Wowsers!

Wow!  What a busy day we had!  We had our centers this morning and some new fun and exciting things during our SMART time.

Our four centers included continuing work with abcmouse.com.  We had planned on trying a new website, but there was trouble with certain games loading, so we postponed the new site.

We also created an underwater scene using cray-pas and water.  We filled in the blanks to label our ocean animal and its habitat.

We colored in a book titled, I Have Fish.  This book helps us practice our sight words and is great practice for recognizing our color words.

At the last station we made -at family necklaces.  We added colored straws in a pattern to the strings of our necklace.  This was a class favorite!

At SMART time we added in a number crabwalk.  We had to pick a number out of the "ocean" then carry it on our tummy as we crabwalked to a cone with the corresponding number.

On the balance beam, we had some secret words that were covered with cones.  We had to crouch down and lift the coin in order to read the word hidden under the cone.

Our fine motor stations were also new!  We used the muscles in our wrist to take lids on and off of jars.

We had a cup of "hot chocolate" and we had to roll the dice to determine how many marshmallows (cotton balls) we needed to add to the cup.  We had to pick up the "marshmallows" with a tweezers.

We also worked on our cutting skills by cutting out snowflakes.

Onto Thursday...

We had a great literacy time today.  We were able to extend our reading stamina to 11 minutes!  We practiced using features of a non-fiction text, table of contents and index.  If you have a non-fiction book at home that includes these features, have your child explain to you how they work!

We also compared and contrasted ocean animals and animals that are pets.  It was fun and interesting to debate some of the animals that were mentioned!

During math we learned a new game, Monster Squeeze.  We have to guess a number that is in between two numbers and as we make guesses, the space between the monsters shrinks.  We even wanted to play this game during choice time today!

We journaled using the ipads today.  We tried using separate "recording stations" on the carpet side of our room to cut back on the background noise. 

 Here are some of today's journals:

Freya's Journal                      Elijah's Journal                              Alex P.'s Journal
Lucy's Journal                       Cooper's Journal                           Lena's Journal

Thanks for sticking with this long post!  See you tomorrow!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Working Hard

Good Afternoon!

We had another productive day at school today!

This morning we read a story on Starfall and figured out words with the -at, -an, and -am chunks.  We can look for these chunks as we read, just like Chunky the Monkey!

We also read our new poem, Jack Be Nimble.  Some of us took turns jumping over our "candlestick." (Mrs. Huettl's water bottle!)

During math we practiced our number writing using a dice rolling game.  We practiced tracing first, then wrote numbers on our own.  We are getting so much better at this!

This afternoon we worked in our journals for the first time since last Tuesday!  It was nice to get back into the swing of writing our stories! 

Have a wonderful evening!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

We're Back!

Welcome Back!

Today we got right back in the swing of things.  This morning we started our new story, Life in an Ocean.  This is our first non-fiction piece and we began introducing non-fiction text features, like the table of contents and the glossary!

We also have our new amazing words:

In math today we continued to work in our number writing books, practicing our number writing with numbers 1-6.

This afternoon we began our new science unit: wood.  We explored different types of wood and talked about characteristics that made the wood samples similar and/or different.  We also talked about the process for making particleboard and plywood.

We have been having fun at the easel painting turkeys the past week!

We added an ocean area to our classroom during choice time.  We took on the roles of different ocean sea life!

Have a great evening! 

Love,

Mrs. Huettl

Happy Thanksgiving

Good Afternoon!

Today was another day focused on the turkeys!!!  This morning we explored the turkey on the starfall website.  We were able to pick a hat for the silly turkey, and choose its feather colors.  We were even able to pick a book for the turkey to read.  We had lots of fun and laughs!

During math we played a dice game.  We rolled two dice and counted the total number of dots.  If we found that number on our paper we colored in the Thanksgiving picture next to the number. 

This afternoon we worked in our journals and watched Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving!

What a fun day together! 

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!  I am so thankful for this group of kiddos and parents like you!

See you on Monday!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Turkey Time

Good Evening!

This week is all about the Turkeys!!!  We had a new word work choice today called Read the Room.  We had to go around the room looking for turkeys and then we read the word and wrote the word that was written on the turkey.

We also started the process of making our symmetry turkeys.  Today we painted the turkey feathers and colored and cut the turkey head, waddle, beak, and feet.  Tomorrow (once the paint has dried) we will start the gluing process. 

We had a nice visit from our 2nd grade buddies today.  We made hand print turkeys and tried out a Thanksgiving word search!

Hope you have a wonderful evening!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Better Late than Never...

Good Evening! (Sorry about the pics-couldn't get them to rotate!)

It's been a busy, busy weekend!  I'm going to do my best to think back to our Friday activities!  First off, it was our friend Jesse's birthday!  Happy Birthday Jesse!!!

Friday morning we continued to add Word Work into our Daily 5 routine.  The kiddos are having fun working with their words in many different ways!

We talked more about nouns on Friday and sorted places and things.

We also practiced writing our letter T,t. 

Number writing can be quite tricky.  We have a number writing book that we will be slowly working on over the next couple of weeks.  On Friday, we worked writing the numbers 1, 2, and 3.

Friday was also our 50th day of school!!!  Zero the Hero brought us another zero-shaped treat!

I hope everyone had a great weekend.  We only have two days together this week-it's going to go fast!

I can not wait to see the remaining families at our parent teacher conferences tomorrow night!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Number Stories

Good Evening!

A big thank you to all the parents that came out for conferences this evening!  Also, the book fair will be closing tomorrow at 3:00, so if you wanted to come in and get a book, time is running out!

This morning we did a different greeting where we sang "Hello Neighbor" and greeted different friends around the room. 

During our Daily 5 time, we added in the choice of word work.  Students work with their sight words in a variety of ways.  I was not able to sneek pictures, but students could choose between wiki sticks, magnetic letters, stencils, or white boards to work on their spelling their words.

We also classified and categorized the different machines from our story Dig, Dig, Digging.  Our categories included, machines in the sky, machines that work outside, machines that rescue people, and machines that work with dirt or rocks.  We found that many machines fit under more than one category. 

In math we solved some number stories using the Promethean board.  We even wrote some number sentences for those of us that were ready for it!

Have a wonderful evening! See you in the morning!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Estimation

What a great day in kindergarten!!!

We had four centers this morning.  We worked on our personal learning paths on abcmouse.com:

We practiced writing our sight words and listening for the /t/ sound.

We picked an amazing word and created a setting for our construction machine.

We put together words to make a sentence that made sense.  Then we wrote and illustrated the sentence.

During SMART time today we used our hand muscles to push feathers into styrofoam and then pluck them out.

We sculpted and molded our pumpkin pie playdough.

We laced using fall themed lacing cards.

We also practiced identifying our coins while bouncing on the trampoline.

For our cool down, we practiced our belly breathing and listened to some relaxing music.

For our math lesson we talked about estimation.  We talked about how sometimes it's okay to have a good guess instead of the "right answer."  We estimated the number of cubes in a jar.  We used a jar of ten cubes to help with our estimations.  When giving our guess, we said, "about____ cubes."  Because an estimation is not an exact answer.  We also talked about why estimations of 1 or 99 would not be good guesses for these jars of cubes.

Have a great evening!  I look forward to meeting with several of you tomorrow evening!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl