and life in an ocean. It was fascinating!!! We had so much fun learning about fish, sharks, turtles, crabs and more.

This week your children created beautiful goldfish and sea turtles.

You should know something special about our class. They earned six tickets for good behavior in the hallways this week. That was so wonderful!!! I hope our class wins something in the drawing on Wednesday.

We read several beginnning fact books this week about sea life. Your children love to read.