Holidays!

I hope that each and every one of you had a wonderful Holiday with your family! I have very much enjoyed getting to know all of my kindergarten friends this past semester and I am soo very proud of all that they have learned and also for how caring each one of them is! I am not for sure if they told you or not - because I won't lie it was a little crazy the last few days of school - but in Kindergarten we Kare about others and like to do little projects for others. So we made Santa's and I took them to the hospital to put on the food trays and in the cafeteria. On the back I put a little label that said "Made with love from Kindergarteners at Meadow Lane Elementary". Hopefully we will get to do a few more service projects for our community this next semester! Here is a picture of the Santa's we gave to the hospitals!

Also I have been meaning to post something about our Holiday program all break and now here I am finally posting - I am so very sorry it took me so long.

Mrs. Schroeder and I are so proud of all our friends - they really did an amazing job at the program. Here is a recap of our program - I am sorry our songs are missing!  

The two days before break we played fun holiday games and also had a photo booth which of course was a favorite - for both students and teachers and here is a video of some of our pictures which we showed before our program started...

  

Hello everyone and welcome to our Holidays Around the World program! We traveled to 5 different countries and we will tell you what we learned in each one. We also made a video of our travels for you to watch. Then we will sing a song for each country.  Let's  get started...

We first traveled Germany and in Germany families decorate Christmas trees and we made a Christmas tree in Germany! Here is the video of us in Germany...

Then we traveled to Holland and in Holland Sinterklaus leaves gifts in kids shoes and in Holland we made a wooden shoe with carrots and hay! Here is the video of us in Holland... 

We then traveled to Israel and in Israel they celebrate Hannukah and in Israel we learned how to play dreidel! Here is the video of us in Israel... 

Next we traveled to Africa and in Africa they celebrate Kwanzaa and in Africa we made kinara bracelets! Here is the video of us in Africa...

We also traveled to America and in America we made ornaments and we use jingle bells to celebrate the holidays. In America some kids get presents from Santa! We even had elves that came to keep an eye on us! Here is the video of us in America and of our sneaky elves, Snowflake and Twinkle. 

We enjoyed learning about different cultures and we liked learning how people celebrate! Here is the video of us during our travels. 

 We also made fun reindeer projects.  We hope that you like them.
Thank you for coming!

Again I am so very proud of how hard the kids worked for the program so I sure hope you all enjoyed it! I hope you have a very Happy New Year! I will see you all next year!!!!!

King Nathan

Last week Nathan was the King of the Jungle and he had a great week! Nathan's favorite color is red, his favorite movie is Johnny Test, and his favorite sport is Hockey! He also really likes mucho nachos and monkeys and really likes Frosty the Snowman - especially the book and the song! When he is at home he likes to play the wii! He is a special kid because his family loves him and when he grows up he wants to be a daycare person just like his mom! Here is a video of his week as King!

              

Crazy ~ Busy ~ Fast Week!

Please remember our Holiday program will be Tuesday at 1:00 in the auditorium. This should last until about 1:30. Please bring your families so they can see all of the work we have been doing!! Doors will open at 12:40. We will be working very hard on practicing our lines and songs for you! Please practice at home if you can Monday night!

We will also be working on some of our other fun projects over these next two days! We will also be reading some Holiday books and playing some holiday games! It is sure to be a fun time!

I hope you have a great week before our winter break!! I will hopefully be sending home some homework to do over the break in your child's Kindergarten folder this week so your child can keep practicing all the things we have learned! But of course I just want you all to have a wonderful break and have fun spending time with your families!

Happy Birthday Leina!!!

Leina is now 6 years old! We celebrated her birthday yesterday and let me tell you Leina was very excited about her birthday! She had a wonderful day at school and we all had a very easy time coming up with adjectives to describe our friend Leina! We hope Leina had a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Here are a few pictures of her day!

 Birthday girl Leina!

 Singing Happy Birthday to Leina!

 Birthday girl Leina with her friends!

 Birthday girl Leina and her present from us!

 Birthday girl Leina and Snowflake!

Middle of December

Well…I hope my kindergarten friends are ready for a wild, crazy, fun week in kindergarten!!! Of course, we will be learning lots of stuff and we will be getting ready for our program next week!!

