Kindergarten musical

Kindergarten opened the spring musical with an adorable song about growing a garden.

Working on "HOW TO" writing

This spring we have been writing informational how to guides. Our class guide, "How to brush your teeth."

Kandinsky quilts

Creating collaborative art in class. We have studied Kandinsky and the shapes he uses in class to create collaborative quilts! Check them out in the halls!

Ms. Biello's Kindergarten Class

Ms. Biello's class is learning about shapes, sizes, and colors of buildings. We read a cool book about what it takes to build a building, and then we drew our own!

All about your kindergartner!

Big Buddies in Kindergarten

Mrs. Rowland's Class having a great time with their big buddies.

2011-2012 is off to a great start

Hello Kindergarten parents!

We are truly off to an amazing start this year. As teachers we were very pleased with the gradual transition and we feel that it made a huge difference in your child's experience.

Currently we are studying about communities: school community, neighborhoods, and families. We are focusing our classroom conversations on how we cooperate with others. We are also having a great time with our new Math curriculum.

We look forward to meeting all of you Thursday, September 29th at Back-to-School night.

Hello Future Kindergartners

Hello Future Kindergartners,

I hope you are enjoying the summer months! Please take a look at some of the older posts from previous years. Sorry there is not a lot posted after January 2011, I was pregnant and had a baby this spring so the blog did not get regularly updated.

I look forward to meeting you in the fall.

Mrs. Rowland-Horrigan (aka. Ms Rowland for short)

Check our kids

Today as part of the Vestal Community Garden celebration city commissioner Nick Fish made the student body of Vestal honorary park rangers.

You can see part of our class featured in the video footage.

http://videos.oregonlive.com/oregonian/2010/03/vestal_garden.html

Dr. Seuss's Birthday

The students had a great time performing a little dance to Dr. Seuss's Foot Book. Our students have been practicing once a week with their big buddies. The big buddies have read countless Dr. Seuss books to them and they helped them make really great hats and masks for the performance.

They were so excited and such great dancers. What a great way to end the day!!!

Valentines and counting to 100.

These are two things we celebrated in February. The students had a great time counting objects to 100, actually 101. The Valentine's celebration was very special. Great work on learning how to spell your friends names!!!

So many things to tell you. . .

Well this year is off to a great start!

We have been learning about how animals and humans change over time. We have studied several animals and how they change over time.

We learned that a caterpillar hatches from an egg, and before it can become a butterfly it must build a pupa as shelter for the transformation.

We also learned that goslings transform into beautiful geese and that butterflies and geese both migrate.

We have also learned the different stages of life in young children: newborn, baby, toddler, and child. The students have been fascinated with everything they are learning.

As a group your children are producing some amazing written works! They are really starting to take off as young authors. Please check out their writing in class and in the hallways.

We also started having a visitor on Wednesday mornings. Her name is Ms. Costello and she is our nutrition expert. She will teach the students about delicious and nutritious snacks they can eat at school and at home. Please look forward to a new recipe everyweek. YEAH for yummy snacks!!!!

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!!!!