May 29-June 1

I hope you all enjoyed the beautiful weather and were able to spend some time relaxing this weekend! I can't believe we are in the final days of Kindergarten! I look forward to spending these last days celebrating our learning together! 

Upcoming Events: 

Our BYE countdown to summer dress up days are below:

6/4: B= bright colors/sunglasses

6/5: Y= you're active/workout wear for field day

6/6: E= bE you! Wear whatever makes you, YOU! :)
6/6: 11:30 Dismissal 

Math: This week mathematicians will review and practice story problems. We will focus on making sure we have both a picture and an equation to show the answer.  We will also be working to show teen numbers in many ways:  with drawings, tools and equations.  Lastly, we will be working to compare numbers using the terms: greater than, less than and equal to.  All of this work will prepare us for our last math test of Kindergarten!

Reading: In reading this week we will shift from the role of a reader to the role(s) of actors and producers!  Readers will choose a favorite book to make into a "movie." They will create a plan to act it out and create props and scenery.  We will even have a "film crew" to record our movie and will celebrate our work with a class viewing party on Friday.  It will be such a fun way to wrap up our last reading unit of the year.

Writing: This week we will use checklists to revise and edit our writing.  We will put all of the things we have learned about composing stories, spelling and punctuation to publish our final story of our Kindergarten career.  One of the charts we will use is based on the work of our mentor author, Mo Willems! 

Science: Now that we've had a chance to really explore and understand inclined planes, we will be challenging ourselves to use our knowledge of gravity and force to change direction of  things headed down an inclined plane.  We will also have a chance to create our own simple machine inventions to make a job we have a bit easier.

May 21-24

We had a blast at the Building for Kids last week! Check out NDLC's facebook page to see some pictures!

In library, the students researched animals and created this Chatterpix video. I'm impressed by their research and speaking skills!

Upcoming Events: 
May 22: Family Night
May 25-28: NO SCHOOL
Our BYE countdown to summer dress up days are below:
6/4: B= bright colors/sunglasses
6/5: Y= you're active/workout wear for field day
6/6: E= bE you! Wear whatever makes you, YOU! :)


Reading: Kindergartners will be starting book clubs this week! These book clubs help us to learn more about characters and what is happening in the story. Kindergartners explore characters and stories by acting out. Here are the most important parts to remember when acting out books:

• Make your reading sound smooth (not. choppy. like. a. robot.)
• Check how your character is feeling! 
• Make your voice match the character's voice 
• Make your face and body match the character's 
• "Pop out" important parts of the book

Writing: This week, writers will learn about different ways to elaborate when writing true stories. One way to elaborate is to make their characters talk back and forth in speech bubbles. Writers also show and tell the way the character felt in the story, especially at the end. We will use a checklist to make sure our writing has a beginning, ending, speech bubbles, feelings, and setting.

Math:  This week, the mathematicians will practice composing and decomposing 2D shapes, comparing numbers using greater than and less than, and creating teen numbers by circling a group of ten and then counting the extras. We will also discuss measurement; specifically, length, width, height, weight and capacity. 

Science: After visiting the Building for Kids and thinking about how force can make simple machines work, we will dive in to a study on incline planes. We will watch videos to build our knowledge and then rotate through the following centers:

• We will watch videos and look at pictures of balls and ramps. Then we will draw blue prints for when we make ramps. 
• We will use paper tubes, wood, and bouncy balls to observe and explore.
• Scientists will be given Marble Works materials to build, observe, and take notes on what we notice.

May 14-18

Happy Mother's Day! Thank you for sharing your amazing children with me during the day:)

Our field trip is Thursday!  Remember that students and chaperones need a bag lunch and drink (no lunch boxes) unless you preordered a bag lunch from school!


Upcoming Events: 
May 17: Field trip to The Building for Kids
May 22: Family Night
May 25-28: NO SCHOOL
Our BYE countdown to summer dress up days are below:
6/4: B= bright colors/sunglasses
6/5: Y= you're active/workout wear for field day
6/6: E= bE you! Wear whatever makes you, YOU! :)

Library Book Return Dates:
May 15


Reading: This week in reading we will focus on sharing the information we learn about characters with our partners.  Working to retell our stories and include character feelings will be a big portionof of our work this week. We will also learn that sometimes stories don't always come right out and say how a character is feeling and why, so we need to use what we have read to infer how a character is feeling.  This is such an important skill for young readers. 

Writing: Our minilessons will be focused on checking words in their writing to make sure they look right.  We will use vowels charts to ensure that each word has a vowel. Also, we will use blend charts (sh, ch, th, etc.) and alphabet charts to make sure we are getting the right sounds and letters in our writing. Toward the end of the week, we will use the book Knuffle Bunny to study how other authors add beginnings, endings, and settings to their stories.

Math: This week in math our focus will switch back to comparing quantities and noticing similarities and differences in how groups of objects are arranged to show a number.  This helps us to be flexible as we look to find partners of numbers 6,7,8,9, 10.  We will also work on making two unequal groups equal and to really focus on what needs to be added to make them equal.  

Science:  This week we will continue our science unit about forces. Our key idea is that by playing with and thinking about forces, people can accomplish surprisingly big things. For example, this week we will solve the mystery, “How can you knock down a wall made of concrete?”  Your child will do an activity where they investigate what happened to a “wall” made of cups when they changed the strength and direction of a paper wrecking ball.

May 7-11

Remember to turn in your permission slips for our field trip. If you need another slip, just let me know!


Upcoming Events: 
May 17: Field trip to The Building for Kids
May 22: Family Night

Library Book Return Dates:
May 7
May 15

Teacher Appreciation Food Sign Up 

Reading: We will continue acting out our books with a partner.  We will learn that readers think “How does this character feel right now?” and then make their voices, faces, and bodies match that feeling. Also, when readers come to a part where a character doesn’t say anything, they can think, “What might the character say in this part?” and then look closely at the pictures to help imagine those words. By acting out our books, we will develop an even deeper understanding of characters in our books. Partners will retell the story after reading each book.

Writing: After working hard during boot camp to make our writing easy to read and to write more sentences in our books, writers are ready to tackle true stories! We will start to brain storm by making book covers to help us hang onto our ideas. As readers, we know that we can take a picture walk to understand how a story will go. We will use that idea and quickly draw the pages of the book before we write. It's like a writing picture walk. Then as we think about writing the words, we will say them out loud and ask ourselves “does that make sense?” before writing.

Math:  This week in math we will continue to study the ways numbers to work together to form larger numbers 6,7,8,9,10.  This week we will continue playing a game called Pigs in a Pen.  The object is to put out 10 objects in 2 rows of 5.  One student closes his/her eyes and another student removes part of the group.  The other student then has to use how many they see to determine how many have been removed.
As students play they say this rhyme....



"Oink, Oink 3 pigs in the pen, tell me what is the partner of 10."
The students then say both quantities together "3 and 7 are partners of 10."

This game helps with both subitizing work and counting on from a number which is an important addition strategy. This would be a great to work with math at home!

Science: Our Force Olympics unit is off to a great start!  We have loved discussing machines that help us and how they work!  This week will explore the work that is done by large machinery that is used on construction sites and will discuss the amount of work they can get done compared to what we can do.  We will watch videos and observe the work done by cranes, bulldozers, trucks and excavators.  We will even learn to act out work words like: tilt, lift, push, and spin.