In literacy we will be starting a brand new unit called “Wonders of Nature.” Our theme this week will be “Watch It Grow!” Our essential question will be “What do living things need to grow?” I know it is a silly time of year to be talking about this…but we will be learning more about this in the spring too!! We will be singing the song “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.” The stories we will be looking at are called, “ My Garden” and “Growing Plants.” We will also be looking at some poetry….can you believe we do that in kindergarten? As we read we will continue to look at the concepts of print, genre, and we will start to talk about the reading strategy of rereading. We will continue to blend words and we will be using this strategy as we read “Hop Can Hop” from our crabby books. We will continue to learn about the letter ‘H’ and we will be sorting lots of picture cards and trying to decide what they start with!! This is so easy for us now:) Can you see we have a lot to do!?!

In writing this week we will be talking a lot about poems - we will make a class poem and maybe even a few poems of our own if we are lucky!! In grammar we start to learn about pronouns! Which is crazy!!!

In math we continue to learn about teen numbers and the number of tens and ones each teen number has!! We are recognizing and writing numbers 1-20….this can be tricky!! Some of us like to get the ones place and tens place mixed around. We will also be looking at shapes and practicing sorting them by their attributes. 

In unit studies we will finish up talking about Celebrations Around the World and we will be doing lots of projects!!!! We have been having so much fun learning about different cultures and their celebrations! We can't wait to show you our suitcases and passports!

Please remember our program will be next Tuesday, Dec. 22nd  at 1:00 in the auditorium. This should last until about 1:30. Please bring your families so they can see all of the work we have been doing!! 

Also, this week we will be giving lots of assessments to close out the 2^nd quarter. Please make sure your child is rested and has ate a great breakfast!! I want them to be fully ready to show me how super smart they are!!

Queen Haylee

Haylee was our Queen of the Jungle this week and she had a fabulous week! She loves the book "Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons" and Mrs. Woita loved reading it! All of her friends loved it as well and even helped read the book - Haylee knew the whole story by heart! She also likes the colors blue and green and the movies Inside Out and Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer which is also her favorite song! Haylee also likes volleyball, pizza, and pugs! Haylee is a special girl because her mommy and daddy love her very much! Something she likes to do at home is play outside with her friends and when she grows up she wants to be a zoo keeper! I think that would be an awesome job for her! Please check out the video of her week as Queen...

                     

King Devin

Devin was the King of the Jungle last week and what a quick week it was! Devin had a wonderful week and is always trying his best at school! Devin likes the color pink and the book "Slappy's Revenge" and football. His favorite food is tacos, his favorite animal is monkeys, he likes the movie "Frosty the Snowman" and the song "Dynamite"! When Devin is at home he likes to watch tv! He is a special kid because his family loves and cares about him so much! When he grows up he wants to be a football player! We all loved learning more about Devin and know he can do anything he sets his mind too! He had a wonderful week and here is short video featuring our King!
                    

Happy Half Birthday Trevin!

Today was Trevin's Half Birthday and he had a great day! We were all super excited to see Snowflake with the birthday suit on! He was tied up and hanging from the ceiling! His real birthday is June 8th and I know he will be excited in the summer to celebrate his birthday! 

Here are a few pictures from his day...

 Singing Happy Half Birthday to Trevin!

 Trevin and his friends with his present from all of us!

 Half Birthday Boy Trevin!

Trevin and Snowflake!

Time is Flying...

So as I am sure you all know our elf, Snowflake, came last week to keep an eye on us during the holiday season and has been moving around our room since he arrived in his makeshift hot air balloon! Snowflake even left us a poster with Santa’s Tips for staying on the nice! I just know that this week we are all going to be trying very hard to stay on the nice list! Here is a picture of Snowflake when he arrived in our room and the poster he left for us!

In Unit Studies we will work on our Around the World book and will be packing/making a suitcase and getting a passport so we can start traveling the world to learn about more cultures and their celebrations. We will be traveling over the next two weeks after our afternoon recess to different countries/classrooms and learning about celebrations people have in Africa, Israel, Holland, Germany, and the United States. We will be learning about Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, the wooden shoe, the Christmas tree, and Santa. It is going to be a super fun time full of learning about different cultures – we will also learn some songs and will start practicing for our program that is Tuesday, Dec. 22nd at 1:00 in the auditorium! We hope you are all able to come!

In Math we will be continuing to talk about teen numbers and seeing the group of ten and ones. We will also be looking at different attribute cards (which is a fancy name for shapes) and will be exploring with them to sort them by color, shape, and size and we will make patterns with them too! We will also be reviewing the equals and not equals signs and comparing numbers. We will continue to tell and solve more story problems and a great time to practice story problems at home is during dinner – for example you could say “we had 6 rolls on the plate and we ate 3 of them, how many do we have left?” or “I ate 3 chicken nuggets and then had 2 more, how many chicken nuggets did I have altogether?” or you can even ask your child if they can come up with a problem of their own. 

