Welcome to the 2012 - 2013 School Year

Welcome to our Lincoln Kindergarten class!  I am enthusiastic about starting another year of Kindergarten, and I can't wait to meet our new friends.

I know for parents and children, the first day can be full of many emotions.  There can be excitement, apprehension and anxiety.  Here is a web site you may want to link to for some ideas on how to prepare your child for the first day of Kindergarten.   I have listed some of the major points below.

         *  Talk about school in a positive way.  Stress that learning is important and fun.  Talk about what the child should expect from school.  What are some activities and what goes on at school?  Discuss why there will be rules at school and talk about what some of those rules might be.  Talk about eating lunch at school, playing at recess, making new friends and having lots of fun while learning.

                 Our class will be going to lunch every day at 11:30 a.m.  We will go to Art once a week.  And we get to go to P.E., Music, computer lab and library twice a week.

           *  Begin including routines and structures to your child's day.  You might even practice getting dressed for school, preparing the backpack and lunch, and walking or driving to school.  Practicing can help ease the transition into an environment where there will be many routines and structures.

          *  Teach your child to write her first name - first letter capital, the rest small.  Knowing this skill coming into Kindergarten may give your child confidence from the get go!

             *  Teach and encourage independence.  Make sure your child can dress and undress himself.  This includes zipping, buttoning, putting on shoes and tying them.  Your child needs to be able to take care of all bathroom needs. 

The main advice I can give parents is to relax and treasure the day.  Feel confident that your child will be cared for by our entire Lincoln staff.  

Kindergarten is a fun place to be!

 

The Polar Express

    

     The Polar Express was our last activity before the winter break.  We read the book by Chris Van Allsburg.  We sequenced the events in the book, and we discussed setting and characters.

     Like the boy in the story, we wrote about what our wish would be if we were chosen to receive the first gift of Christmas. 

     We used shapes to construct the Polar Express train.

     We had a full day of Polar Express activities on our last day.  Everyone was invited to wear their pajamas and slippers to school, and all the school gathered together in the gym to watch the movie.

     Our December Family Project was to make a train car from a box big enough to sit in comfortably and see over the top.  Any materials could be used to decorate the train.  Our families were very creative, and we had beautiful train cars.

     While the students were away at Art class, the room was transformed into the Polar Express.  The chairs and tables were all pushed aside, and the cars were all put together to make a long train.  After Art, the students were taken to a different classroom.  We were listening to a story when the conductor, Mr. Garcia, showed up to punch our tickets and take us to the train.  The conductor led us back to our room, and the students entered to find the Polar Express waiting for them to board.

     While "riding" on the Polar Express, the students were served cookies and hot chocolate.  Each child was given a bell tied onto a red ribbon to wear around their neck.  The bell was a reminder to always believe and a reminder of our special day.

 

 

Holidays Around the World

      We continued our Holidays Around the World unit.  Using our Promethean Board and Google Earth, we flew from Colorado to the country of Germany.  This technology was exciting to the students.  What a great way to build interest in globes, maps, countries and technologies. 

     We learned that the Christmas tree tradition probably started in Germany.  Gingerbread is also a German tradition, and we included a unit on gingerbread men.

 

      This is our interactive writing about Germany.  Below is our tannenbaum hats.

     Another day we flew to Mexico to learn about their holiday traditions and Los Posadas.  After finding Mexico on our world map, we colored a map of the country and the Mexican flag in our holiday suitcase.  We also made pinatas from white paper lunch sacks.

     We read the book, The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tommie dePaolo.  The book tells the legend from Mexico about the beautiful poinsettia.

     I shared a live poinsettia with the students.  And we created our own flowers with construction paper.

Our interactive chart for Mexico

      Our trip to other countries ended in Israel where we learned about Hanukkah.  We were fortunate to have our parent, Mrs. Hinton come to our class and tell us about the 8 day Jewish holiday.  She shared with us her family's menorah.

      Many of these ideas are from the Kinder by Kim website.

Gingerbread Men

     It is Gingerbread Man week in our class.  We will be reading many different versions of the story.   We will compare how the stories are alike and different by looking at the story elements - characters, setting, problem and ending.  Yesterday we started with the book by Karen Schmidt.

     After reading the story, we sequenced, drew and labeled the characters on our own papers.

     Today our book was, The Gingerbread Boy by Paul Galdone.  We then compared it with the story from yesterday.  The students were quick to point out that the characters and ending were different from the Schmidt version of the story. 

     We started writing our own books about the gingerbread man.  Students are using the frame, "I can run from a _____".  They are responsible for writing all the words and illustrating the pictures. 

Holidays Around the World

We started our unit, Holidays Around the World, in our own country. The activity pages for this unit were stapled into a file folder. A cardboard handle was added to the top so the file looks like a small suitcase. The students drew red stripes on the handle to make it look like a candy cane.

