Leader in Me

Habit 1: Be Proactive is a meaty concept for kindergarten.  We have spent the first six weeks of school digging into the meaning and I believe students now understand ways they can be proactive.  Students came up with the following list:

I sit criss-cross applesauce. (Dyson)

I do something nice for someone. (Drew)

I am quiet when someone else is talking. (Adalyn)

I keep my hands to myself. (Alivia)

I help people. (Roan)

I share. (Thomas)

I choose my own weather. (Harry)*

I try new things. (Lilie)

I find my own fun. (Addison)
I'm in charge of me. (Kayla)

*No matter what the weather, I carry my own sunshine.

During October we will begin Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind.
We will begin our lessons with goals and objectives.  We will also begin keeping our own data binders to record skills we have and the growth we make.  This is supported by our Kindergarten Challenge of learning all the names and sounds of the letters by Halloween.

Field Trip to Mill Creek Pumpkin Patch

Mill Creek Pumpkin Patch

Kindergarten will be taking a field trip to Mill Creek Pumpkin Patch with 1st and 2nd grades on Thursday, October 17.  This will be a culminating event for our thematic unit on pumpkins.  Click on the above button to sign up to volunteer to help supervise this event.  Parents will also be sent an invitation from Volunteer Spot to sign up.

Students will also be parading in their costumes through the nursing home on the afternoon of Halloween.  You may sign up to volunteer for this on Volunteer Spot as well.

What's Going on in Kindergarten?

Practicing Letter Writing at the Chalkboard

Teamwork Building a Marble Maze

Curious Onlooker at the Easel

Lego Mania!

Proud Worker

Circle Time

Happy Birthday, Kayla!

Play Dough "Cookie"

Teamwork Building Pattern Block Designs

Environmental Print

Even before children learn to recognize their own names, they begin to recognize the print in their environment. Our environmental print bulletin board is growing.  Keep those labels, newspapers, shopping bags, etc. coming in! We want it overflowing onto the walls.

What Makes a Quality Illustration in Kindergarten?

In our classroom we use the above poster to set the expectations for our illustrations.  Sometimes you may see a number at the top of your student's work to indicate how many of the above characteristics were demonstrated.

Students are beginning to label and write sentences to go with their illustrations.  All of our high frequency words are posted on a word wall as a reference for student writing.  When students write these words and other words that are posted on shared writing charts, they are  spelled correctly.  We will be helping students to spell proper nouns.  Other words we will be encouraging students to stretch out and write the letters they hear.  Do not be concerned that these words are not spelled correctly as this gives us information about students' phonics skills and indicates where we need more work.

Letter Association

S is for spider.

Miss Fry helped students make Ritz Spiders today.  We used peanut butter to "glue" two Ritz crackers together, 4 stick pretzels to make 8 legs, and two m&ms for eyes.

S is for spiral snake.

Protecting God's Children Class

Please make sure that you have taken the Protecting God's Children Class.  This class needs to be completed before you can participate in school activities such as volunteering in the classroom or going on field trips.  I do not want to disappoint anyone who volunteers to help later in the year.  The next class is offered Thursday, September 19th at 6:00 PM in the school cafeteria.

The Kindergarten Challenge

100% of the Kindergarten Students Will Know All the 

Names and Sounds of the Letters by Halloween

I have completed all of the initial assessments for students in Literacy and Math and we have a good start to achieving our goal (Way to go, Mrs. Ackman!).  By adding up all the the correct answers for the whole class and dividing that number by the total possible correct answers for the whole class (x 10 students), I was able to get a class percentage for Names of the Uppercase Letters, Names of the Lowercase Letters, and Sounds of the Letters.  

Names of the Uppercase Letters - 82%

Names of the Lowercase Letters - 69%

Sounds of the Letters - 58%

Continue to work with your student in learning these skills.  Speed and accuracy in naming letters and producing letter sounds is the number one indicator of early reading readiness.

Students were also assessed on what numbers between 0-20 they could name out of order and rote counting.  The expectation was to identify all the numbers 0-10 and count to 30.  Some students were able to identify all the numbers to 20 and others counted to 120+.  Keep up the GREAT work!

Fine Arts Grant

Our First Art Class with Mrs. Jochem

Art, Music, Dance, and Drama programs are provided by the Fine Arts Grant which is funded by the Tracy Family Foundation.  Mrs. Jochem comes to our school twice monthly to provide visual art instruction to our students.  She uses a variety of materials and techniques.  All Kindergarten students will have the opportunity to participate in the Regional Office of Education Art Show held at Lincoln Land Community College in Jacksonville during March.  We feel very fortunate to have Mrs. Jochem and are delighted to have her back again this year.

Apple Dip

Alivia said, "The dip is good!  My favorite apple was the green one.  It was sour."

Creating Letter Associations

A is for alligator.

M is for monkey.

Things We Do With Our Families

This week we are reading stories about what families do together.  After reading The Picnic at Apple Tree Park, Miss Fry lead the class in a discussion about things we like to do with our families.  We will use our recordings to guide our writing throughout the week.

Friends of St. Mary School

Friends of St. Mary School

FOSMS is my favorite school/parish organization.  It  is a PTA type, grass roots group that puts resources directly in the classrooms where they are most needed.  The last two years FOSMS has given the Kindergarten classroom (and each of the other classrooms) $200 for supplies and activities for the students.   Kindergarten has purchased cooking supplies, pet equipment, and additional art supplies with this money.  FOSMS also paid for the Kindergarten school bus transportation to the pumpkin patch in the fall and the dairy farm and bakery in the spring.  FOSMS fundraisers have included school logo apparel sales, bake sales (which net $600-$900!), monthly aluminum can drives, and concessions at local auctions (Father Tom and Judge Slocum). By attending the monthly meetings (usually the first Wednesday of the month) you can help make valuable decisions about how money is used and what types of fundraisers will be sponsored.  I encourage all of you to try it out by attending the next meeting, October 2nd at 5:30 PM in the school cafeteria.

God Made the World

This week we have been talking about all the wonderful gifts that God has given us.  Today we watercolored a model of the earth to remind us of Psalm 89:12, God made the whole world and everything in it.

Our First Sentence

A baby zebra is a foal.

Today we read Whose Baby am I? and A Pinky is a Baby Mouse, both books about mother animals and their babies.  After we read the books, we made two lists. On one list we put some animal mother names and the other we put some baby names.  We used the words on our lists to "share the pen" and write a sentence.

*The next day we each chose an animal from our lists and then drew a picture of the mother with the baby.

A Full Day at Last!

 In the above pictures students are enjoying some free exploration with math materials.  We will be learning all about the number 1 this week.  We learned a song to help us write the number and put one object on a ten frame.  Later this week we will practice identifying the ordinal first, discover how many combinations of objects equal 1 (0+1, 1+0), and sing the O-n-e song.  We will go through this process for all of the numbers to 9.

(To the tune of Skip to My Lou)

Come straight down and that is all. (3 times)

That's how we write the number one.

Students will be assessed this week to determine how high they can count and what numbers from 0-20 they can identify.  Our first goal is counting to 30 and identifying to 10.  If your child is beyond that, keep up the good work and keep pushing them to the next step.  If your child has not yet met those goals, please work with them daily.  We want the students to be able to count to 100 by the 100th day of school.

In the BEACH Notebooks you will notice a new calendar to record your reading time at home...