During Literacy our essential question this week is “How can people help to make your community better” which is a wonderful topic to discuss and I am excited to hear the conversations we will have this week about pitching in and making our community the best that it can be! We will be reading the following stories – “Roadwork”, “A Community Garden”, and “The Bundle of Sticks”. In our crabby books we will be reading “I Can You Can” and in guided reading your child will either read “Can you Fix It” or “We Clean”. Our vocabulary words are community, improve, confused, harvest, and quarrel. Again this week we will be focusing on those key details of the story and answering and asking questions when we read. This is actually a review week and next week we are suppose to learn the word “my” and focus in on the letter H but we will be switching those around because next week will be a little crazy with getting ready for our program so this week we will learn about “my” and “h”! I will also be assessing quite a bit this week for report cards too! Always so much to do!

A big thank you goes out to all of the families that were able to attend Math Night last week - I sure hope you had fun playing some math games - also everyone should have received the folder full of math activities to do at home. I hope you have fun with them all! Please let me know if you have any questions! Here is a short video of your super smart Kindergarten Math Wizards and a few pictures from Family Math Night!

                          

It is sure to be a fast and fun week again in Kindergarten! I hope that Snowflake has nothing but good news to report!

Parent Readers!

We have had 3 parent readers these past few weeks and we have loved every single one of them! We had Leina's dad come in and read a few weeks ago and he read one of Leina's favorite stories. Then the next week we had Jaxson's mom come in and read one of our favorite stories. And today we had Evan's mom come in a read to us a super fun book about Firefighters! 

Here are a few pictures of our awesome parent readers!

Leina's dad getting ready to read "Pigsty".

We are all loving this funny book!

Leina thinks her dad is soo awesome!

Leina and her fabulous dad!

Leina's dad even stayed for lunch!

Jaxson's so excited his mom is reading "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom"!

We all helped read this super fun story!

We sang the ABC song together at the end of the book!

Jaxson and his super cool mom!

 

His mom even stayed for lunch!

 Evan was so excited to show his friends his book!

 We all really enjoyed this story!

 Evan loved that his mom came in and read to us!

 Evan and his awesome mom!

Evan's mom stayed for lunch too!

Happy Half Birthday Scarlett!

Today Scarlett is exactly 5 1/2 years old today! Her real birthday is June 4th - but we had a fun time celebrating today! All of my friends had a easy time coming up with adjectives to describe our friend Scarlett! We hope she had a very Happy Half Birthday! Here are a few pictures of the day...

 Half birthday girl - Scarlett!

 Singing Happy Half Birthday to Scarlett!

 Scarlett and her friends with the gift we made for her!

Birthday Girl Scarlett and Snowflake with his birthday suit on!

Happy Birthday Evan!

Today December 3rd was Evan's 6th birthday!! He was a very excited boy when he came to school today and has been looking forward to his birthday for awhile! All of Evan's friends loved making his gift and we had a blast singing him Happy Birthday. Here are a few pictures from his day...

 Birthday Boy Evan!

 Singing Happy Birthday to Evan!

 Birthday Boy Evan with his friends and his present!

 Evan and Snowflake!

Happy Half Birthday Max!

Today we were all surprised to see confetti in the coat hall when we came to school! All my friends were super excited- but when I asked whose birthday it was - we didn't have any birthdays on December 2nd- so we were all confused! Although when we came into our room we saw confetti and a birthday crown on Max's desk- then it all clicked! Max's birthday is actually on June 2nd so today is Max's half birthday!!! There was a note from Snowflake our elf  (who came yesterday to keep an eye on us) that he borrowed Confetti'soutfit- because as you know this is a very busy time  of the year for elves! So anyways it looks like we will be celebrating some half birthdays over the next few months and it will be a great time! It was so easy for all of us to come up with adjectives to describe Max for his gift today! We hope he had a wonderful half birthday! Here are a few pictures from his day!

Half Birthday Boy - Max!

Singing happy half birthday to Max!!

Max and his friends and his gift from all of us!

Birthday boy Max and Snowflake! 

The Holiday Spirit is Here...

I hope that you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving and my friends had a good break. I also hope that they are ready to get back to school and are ready for a fun, fast 16 days! We will be doing a lot over the next 3 weeks and we don't have any time to waste!

I am thinking that one of Santa's scout elves will probably be coming to keep an eye on us during this crazy time to make sure we all stay on the nice list! Our elf, George, came to my house this past weekend to keep on eye on Henry, Lily, and Macy so I am sure Snowflake will be arriving anyday now to keep watch over my friends while they are here at school! I am crossing my fingers for excellent behavior because like I said we have lots to do!

