This Week in the Green Room...

This week was filled with what we at Nicklin call "Careful Corners". This is a whole week full of events and activities focusing on being safe. On Monday, Mrs. Scott, our school nurse, spoke to us about being safe at home, specifically not touching things if we don't know what they are. (Sorry I didn't get any photos from that day!) The teachers put on a skit in which we were introduce to Little Red Riding Hood and her farm friends. She kept picking up dangerous things on her walk to Grandma's house, and the animals helped her remember not to touch them!

On Tuesday, we learned about being safe on the playground. We practiced the rules on our playground equipment, then had some extra time to play and remember them!

On Wednesday, Fireman Robbins visited to help us learn how to prevent fires, and how to be safe if we are ever around one. He even dressed in his uniform and mask so we could see he's not scary! We also practiced crawling under smoke to get out, and the famous "Stop, Drop, and Roll" if our clothes are ever on fire. Finally, we watched Little Red Riding Hood make some very bad choices during dinner with her animal friends, until the kitchen caught on fire, and she helped all of the animals get out of the house safely!

Listening to Fireman Robbins

Fireman Robbins dressed in his gear

Crawling under the smoke

Practicing "Stop, Drop, and Roll"

Stop, Drop, and Roll

Stop, Drop, and Roll

Crawling under the smoke

On Thursday, Officer Lee visited to talk to us about Stranger Danger, and to remind us to learn our address and phone number in case of emergency. He also showed us his cruiser, and even let us sit in it! We also practiced the safe way to cross the street on this day. We went to the corner of Nicklin and Park Streets, practiced pressing the Crosswalk Button, and crossing only on the walk sign. Little Red Riding Hood, once again on her way to Grandma's house, was met by several "strangers", but with the animals' help, she remembered to yell, "No!" and get away from them.

Listening to Officer Lee

Officer Lee talks about the tools he keeps in his cruiser for safety

Getting a chance to sit in the cruiser

On Friday, Mr. Dan brought a few friends, including "Buster" the Bus, to talk to us about being safe on the bus. We learned that we have to sit "Seat To Seat and Back To Back", and that we should use our "inside voices" while on the bus. We even got to take a quick trip around the block to practice our bus safety rules! Finally, we watched as Little Red Riding Hood and her animal friends rode on two buses to school - some of those animals need to come to Careful Corners to learn how to ride the bus safely!

Listening to Mr. Dan and "Buster"

Abbey even got picked to participate!

When we weren't learning about safety rules, we were practicing the rules at our math and literacy stations, as well as learning about the letter Ee and the popcorn word like, and the number 2!

Sorting the marker caps onto the Lego table - what a creative idea she had!

Matching letters into the correct square

Building letters with wood pieces

Making letters with Playdoh

Sorting by size, shape and color

Using the sensory table to find letters

Stealing her idea

Using the computer

Reading

Up this week: we will be reading several books about one of Mrs. K.'s favorite characters: Froggy!

We will be learning about the author, illustrator, characters, and setting, and we will be comparing several different Froggy stories to see how they are alike and different! We will also be working on the letter Dd, the popcorn word and, and the number 3.

Don't forget, Family Reading Logs will be collected on Tuesday morning. You must have at least 30 books recorded on the paper for your child to be recognized at the assembly, and to be entered in the prize drawing at the end of the year! This is a requirement because of our Title I funding status.

Have a great week!

This week in the Green Room

This week we learned about the letter F and the sound it makes, like at the beginning of "fish". We learned the hand sign for F, which looks like the "ok" sign.We added another popcorn word, "can", to the two words we already know, "I" and "a". We also finally finished up our Fall round of NWEA testing. In math, we focused on sorting by size, shape, and color, and recognizing numbers between 1 and 25 in order to color our charts. We practiced reading using several easy readers Mrs. K. gave us to keep at school for a while. We will use these to practice reading our popcorn words.

Piqua City School has an online Parent Access feature that you can use to see your child's progress at any time. "Assignments" are posted regularly, and you are encouraged to view your child's results. In kindergarten, of course, we do not give assignments; however, the teachers this year have been asked to post results of our work in the classroom with your child. If you would like to log on and view your child's progress, please send me an email to request your login code.

This week also kicked off our annual Cookie Dough Fundraiser. This is a very important fundraiser for Nicklin, as it helps us have money for field trips, our Kindergarten Musical, and other activities. There are prizes for those students who sell the most cookie dough, and there is a pizza party for the class that sells the most. I think we can do it with your help!

Here's a look at some of our activities from this week:

Using playdough to build letters as
well as hand strength

Using the computer for fun instead of testing!

