Queen Savannah

Savannah was our first official Queen of the Jungle and she loved every minute of it! Savannah loves the color pink and Curious George books - she brought in a Curious George book that had 10 stories and we loved the story she picked for us to read and of course her favorite animal is a monkey. She also loves the movie Zootopia and macaroni and cheese. She loves running and her favorite song is "Cheap Thrills".  She is a special girl because she has a lot of love to give. Something that she likes to do at home is play with her baby dolls. When she grows up she wants to be a hair stylist and own a skate zone! Savannah had a great week and was a wonderful Queen. Please check out her video...
                  

Queen Mrs. Woita

Last week we started our King/Queen of the Jungle. This is a special week for boys and girls where we get to learn a little but more about our friends. All of my friends are super excited about their special week! But first I would like to tell you all a little bit about myself. As most of you know I have four small children who I talk about all the time! Henry is 7 years old and is in 1st grade, Lily is 5 years old and in kindergarten, Macy is 3, and Marty is 7 months old! Boy oh boy how time flies by... I have been married to my high school sweet heart, Justin, for almost 9 years and we couldn't be happier - how lucky we are to have four happy and healthy children! We also have a dog named Olivia who we got right after we were married who taught us a lot about parenthood! I have been a lifeguard, pool manager and swimming lessons instructor since I was in high school and I love to swim!  I student taught at Meadow Lane in 2006 and have been here ever since I graduated and I LOVE kindergarten! Now on to some of my favorite things... My favorite food is pasta, and I love volleyball and have been a volleyball official for 14 years (it's my spending money for the holidays)! I can't really pick a favorite book but I do love anything by Dr. Suess and Nicholas Sparks! My favorite movie is The Lorax and I love almost every song from the movie and I LOVE the song "Happy"! Here is a little video I made for myself featuring pictures of my family and me and my new kindergarten friends!
                 

We love America!

I have loved getting to know each and every one of my kindergarten friends this year. They are all so amazing and I can't wait to see how much they will grow and learn over this school year! Here is a short video featuring all of my friends...
            
Our American Symbols unit and Constitution Day are really some of my favorite things we do during the year. I LOVED reading all of the family constitutions that you made together as a family!Thank you for taking the time to do this together. We really do LOVE America and enjoyed learning about our American Symbols that represent our country! Please check out our video.       
            

Happy Grandparents Day!!!

This Sunday we will celebrate a VERY important day.....Grandparent's Day!!! The kids have been telling me how special you are to them and all of the fun things you do together! Thank you for all you do....know you are loved. Here is a little poem for you...

GRANDPARENTS

Grandparents are special people
with wisdom and pride.
They are always offering love and kindness
and are always there to guide.
They often make you feel
so confident and strong.
Their arms are always open
no matter what you did wrong.
They try to help out
in every way that they can.
They love all their grandchildren
the same whether you're a child,

Or a woman or man.
They are always there to listen
and to lend a helping hand.
They show you respect
and they try to understand.
They give their love, devotion and so much more,
that's easy to see.
Grandparents,
what perfect examples
of the kind of person that we should be.

~By Stacy Smith~

Please enjoy the video we made for you...some of the pictures might even look familiar to you:)

I hope that all the grandparents that are still with us have a wonderful day...  :) Mrs. Woita

                       

Almost September!!!

I can hardly believe that it is almost September!! The start of the school year has really flown by quickly!!! I am sure it is because we are SO busy in kindergarten!!

In literacy this week we will finish up with learning about the alphabet!! We will be learning about the letters S-Z!!  That is SUPER exciting!! Although, next week we will start focusing in on one letter a week!!  On Friday we will review the alphabet and have a little chicka chicka boom boom celebration!!! We will continue to talk about all of the fun things kindergarteners can do. We will continue to review the words ‘I’ & ‘can.’ We have even been reading them in books…YES I said they are reading them. It is pretty amazing to hear these kids already reading. We have also been reading a lot of nursery rhymes…the kids really enjoy these and we have even been learning about syllables!

In writing we continue to become amazing authors!! We now have our writing folders and will be practicing telling our stories out loud to our talking buddies!! This week we will really focus on trying our best as writers and how to draw objects that may seem tricky we will practice drawing people together- but not the stick kind!  We will also be looking at the book “Good Dog, Carl” (which is a book with no words) that will help us learn that stories can be told just through pictures – which is where we will start. In kindergarten we start by drawing pictures then we will add beginning letters to our pictures, then labels, and finally start some sentences (we will be focusing on just pictures this week and will slowly get to the rest).

During math we will be continuing to explore numbers with our counting mats as well as our own counting books but we will also start practicing how to write the numbers 1 and 2 and comparing things that are the same and different!