In Literacy we will be focusing on the letter d and the word "do". Our vocabulary words are appreciate, culture, prefer, proud, and tradition. We will be reading "What Can You Do With a Paleta?", "Cultural Festivals", "A World of Festivals", and in our crabby books we will read "Sid" and in guided reading your child will read either "Neighborhood Party" or "Parade Day". If we can squeeze in any holiday books we will be doing that too! We will work on our comprehension skills as well when we are reading stories and will be talking about the character, setting, and the events that take place throughout the book. We will be blending and segmenting words and also reading silly/nonsense words this week to get ready for our Quarter 2 assessments!

In writing we will be continuing to learn more about what good writer's do - the CAPS man really helps us remember that every sentence starts with a Capital letter, we need Art work to match our story, also Punctuation marks go at the end of every sentence, and between every word we need Spaces!

In math we will be working hard on learning those teen numbers, we are going to practice solving and telling oral story problems and again reviewing the different strategies we can use to solve story problems. We will be exploring with a balance to compare how much things weigh and we will be using vertical and horizontal graphs to show our results! We will also be talking a lot about number partners and working on our counting mats!

In Unit Studies we are starting one of my favorite units (I know that I say that about all of the units but this one really is a good one) we will start learning about People and Celebrations. It is so neat to talk about our own family traditions around the holidays but also so neat to talk about how different cultures celebrate. We will be making a booklet and talking about what we might see if we were to actually travel around the world! It is sure to be a fun busy week!

Please make sure you are free to come to our Celebrations Around the World Program on Tuesday, Dec. 22nd at 1:00 in the auditorium. You will be getting an invitation soon but wanted to give you a heads up that it will probably last around 30 minutes. I hope that you are all able to make it!

I can't believe it is December and we are almost done with the second quarter of kindergarten!
Also Ms. Shipley's last day is this Friday - December 4th - which is super crazy and I know all of my friends will miss her so very much as will I because I don't know how I will ever manage without her - she helps us all out so much each and every day- so hopefully we will have a super great week since it is her last week with us!

Also please remember that this Thursday, December 3rd is our Family Math Night from 5:30-6:30. I hope you all can make it to this fun family night!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

I wanted to let you all know how very thankful I am...
I am blessed with a healthy family and a job that I love! I am so thankful that I get to work with your children every day! I wanted to share this poem with you all and tell you that I hope that I can be the kind of teacher that teaches your child the importance of being thankful...

Be Thankful

Be thankful that you don’t already have everything you desire,
If you did, what would there be to look forward to?

Be thankful when you don’t know something
For it gives you the opportunity to learn.

Be thankful for the difficult times.
During those times you grow.

Be thankful for your limitations
Because they give you opportunities for improvement.

Be thankful for each new challenge
Because it will build your strength and character.

Be thankful for your mistakes
They will teach you valuable lessons.

Be thankful when you’re tired and weary
Because it means you’ve made a difference.

It is easy to be thankful for the good things.
A life of rich fulfillment comes to those who are
also thankful for the setbacks.

GRATITUDE can turn a negative into a positive.
Find a way to be thankful for your troubles
and they can become your blessings.

Author Unknown

I hope you all enjoy the long weekend!  Please enjoy the video we made! 

                    

Happy Birthday Jaxson!

Yesterday was Jaxson's 6th birthday and oh boy were we all excited to see Confetti, the birthday elf! He left confetti on Jaxson's desk and even wrote him a note on the board!  We all had a great time using adjectives to describe Jaxson to make his present! Jaxson had a great day and is super excited to now be 6 years old! Here are a few pictures of Jaxson's day at school!

Jaxson's friends singing him Happy Birthday!

Jaxson with his friends and his gift from all of us!

Jaxson and Confetti!

Jaxson and the note Confetti left for him! 

(we all agreed we need to help Confetti learn how to write letters the right way!)

Queen Leina

Leina was our Queen of the Jungle last week and she had a wonderful week! Her dad was able to come in and read one of her favorite books Pigsty which was super funny, she also likes the book Shapes. We all loved the book Leina's dad read to us! But back to Queen Leina - she likes the color blue and volleyball and lions. Her favorite food is Lucky Charms and she also likes the movie Olivia and her favorite song is Twinkle Twinkle. Leina is a special girl because she is just the way God made her! When she is at home she likes to play with dolls and when she grows up she wants to be a teacher! I know she will make a great teacher! Here is a video of her week as Queen!

                     

Crazy Busy 2 Days!!