Building letters with wood pieces

More letter building with wood pieces

Reading

Reading

Sorting by size, shape, and color

More sorting

More sorting

Sorting letters into the matching space

In math, we have been learning to recognize numbers by uncovering them on the smartboard and coloring the same number on our charts. You probably saw these come home in our Parent Packs this week.

Working on coloring the right number on our charts!

Using the Smartboard to guide us

Here's the finished product

Finally, next week we will be learning about the letter E, we will be doing more number recognition and sorting, and we will be learning lots about safety. We will focus on poison safety, fire safety, stranger danger, bus safety, playground safety, and crossing the street safely. Be sure to ask your child each day about the skits the teachers will put on to teach these concepts! There will also be a video, classroom discussion, and activities each day to practice each form of safety. This is the perfect time to continue or begin to teach your child your address and phone number. You may think they can recite both, but many times they are not able to do so when in a different setting, such as school. It is extremely important that your child know his/her home address, and at least one phone number to reach you in case of emergency. One thing I suggest is to have them tell you their address and phone number every time you get into the car. This is a great way to remember to practice these, and will help your child associate these when you are not at home. Doing this once will not help them remember; it must be done repetetively, until they can produce it without your help, and even then, keep it up so they don't forget!

Have an awesome week!

This Week in the Green Room

This week was filled with activities and LOTS of testing. If you came to Meet the Parents/Teacher Night on Thursday, you heard about the NWEA and DIBELS testing that we started this week. The NWEA tests are computer-based individual tests that measure your child's placement in reading and math. The DIBELS tests are paper-based individual tests that help us to see how many letters your child can recognize and whether or not they grasp the concept of beginning sounds at this point in the year. The results of both of these tests will help me plan and tailor my instruction to your child's needs.

NWEA Testing

DIBELS Testing

I can put students on the computer for testing and still work with the other students, but I must do the DIBELS testing myself. While I was doing this testing this week, your child spent this time playing with exploring our math materials. Some built awesome pictures and structures, while others found, ahem, "inappropriate ways" to use the materials. Of course, I took this time to review our classroom rules and procedures, and discuss appropriate ways to complete our work. This is always something that takes several weeks to sink in, but we'll get it, sooner or later!

Somewhere during all this testing, we found a little time to read the book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" We discovered we can all "read" this book because we can use the pictures to know what the words say, and we learned our very first two popcorn words: I and a. Your child should now be able to read "I" and "a" anytime you are reading a book to them and point to one of those words. It is fine to start this now - the earlier, the better!

Besides acting out this story (sorry, I don't have any pictures of that), we also began learning how to write our color words. We matched the color word to the animal in the pocket chart, then completed a worksheet that helped us learn how to spell each color word. We even wrote each word with the correct color!

I also gave each student several M&M's along with a sorting sheet, and made them work for their candy! They had to sort the M&M's onto the animal that was the same color in the book, then count each group and write the number before they could eat the M&M's. They loved this, and even begged to do it again!

I mentioned above about Meet the Teacher night. On Thursday, I introduced my homework policy to the parents in attendance. If you were not able to attend, I will be contacting you via email to explain my homework requirements. In a nutshell, your child will have homework to complete every night. Sometimes it will be just to read a book and record it on your Family Reading Log; other times, it will involve computer-based activities as well. Please be on the lookout for this email, as our homework will begin later this week. Click here to view the presentation I used to introduce the homework.

Lastly, a few reminders:

Reminder #1: I have had several students who have not been bringing their Parent Pack (green folder) to school (or home) every day. It is very important that this folder is brought back and forth, as it is the main line of communication between home and school. We all know how papers can get buried in the bottom  of a bookbag, never to be seen again until June - this folder helps to reduce the chance of that happening! As soon as you have checked the papers in  your child's folder (or recorded the books read) each night, please have your child pack their folder back in their bookbag so it is ready for the next day. This helps them learn how to be responsible for their belongings. I have already heard more than once this week, "My mom/dad forgot to pack it!" Of course, I never let them get away with this! I always tell them it's not Mom's/Dad's school folder, it's theirs, and it is their job to remember it.

Reminder #2: All money sent to school MUST be sent in an envelope with your child's name (first and last) and the reason for the money (lunch, school fees, library book, etc.) I am not a mind reader when it comes to loose money, who it belongs to, and why it's being sent to school! :-) And of course, your child doesn't know why they have it - half the time, they don't even know they do have money in their folder!

Reminder #3: If you would like to help out in the school in any capacity, or attend any of our field trips, you must go through the fingerprinting process and be Board Approved. You can do this by calling the Board Office at 773-4321 to set up an appointment. However, if you would like to attend our first field trip (coming up at the beginning of October), you must complete the fingerprinting process by this Friday, September 13, in order to be placed on the September Board agenda. The October Board meeting is not until after our field trip, so if you miss the September deadline, it will be too late to go on the field trip.