We began the unit by discussing the traditions our own families honor. It was decided that most of our families put up a Christmas tree, hang our stockings, exchange gifts and have a visit from Santa.

In our "suitcase" we found the United States on a world map and colored it in. On the next page was a map of the United States where we found our state of Colorado and colored it.

We looked at our U.S. flag and talked about how it looked. The students were excited to notice that our flag has a pattern on it. (Since our math unit on patterns, we have been finding patterns every where!)

Today we began talking about the holiday traditions and customs of Germany. On the Promethean board, I used Google Earth to show the children where we were in Colorado. Then we flew across the ocean and landed in Germany. What a great tool to visualize traveling around the world!

Our class learned that the Christmas tree  originated in Germany and is called the tannenbaum. Families gather together and enjoy baking together. One of the favorite cookies to make is gingerbread. Therefore, this week our class will be participating in many gingerbread men and Christmas tree activities.

In our suitcase of activity pages, we found Germany on our world map. Our word this week is compare.  So we compared our country to Germany and noticed that Germany is smaller than the United States. To color in the Germany flag, we had to research on the internet what colors to use because no one knew.

I am surprised and excited about how interested the students are in their maps and flags. One little guy chose to finish coloring his flag instead of going to recess. Now that is something!

In math, we started our new unit on measuring. We traced our shoe and cut out the shoe print. The students then measured how many unifex cubes long their print was. They had to record their answer.  We then exchanged shoe prints, and we measured someone else's print.  Using our word compare again, we compared our prints to see which one was longer, smaller or just the same.

Reindeer & Count Down Chain

      We started off the holiday season by studying about reindeer.  We learned many interesting facts about real reindeer.  On the first page of our book, we cut apart and put back together the sentence, "Reindeer are mammals."  Mammal was a new word for us, so we had to research and find out what the word meant.

      On the second page of our book, the students chose their favorite fact about a reindeer and wrote it, being very careful to sound out each word.  On the last page, we used different shapes to draw reindeer.

 

     Together we labeled the parts of a reindeer.

      

      The students were then given their own paper where they could label the reindeer.

      To make a reindeer, we traced our foot for the face and traced out hands to make the antlers.  We glued these pieces onto a stuffed paper bag and added accordion legs.  These are the cutest reindeer!

       After the students created this cute paper bag reindeer, they wrote a fiction story about their special magic reindeer.

      On the first day of the month, we made a classic Kindergarten holiday tradition - a red and green paper chain.  Twenty-four links are on our chain so we can count down the days until Santa arrives.  The students were very excited and proud of their long, pattern, count down chains.  They all worked very hard to complete all the links.

Pumpkins & Mummies

    

     Our poem for this week was Five Little Pumpkins.  The students love this poem and would break out chanting the poem all on their own at times during the day.  They loved creating their own pumpkins for our fence.

  

   

     We are learning to use our sounds to spell words.  The best place to start with this skill is in labeling.  Here is a picture of our class labeling a pumpkin together.

During our lessons on the life cycle of a pumpkin, our class read the book, Pumpkin Jack. 

     This is a book about a boy who puts his pumpkin out in the garden.  Over the seasons, he watches the pumpkin change.  In the Spring, he finds that Pumpkin Jack has rotted and produced lots of other new pumpkins.

     After reading the story, the students decided that they wanted to observe what our pumpkin would do over time.  We already had a plastic box full of dirt where we had planted seeds.  So we put our Pumpkin Jack in the box and covered it with a lid so it wouldn't stink in our classroom.   We predicted that over time our pumpkin would rot.  We have been recording our observations each day of what Pumpkin Jack looks like.

      This fun science activity came from Mrs. Jump's blog.  Our class also used her ideas for the book, Where's My Mummy?  

    Our class is working on naming characters and their characteristics in books.  This was a good book to practice this particular skill.  We focused on Baby Mummy and how he looks, what he does and how he feels.

    
     Together we completed a chart with the frame, "When I'm scared, my mommy _____."  This helped us make connections to complete our own frame on our paper.  The best part was making our own Baby Mummy.

     On Friday we wrote our first book!  We titled our book, I See.  While writing the books, our authors practiced creating text, sounding out words, locating words in the room and copying them for their story, letter formation and illustrations.  They are very proud of their books, and I am proud of the work they accomplished on the first book they authored and illustrated. 

     In math, we are working on ordering numbers.  When given 4 different numbers, the child should be able to put them in order from the smallest to largest number.  

      In class, we played a card game, called Compare or Snap,  which you can easily play at home.  Use number cards 0 through 10.  Shuffle the cards, place them face down.  Each person turns the top card over and compares the numbers on his/her cards to see which number is greater and which number is less.  Whoever has the greater number says, "snap" and gets to have both cards.

     Next week, we will be talking about scarecrows!