This week will be a quick one- we will be going turkey crazy and talking a lot about the things we are thankful for! Tuesday is a PLC day so it will be a super fast day! If we survive these two days and all the things on the to do list we will all deserve a break!  Although I am sure hoping for a little bit of free time because I have quite a few funny turkey books I know my friends would love!

Thank you Veterans!

On Wednesday, Nov. 11th we celebrated a very important day in our country, Veterans Day! I talked with my friends about how much the women and men have sacrificed for our country to keep us safe and free. We are so thankful for all of the veterans and for all the men and women who are still serving our country! We are truly so lucky to live in America! Words cannot express our gratitude for all that they have done for us. Every passing day I admire and appreciate our veterans even more.

This year the kindergarten teachers at Meadow Lane challenged our students to bring in candy that they got from Halloween to share with the Veterans in our community. I was amazed at how much candy my friends brought in. We had a blast bagging up the candy to share with others. We also made turkey cards that were made with our hands and feet with the words "from our hands down to our feet we say thanks for keeping us free!" and I will be taking them along with our bags of candy to the veterans hospital this weekend to share with them. A few of my friends even took some home to give to the veterans that they know! Please check out this short video we made in honor of Veterans Day.

            

New units in November!

It is the middle of November and we are moving right along. We are starting a new unit in Literacy and in Math! My friends did great on their Unit 2 math test and are excited to keep learning more about numbers. Unit 3 will review and build upon our knowledge of numbers 1-10. We will be focusing on teen numbers and seeing that there is one group of ten in every teen number. This week we will be introduced the to “ten bug” who LOVES the number 10. We will continue to work with 5-groups and if we are lucky we will maybe have one more visit from the 5-finder this week! We will also be learning about number partners and how a number is a whole that can be easily separated into partners! We will also learn about different strategies that we can use to solve story problems! Oh how I LOVE math – it truly is so fun to see my friends learning more about numbers! Remember math night is Thursday, December 3rd and I hope you all can come!

In Literacy we will be starting Unit 4 “Around the Neighborhood”. This week our essential question is “What do people use to do their jobs?” and I can’t wait to hear the conversations we will have! Our vocabulary words are equipment, uniform, expect, remained, and utensils. We will be reading “Whose Shoes?” and “Workers and Their Tools”, which are both informational texts that give us real information and many times include photographs.  We will also be reading “Little Juan and the Cooking Pot” and in our crabby book we will read “Tom on Top”.  During guided reading your child will either be reading “ You Cook” or “On the Job”. We will be focusing on the letter “o” and learning the word “you” this week as well. As always we will blending sounds together to make words and also taking a word and sounding it out slowly - which ties in so nicely with what we have been working on in writing. We will also focus a lot on ending punctuation marks and how our voices sound when we read them.  We will also be learning that an adjective is a describing word that tells us more about something! For example when we are writing about going down the slide at the park we could say we that we go down the big, red, curvy slide at the park!

We will be working on our sink and float books this week! I now we will love experimenting more this week because last week we each got to pick one item to experiment with and we had soo much fun! Be prepared to do some experimenting at home as well! We will be learning words like hypothesis, displacement, and density – geez we will sure be learning lot in kindergarten this week!!

Also if you ordered cookie dough for the school fundraiser- please make sure to come pick it up this Wednesday from 4-6!!

Queen Aubrey

This week Aubrey was the Queen of the Jungle and she loved every minute of it! She was our first Queen and we loved learning more about her! Aubrey loves the color pink and the movie Frozen! She also likes gymnastics and enchiladas! Her favorite animal is a horse and her favorite song is Hillsong-Alive! Her favorite book is "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and her mom even cam in and read it to us and we all loved listening to her read! She is a special girl because Jesus loves her and when she is at home she likes to play school and wants to be a teacher when she grows up - which of course makes Ms. Shipley and Mrs. Woita very happy to hear! We know Aubrey will be a great teacher someday! Here is a video of her week as Queen!

                 

Parent Readers this Week!

This week we were lucky enough to have two parent readers come and read to us. Aubrey's mom came in on Thursday to read and have lunch with the Queen of the Jungle, Aubrey, and Harper's mom was signed up to read today - so we were extra lucky this week! Here are a few pictures of our special guest parent readers!

 Harper and her mom!

 Harper's mom getting ready to read and asking us questions about Charlie Brown!

 Harper does love listening to her mom read!

 Harper's mom read "You've got Talent, Charlie Brown".

 Harper's mom even stayed for lunch!

 Aubrey was so excited her mom came to read!

 Everyone loved this book!

 Aubrey loves this book AND her mom!

 Aubrey's mom read her favorite book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" (it was a super small book).

Aubrey's mom with our whole class!