In unit studies we are continuing to learn about how to stay safe and will finish up our safety books! We will hopefully get to go on a safety walk around the school to practice using the crosswalk and also so we can see the signs that are all around us to help us stay safe. 

 

Remember we go to P.E. on Day 4 on the calendar  – so this week again it falls on a Thursday so make sure to mark it on your calendar. You can find the day on the lunch calendar! I will hopefully also be sending home our homework folders this week and I will try and put that on our calendar as well! Yes I said HOMEWORK - and it is crazy but my friends this year have been begging for homework - so I hope that they still love it once it starts coming home! 

Also this Tuesday is our first PLC Day so we will be dismissing at 2:18 which is 80 minutes earlier than usual. It will be a fast, fun day. 

I hope you had a wonderful weekend and of course if you have any questions or concerns please let me know!  Mrs. Woita

Week 2 of Kindergarten

Well I honestly can’t believe that we are starting the second week of school!

Last week we really did talk a LOT about routines and my friends are really doing a good job with them! 

We read a lot of books that had to do with starting school and especially kindergarten. I love Chester the Raccoon and we read quite a few of his books as well this past week – I am sure you heard all about it! I also hope you liked the Kissing Hand we made for you! We even got to take a quick tour of our school while looking for Chester and we found out where the office is, the lunch room, all of our specials (computer, pe, music,library and art) classrooms are, we also found the courtyards. I sure hope your kids told you all about it! I know they were all disappointed that we never found Chester - but he did leave us a bracelet to make!

In Math we will learn more about our Daily Math Routines which we will do everyday and I promise I will explain in detail at a later time. We also started to learn about how numbers are all around us and we LOVE math already! We read Anno’s Counting Book (which actually has no words just scenes so we will get to make up the words) and will be looking at this book again and will actually get to make our own counting books were we will get to draw scenes of numbers and discuss them with our new friends! Last week we were introduced to our math mats. These are mats that we use to show a number and display objects of that many number. We will use counting mats many times throughout the year and will learn to talk about our display with our class and listen to our friends as they share WONDERFUL ideas!!

In Literacy last week we learned our ABC chant (which my friends LOVE) and also focused on the letters A-H and this week we will keep on going with as many letters as we can get through! We always practice finger writing the letter and saying the sound it makes! We also read a poem everyday out of our "Big Book of Rhymes" and will continue to do this as well. We even read "Animals in the Park" and will be rereading that as well! We will be talking a lot about books and authors and illustrators and what it takes to be a good reader and writer! We will start to look for capital and lowercase letters and also punctuation marks! Hopefully your child told you we learned a new word "I" and we even read sentences with it!  We can point to the words and read the sentence to our friends! We are SOO SMART! And this next week we will learn another new word "can" and I can't wait to see the sentences we read.

 During writing we read “Library Mouse” and discussed storytelling and about writing about what you know. Thank you for sending in a picture of your kindergartener - it was soo fun to hear them talk about it - we still have a few more to share. But please know I love hearing details of all the amazing things my friends have done! We will also be discussing the rules and procedures of writer’s workshop. We will practice how to sit, how to write, and how to put our things away. We might even get our writer’s workshop folders! We will store our writing in them AND be able to use some of the charts to help us spell better! I have learned that we LOVE to talk in our classroom so I know they will love getting introduced to talking buddies. They will have a buddy that they are paired up with. This is the friend they will practice orally telling their stories to before they write. I just know they are going to LOVE this! 

In unit studies we will be learning about safety! This week we will talk about stranger safety, fire safety, and our important emergency information. I will be sending a note home in Wednesday folders about this. On this note I want you to write the primary address and phone number you want your kindergarten child to learn in case of an emergency.The kids are going to be making their very own safety book so they can stay SUPER safe!!

We will continue to go to specials & we all love that time. Here is the schedule for this week:

Mon.: day 1 - Art 

Tues.: day 2 -Computer

Wed.: day 3 -Music

Thurs.: day 4-PE .(please send your child to school wearing their tennis shoes)

Fri.: day 5 -library (please make sure to return your books)

It's gonna be another great week!:) Mrs. Woita

First Week of Kindergarten!

Well...the first week is past us and it has been a SUPER busy and fun week!!! We have been learning all about Meadow Lane and the expectations. We have learned a lot about our 4 expectations...be respectful...be responsible...be safe...and be productive. We have also learned about the voice levels we should use in the building. The week has been filled with lots of excitement and of course, a few tears (but not for long- I promise).  I know it was hard to send your sweet little kindergarten kid off to school, but I want you to know that I am going to work very hard to make sure they are not only learning at school, but that they also feel special. I am so excited to see what the year has in store for us. I know it will be a good one!!

Please enjoy our first week video...You will have to actually go to my blog to watch it! I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend!