First week in our new home

Welcome back!  The K-Kids and I were so excited to check out our new school, learn where our special classrooms were, and get to know our new classroom.  On Tuesday, our first day in the new building, Mr. Becker held a special assembly in our new FULL SIZE gym!  The kids were amazed that there are now six basketball hoops and drinking fountains right in the gym.  The K-Kids now have physical education class five days a week which is great for exercise and to help increase our coordination and  body awareness.  The top favorite things about the new school are: larger classroom, a restroom in the classroom, our new playground, and our new schedule with more gym time and longer French and music times.

Our focus this week was learning our way around the new school, reestablishing routines, and SNOW. Unfortunately, mother nature did not cooperate too much with the third lesson, but we had fun with the theme anyway!  We wrote about what we did over winter break and decorated paper snowsuits.  Both of these activities are on display on our Kindergarten door.  We also read stories about snowmen and created a tree map about snowmen.  Tree maps are great visuals for classifying and grouping information.  The kids helped fill in the map by answering what snowmen CAN do and what snowmen ARE.  As a group, we completed a science experiment by using hot water and Borax to create a snow flake.  The kids discussed why it snows and then learned the real reason why it snows (unfortunately, Santa does not make it snow!).  The science experiment also encouraged the K-Kids to investigate crystals and what a crystal is.  During Writer's Workshop, the K-Kids wrote a "how-to" book explaining how to make a snowflake using hot water and Borax.  I am so impressed with their handwriting and independence when writing!

Literacy Corners were in full swing again.  We reviewed WOW words already learned and got back into the routine of working independently while Mrs. Brown meets with reading groups.  The independent work focused on color words, body part words, and reinforcing WOW words.  The K-Kids also learned two new reading strategies during reading groups - stretchy snake and eagle eye.  Stretchy snake is when you stretch a word out slowly to hear the sounds and put the sounds together to figure out the word.  The kids heard "stretchy snake" a lot this week when they were stumped with a word which prompted them to stretch out the word and attempt to sound it out.  Eagle eye is when you look at the picture to check the sounding out or if you need a visual clue.  This is a strategy that the K-Kids use a lot.  It should not be the first strategy used since pictures do not tell the whole story, but it can be used if stretchy snake does not work.  Over the next couple of weeks, the K-Kids will continue to learn more reading strategies, and those strategies will be posted on the blog for you to reinforce at home!

We continued working in our calendar journals this week.  The calendar journals allow the children to follow along with the calendar routine and record the date, how many days we have been in school, and the weather.  Tally marks, days of the week, months of the year, and number writing are also reinforced during calendar time.  The K-Kids played a "teen frame" game that reinforced that numbers 11-20 can be viewed as 10 plus another number (ex. 15 is 10+5, 12 is 10+2).  Another fun activity we did was estimate how many Unifix cubes could fit into our gloves and mittens.  Each K-Kid made an estimate for his/her own glove and then checked the estimate by really putting cubes into his/her glove!

Have a great weekend!  I will see you all on Monday as we begin learning about the polar regions!