Reminder #4: Please continue to have your child wear his/her transportation necklace until the bus drivers are familiar with each student's stop and caregivers. This will continue through September.

This coming week, we will be reading and completing activities based on the books:

We will be waiting to see what kind of crazy antics those letters and number get themselves into this week!

Have an awesome week!

Mrs. Krouskop-Smith

This Week in the Green Room

Well, we survived our first full week!

I would just like to take a moment to say this now, before I get long-winded and lose you. :-) PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE help your child remember to wear their transportation necklace to school EVERY DAY. We've already had one student get on the wrong bus because she didn't have her necklace, and I didn't have my list with me at the time. If you need a new one, please let me know.

And one other note of business: please also help your child remember to bring their Parent Pack (green folder) to school every day. It is extremely important that all notes, money, etc. be placed in their folder for me to see. Sometimes students are told to give their note directly to me, but as you might expect, sometimes five-year-olds lay things down, and forget what they're supposed to do with those things! I do check every folder every day, so anything that's in the folder will be found by me. However, I do not check bookbags, so if it is in the bookbag but not in the folder, I will not receive it.

OK. On to our classroom happenings for this week!

We had an adventure with that rascal the Gingerbread Man. He kept running away from us!

image from MyCuteGraphics

First, we read the story

The Gingerbread Man

Then we made our own Gingerbread Man.

But of course, that naughty guy escaped from Mrs. Ritter's oven when she peeked in on him!

To find him, we went on a tour of Nicklin School. We found several clues, but couldn't find him at all. We made "Missing" signs and posted them around the school, in case anyone else saw him. Guess who found him for us? Mrs. Henderson, our Principal! She came running into our classroom that afternoon, all covered in flour and carrying our gingerbread man! She said she was working hard in her office, and he came running by, so she reached out and grabbed him for us! After she returned him to us, we did what everyone does to naughty little gingerbread boys ... we ate him up! He was super yummy.

Whew! What a ride he took us on this week! During all this hullabaloo, we:

• learned about the title, author, illustrator, and characters of a book
• compared different versions of the same story
• made and brought home a story retelling activity
• completed an activity that had us following directions
• found color words in our very own little gingerbread "readers"
• practiced the correct way to use scissors
• Mrs. K. gave us each a gingerbread cookie - we took one bite - then we graphed which part we bit off first. It was tied - 9 of us bit the head and 9 of us bit the leg, while 3 bit the arm. Then we got to eat the rest of our cookie!
• and we even made our own class book, which you will get to read when you come to Parent-Teacher Conferences in November!

This week we also learned about our classroom rules. We have several "people" who help us remember the rules:

• Poky Pink helps us to remember Rule #1: Follow directions quickly.
• Butt-in Brown and Rudy Red help us to remember Rule #2: Raise your hand to speak.
• Betty Blue helps us to remember Rule #3: Hands and Eyes and Rule #4: Criss-cross Applesauce.
• Yelling Yellow and Whispering White help us to remember Rule #5: Bubble in your mouth.
• Tattletale Tan and Greedy Green help us to remember Rule #6: Make smart choices.
• And finally, Pouty Purple and Alright Orange help us to remember Rule #7: No Pouty Purples, just Alright Oranges!

We also play a game with Mrs. Krouskop-Smith every day. We work together as a class to get points ("smilies") by following the rules, but Mrs. K. gets points ("frownies") when we're not making good choices. Because we're still learning how to work together appropriately, Mrs. K. is in the lead right now. We're sure that will change soon, though! Hopefully this gives you an idea of the expectations we have for behavior at Nicklin.

We met Mrs. Fair for music, and she taught us some really cool songs. We will visit her every Monday. We also met Mrs. Hopkins in the library. She read us a neat story, and taught us a little about using the library. We will visit her every Wednesday for storytime and book checkout, and every Friday for checkout only.

The rest of the time each day was spent learning how to work in small groups. This week's focus was on exploring our math manipulatives. Soon, we will be moving toward actual work in these "stations". This is the time that Mrs. Krouskop-Smith will be meeting with us in small groups or individually. Here are some pictures from this time in our day:

What's up for next week? Testing, testing, and more testing. We will begin our first round of standardized computer testing of each student in both language arts and math. We will also complete an initial reading fluency test on your child. The results of this test will help Mrs. K. place the students into groups based on their individual needs in reading. Following this, each student will receive instruction based on their reading level. This is in accordance with Ohio's Third Grade Reading Guarantee, which states that every child will read on-grade-level in the third grade. Those who aren't on level at that time must be retained. Gone are the days of playtime-snacktime-naps in kindergarten! :-)

We will also (when there's time!) read and do activities based on the book

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Have a great Labor Day Weekend!

<3 Mrs. Krouskop-Smith