Here are a few new pictures to enjoy...

Check out the green goggles we made with Mrs. Gocken for green week!

We love building in the block area!

We are fitting the ones blocks in the tens blocks, and the tens blocks in the hundreds blocks to build number sense.

Brynlee is smiling next to our number clothesline center.

Paisley is a number and letter detective!

These are the hearts we made for Peace Day.

Jarrett and his sister, Jaidon, share a caterpillar they found at home.

Jarrett tells his friends about Mr. Fuzzy.

Meet Mat Man - These are a few of our mat men that our reading buddies helped us make.

Mrs. DiBenedetto comes to share I-Care cat with us.  This week we learned about helping.

Shawn is putting the numbers in order on the clothesline.

Jace and Shawn work together to put numbers in order.

These are a few of our trees with apples from 1 to 10.

This is one of our Little Red Hens that we made for red week after reading the story 'The Little Red Hen'.

Apple Day and Germs Away!

We had fun peeling the apples for our apple sauce!

We drew 10 apples up on top of ourselves after listening to the story 10 Apples Up on Top.

This group is making apple prints with paint.

Briana's mom is helping us with the paint.

There were many apples to peel and core for the applesauce!

We are peeling more apples....

More apples for our applesauce...

We got to taste three different kinds of apples to see what we liked best.. red, yellow or green.

We are making more apples up on top!

After the Germs Away presentation we had our hands checked for germs with a 'special solution'.

Angie Johnson from the Pecatonica office of FHN and Barb Lessman from Freeport FHN gave a presntation about germs.

We are getting our hands checked before and after we washed off the special solution.

We recorded our answers to tell what kind of apple we liked the best.

More apples to peel...

We are getting our hands checked.

Jace's mom reads 10 Apples Up on Top.

We washed off all of the germs...

See.... no germs here!

!

Our week...

I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend and had time to spend with their families!  Did you have a garage sale or go to any garage sales?  At school we are looking forward to our apple day on Wednesday!

Last week was yellow week.  We colored corn to put on our farming wall and on the back of our door.  So far we have tomatoes (for the color red), carrots (for the color orange) and corn (for the color yellow).  The beautiful sun that your child and you helped us make at our back to school night is at the top!

So far we have celebrated 2 birthdays at school!  Happy birthday to Jace and Briana!

Mrs. DiBenedetto came to our class again on Thursday with I-Care Cat to help us learn about helping.  Your child drew a picture of what he or she does to help at home.   The social skills we have learned so far are helping and being patient without interrupting (unless there is an emergency).

In math we started making a math bag.  So far we have 5 counting beans and a ruler inside.  We will be adding more counting beans after we start with the basics of counting forward and backwards from five and putting them on our number line (ruler).  We are building math sense.  We have also been learning about what is the same and different with different pictures from our math book.  We have been doing this together on the smartboard so their isn't a paper to come home at this time for this.

In fundations we have learned the letters, sounds and letter formation for lowercase t,b,f,n,m,i,u,c,o.  Please have your child tell what the names of the lines are that we use on our dry erase boards.

We are excited to start reading groups!  Today we read a book called 'A Park'.  In this book your child found a swing and a see___.  It is something that goes up and down.  During our word work time we also spelled the words 'the' and 'see' using our ketchup bottles.

Umbrellas for Peace Parade 2014

Peace means... you don't pop someone's bubble.

Peace means.... you are nice to everyone.

Peace means... you listen to your families and teachers.

We are getting ready for the parade!

We are lining up in the hallway.

It is going to start soon!

We love our umbrellas!

Thank you Mrs. Gocken!

We are getting ready to walk!

Peace means... we are kind.

Peace means... we work together.

We are peaceful!

Kindergarten News....September 9, 2014

Kindergarten News… September 9, 2014

This week is sure to be an  exciting week!  We are looking forward to walking in the Umbrellas for Peace parade that Mrs. Gocken has been working so hard with us to paint umbrellas.  The parade will be this Thursday starting at 8:45.  We will be walking behind Mrs. Gocken and Mrs. Brockway who will start the parade.  There will be a firetruck that the parade will follow down Main Street and then back up Reed Street back to our school.  Our class will be with the kindergarten section in front if you are able to come to see us - please look for us in the front of the parade!  Parents are welcome to come and sit along Main Street.

This week is also orange week.  We will be doing some orange activities later this week.  Remember to wear orange tomorrow on Wednesday if possible.  This week we learned the rhyme of Humpty Dumpty and cut and glue a sequencing page and put a puzzle together.  

We are starting our unit about apples.  We are going to trace our hands, wrist and arm to make the trunk of an apple tree.  On Monday we read the story ‘A Fruit is a Suitcase for Seeds’.

During calendar time we are learning the months of the year song and the days of the week song.  We are also learning the names of the coins and that each coin has the picture of a president on it.

Thank you for checking your child’s homework folder!  This week there is a poem about apples with activities on the back and a math sheet to do.  Thank you for your help from home!

Just for fun…

When asked what peace means to them, these were the wonderful responses from your kindergarteners… (turn over for responses please)

Peace means...

- being nice

- to take care of your family

- being nice to somebody

- to help

- waiting peaceful

- be nice

- following your family and teachers

- to be quiet

- listen to my family and teachers

- keep your own space

- to always say nice words

- listen to each other and stay in line

- peace

- being nice all the time

- don’t talk to someone if they’re not being nice and don’t pop their bubble

- giving a hug

- you are happy

I am proud of all of our kindergarteners for being kind to each other and for doing a great job learning the I-care rules!  So far our rules are:

1.  We listen to each other.

2.  Hands are for helping, not hurting.

3.  We use I-Care language.

Our new rule that we are going to learn is ‘We care about each other’s feelings’.  Our kindergarten friends are already doing a great job caring about each other.  Keep up the great work!

Mrs. Brockway came to read to us today!

Mrs. Brockway read the story, My Friend Rabbit, with us today.

We had fun sharing ideas of how we could get the plane out of the tree in the story.  

Happy Red Week!

Can you believe it is already the third week of school?  I hope everyone enjoyed their Labor Day weekend and had some extra time to spend with their families.  This week we read the story 'The Little Red Hen' and we are in the process of painting a little red hen to bring home.  Earlier this week the kindergarteners tore red, green and brown paper to glue onto an apple.  We are going to start our apple unit next week.  This week we started our 'blue book'.  During blue book we learn skills such as rhyming, initial and ending sounds and counting words in a sentence.  These skills will help us as we start to read.  We also started fundations.  During fundations we are learning the lowercase letter names, sounds and letter formation.  We started with letters t,b, and f.  Next week we are going to be learning n and m.  Thank you for any extra help from home in learning the letters and thank you also for sending back homework folders and the All About Me bags!  The yellow folders will come home again next Monday.  In math we are learning about same and difference.  Yesterday the kindergarteners had to decide what was the same and what was different about pictures on the smartboard.  They discovered that it may be the same picture such as two bears except it was different because it was a different size.  We continue to learn our I-Care rules throughout the day.  So far we've learned:

1.  We listen to each other.
2.  Hands are for helping, not hurting.
3.  We use I-Care language (kind words).

Next week Mrs. DiBenedetto will start coming to all of the classrooms to introduce us to I-Care cat and review the I-Care rules with us.

Enjoy the weekend and sunshine!