Week of Sept. 27

Our focus this week is on the colors!

In Language Arts, our letter this week is Aa. We were visited by Andy Apple, who told us the sound of short /a/. Our new popcorn word for this week is the. We will be reading and doing lots of activities focused around the very popular children's book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You Hear?, by Bill Martin, Jr. and Eric Carle.

You can watch Bill Martin himself read this fun book here: YouTube: Bill Martin reads Brown Bear.

In Math, we are using Mrs. K.'s stuffed animals for sorting, patterning, measuring weights, and comparing.

In Science, we will watch what happens when we put a stalk of celery in colored water, and discuss why we get our results!

We will also practice what we've learned during our Daily 5 and Centers times. We are learning how to "build our stamina" for reading, writing, and listening to a story up to 20 minutes - we are at 14 already! We learned that practicing this will help us to be better readers!

Have a great week!

Thursday Night is Parent Night!

After all the students left yesterday afternoon, I found a Parent Night notice left on the floor. Since I'm not sure who didn't take their notice home, I thought I would put up a reminder here.

THIS Thursday, Sept. 30, we are having a Parent Night. This is a time for you to come and find out about our activities and procedures and have any questions you may have answered.

We hope to see you there!

Kids Say the Darndest Things ...

They are replacing the boiler for our school, which is right next to our room. They have been doing a lot of loud work (sawing and welding) right outside our classroom, so yesterday I took the students outside for class for a while. Here are some of the wonderful quotes I overheard while we were outside!

GH, upon seeing a leaf blow down the alley: "There goes the best leaf ever!"

KF: "Mrs. K., books are fun!"

Week of Sept. 20

I apologize for the late update for this week - we are getting deep into the throes of learning, and with that comes a lot of work and things to keep up with!

This week is what we at Nicklin lovingly call "Careful Corners." Throughout this week, we will have activities and assemblies centered around safety. Yesterday, we met some firemen, saw what they look like when they are in full gear (so we're not scared), practiced escaping from a burning house, and toured the fire truck. We also watched a couple of videos about fire safety.

Today, we listened to our school nurse, Mrs. Liette, talk about poisons and handwashing. She showed us that sometimes things that are bad for us look like things that are ok, such as candy and juice. We learned never to pick something up if we don't know what it is! We also learned the appropriate way to wash our hands, by getting in between our fingers and under our fingernails, and singing the ABC song to make sure we wash long enough.

Tomorrow we will be visited by someone from the Humane Society to teach us about animal safety, and we will also review being safe on the playground. Thursday, a policeman will visit us to talk about stranger danger and the importance of having your child learn their address and phone number.

Friday we will learn about being safe on and near a school bus.

Aside from all of this fun stuff going on, we are still learning in Language Arts! We have begun learning about the letters and their sounds. Our letter for this week is Mm. Mimi Mouse made a stop in our classroom today to tell us the sound of Mm, and she brought some Mm activities for our SmartBoard. Also, we can now read three words: I, can, and we. We look for these words in all of our reading!

Next week, we will be learning about the letter Aa, the "popcorn word" the, and we will be doing more math activities with stuffed animals (I will provide the animals this time), and more science activities with our plants.

Have a great week!

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Chicka Chicka, BOOM BOOM!

I had a spur-of-the-moment idea today. I already had planned to have the students act out (role-play) Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, but on a whim, I decided to video it. A couple of boys were sitting off the screen to the left, so I apologize if your child cannot be seen. I promise, they were there and participating!

Kids Say the Darndest Things!

Every morning I put out the big blocks for the children to play and explore with while others are eating breakfast. This is what I overheard today:

S: "This is the queen."

H: "No, I'm the queen, silly!"

The other item I got out this morning for free exploration was our linking cubes. Every year it seems, the students love making "trains" out of them, and seeing who can make the longest/tallest. Today, they accomplished something that hasn't been done in a few years, and the excitement could almost be felt. Can you tell what they did?

Yep, they stretched that thing all the way from one end of the room to the other - length-wise! My, but they were proud of themselves! I just love it when the "little" things tickle them pink!

Week of Sept. 13-17

This week in Language Arts, we will have many activities focused around the very popular and very fun book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, by Bill Martin, Jr. & John Archambault.

It's a hilarious account of what happens when too many letters of the alphabet try to climb a tree at once on a dare! Your child will love reading this with you if you order it from Scholastic! Paper orders are due Friday; online orders are due the 24th.

In Math, we will have fun with our stuffed animals. We will sort them several different ways, categorize them, and even measure them!

In Science, we are still studying plants. Last week Mrs. K. brought in several plants for us to observe; this week, we will learn about what is involved in taking care of them!

Next week is our Careful Corners week. We will be learning about many ways to stay safe - fire, nurse/medicines, strangers/police, dogs, and bus.

Have a great week!

First Week Under Our Belts!

Well, we have our first full week down in the books. We learned all about the rules in our classroom and around the school, practiced "reading" every day, and made lots of new friends! We read about a young raccoon who didn't want to go to school, but his mother gave him a special gift that made him feel better. Be sure to ask your child what that gift was! Our very first "popcorn word" was I. We can read it anytime we see it now! We also began experimenting with several different math manipulatives, including blocks and colored bears. We wrote in our journals, and learned how to draw as many details as possible in our pictures.

This week, in Language Arts, we will be reading Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten, as well as other "kindergarten" and "beginning of school" books. Our new popcorn word is can.

In Math, we will continue exploring with our manipulatives, brainstorming ways to use them. We will also continue making our own color posters for our walls, and counting to 10.

In Science, we will begin learning about plants. Mrs. K. will bring in several plants for us to observe and take care of.

Finally, we will begin learning procedures for learning centers. We will practice matching letters, counting bugs, exercising our fine motor muscles, putting together puzzles, and using lines and curves to create letters.

We hope you have a great week!