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!