November 13, 2009

 

Ms. T spent most of the past two weeks with us in our classroom.  In honor of Ms. T we made terrific trees, learned the “Turtle” poem, heard the story of Timothy Turtle the Tattle Tale and made tissue turtles.  We also played Telephone Bingo and graphed our telephone numbers.  I read the stories Yertle the Turtle, The Big Toe, and The T-shirt Song Book.  We wore our favorite T-shirts to school and made our own decorative T-shirts at the Art Table.  As always, we learned how to print uppercase and lowercase T’s.  At the Listening Center, we listened to the stories Tikki, Tikki, Tembo and Bear’s Toothache.  We did “Write the Room” for T words, worked on rhyming at the Computer Center, and worked on matching the names in our class with the correct number of syllables. We also worked in our Weekend Journals. 

 

In math, we are still working in Unit 2 of our Investigations program.  We are working on developing strategies for accurately counting and keeping track of quantities up to 12.  To reinforce this concept, we played the game “Build It”.  We also used “Inventory Bags” and represented the quantities of what was in the bags with pictures, number and/ or words. The children worked on the numbers 7 and 8 in their Counting Books.

 

Yesterday, in honor of Veteran’s Day, we had two visitors talk to the children about being in the Armed Services.  Chief Heidi Willson, who was a director for the United States Navy Band, and her son Cadet Ethan, who is in an Army Corp program, lead the children in a patriotic sing along. They also shared military pictures related to the 5 branches of service, showed their uniforms and medals and even did some drum beats and drills with the children. The children loved the program and hopefully gained some knowledge and respect for the United States Armed Services.

 

I want to let you know that Mrs. Singer, the Kindergarten Reading Specialist, has been coming into our classroom to help support students in the literacy process.  She is working in all of the Kindergarten classrooms.  I find the extra support in the classroom very helpful.  

 

Picture retakes will be Tuesday, November 17^th.  If you want a retake, please send back the original pictures and a note letting me know you want a retake. 

 

We are starting “Special Person of the Week” next week.  When your child is chosen to be “Special Person”, they will be given a magazine to fill out over the weekend and then share it with the class on the following Monday.  If you know a particular weekend would not be good for your child to be selected, please let me know in advance and I will purposely not pull his or her name for that weekend.

 

 Finally, I am very happy and proud to report that this week the children filled our class jar all the way up to the top with the pretty blue marbles.  They have worked so hard at staying on green and will be rewarded next week with some extra Gym time.  Has your child told you about how when the class receives a compliment we get to put extra marbles in the jar!  The past two weeks the class has received a number of compliments for walking in the hallway so nicely and for being such a respectful class.  I really am thrilled with how well they have been behaving.

 

Have a nice weekend.

 

Paula Grace