A Chill in the Air

Good Afternoon!

We worked really hard durin gour Daily 5 time this morning!  Students were engaged in word work, reading to self, and listening to reading.  In fact, one student proudly cam up to me after one of our choices and said, "Mrs. Huettl, my name has two vowels and and two consonants in it!"  (I wonder which word work this kiddos chose today...)

Mr. Tinjum came in this morning and talked to us about the new word of the week:  Honesty.  We drew some pictures about not blaming others, or how it feels to be blamed for something you did not do.

In math today we order green paper strips by length.  Then we centered them on a piece of red paper and made a tree!  Tomorrow we will add ornaments to our trees.

This afternoon we started talking about adjectives, specifically referring to color.  Students were challenged to use a color word to describe something in their journal today.

Becuase we are talking about grassland animals this week, we have a giraffe project at the easel during choice time!

Each time we get dressed for outside, it takes a little less time.  Now onto organizing the coat room!

Have a great evening.  Stay warm!  See you tomorrow!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Let it Snow!

Best thing about practically eating brunch and having the first recess of the day?  We were the first ones to run through the freshly fallen snow!  What fun!  It doesn't get any better than that!

Getting everybody dressed and ready took quite a bit of time today.  The more independent your child can be at dressing themselves for the outdoors, including zipping coats and putting on mittens, the better.  

Happy Birthday Lena!!!!

This morning we read our new story, Animal Babies in Grasslands.  We found so many popcorn words in our book!  We underlined them with wiki-sticks.  

We used the ipads during guided reading today to make some of our sight words:

We had four new word work choices today.  We used whisper phones to read and practice spelling our words. 

We wrote our words in secret code-invisibly with white crayons, then painted over them with watercolors to reveal the words.

We wrote our words in markers-blue marker for consonants, and red marker for vowels.  

Our final word work choice was the crocodile chomp!  This basically means we sort our words according to the number of syllables in the word, but it's more fun with a crocodile head staring at you while you work!!!

This afternoon we worked on a secret project-so no pictures!!!

Hope you had a great evening!

Love, 

Mrs. Huettl 

S is for Skittles

Good Evening!

Happy Birthday Ellie!!! (One day early)

What a fun day!  We started out with a family breakfast for families with last names L-Q.  Here are some of the families from our class that attended this morning's breakfast:

This morning we talked about proper nouns.  A proper noun is the name of a person, place, or thing, or an animal.  Say that sentence to your child and see if they sing it back to you!

We practiced the letter S,s in handwriting.  This letter can be a bit tricky and is commonly reversed.  If you notice reversal of the letter S,s at home point it out to your child and have them correct the direction of the letter.

We met with our buddies this morning.  We shared our poem notebooks with our buddies and we played a matching game with dominos and our number cards.

This afternoon we had a fun math activity.  Since we are talking about the letter S this week, we ssss-orted and graphed SSSSS-kittles!  Yum!  We are showing secure graphing skills.  We do lots of graphing during our morning calendar math, and the practice is paying off!

I hope your family made it home safely...the roads got pretty slick!  Enjoy your weekend and the freshly fallen snow!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Movers and Shakers

I'm sure you are all aware by now, but we do a LOT of moving and grooving in kindergarten.  It helps blood flow to our brains, it is engaging, and we can recall information more readily when it is learned to the tune of a song.

We have a couple of songs we have been singing to practice counting by tens.  Here are some photos of us dancing and singing by tens.  Have your child count by tens for you at home.  Chances are they will sing them, rather than just say them. :)

We finally got our Whiz of is hats labeled.  They are so much fun!

We did a lot of reading this morning and have built our stamina up to 12 minutes!  This is great news for our guided reading groups.  We can do a lot in those 2 extra minutes!

In math we started discussing probability.  We talked about things that were likely and unlikely.  We also discussed what it means for something to be impossible. (we decided going to the moon at recess today would be impossible)

It's hard to believe that tomorrow is Friday already!  Have a great night and I'll see you tomorrow.

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

A Full Room

Good Afternoon.

Today was quite a busy one!  This morning was the first of five kindergarten open houses for Somerset.  We had about 30 people in and out of our room this morning checking out kindergarten!  What fun!

We had four centers during our literacy time this morning.  We continued our learning paths on abcmouse.com.

We sorted pictures by intial sounds, /s/ and /t/.  Some of us even took a challenge and tried writing the words to go with the pictures!

We played a math game where we counted the dots on a domino and had to put the domino next to the corresponding number on the number line.

For our art center, we sponge painted either an armadillo or a tortise (two amazing words and characters from our story this week.)  We labeled our picture using our amazing word cards as a reference.)

We had SMART time this morning as well.  We continue to work on teen number identification, sight words, and three letter words with the short /a/ sound in the middle.

Our morning work this morning was in preparation for our math lesson.  We cut out number cards 0-20, and then during math we had to put all of the cards in order.

During journals we continue to have fun with our Whiz of is hats!

We had a great day today!  Looking forward to tomorrow!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

Photo-less

We were so busy today...we are photoless.

This morning we did our Daily 5 routine, with Read to Self, Listen to Reading, and Word Work.  Mrs. Huettl met with small groups for guided reading and sight word practice.

We talked breifly about the letter /s/ sound, which are sssss-cure with!  Then we searched for the letter in our poem, "Sing a Song of Sixpence."  These will be coming home in your child's poem notebook this weekend.

In math we did some addition and subtraction using a mystery bag.  Mrs. Huettl would add or take away from the cubes in the mystery bag and we had to figure out the number of cubes in the bag.

This afternoon we continued to work on being the "Whiz of is" in our journals.  Bystanders would think we were having a birthday party with all the hats that were passed out.

Tomorrow is the first Kindergarten Open House for next year's students.  We will have guests in and out of our room during the morning.

See you tomorrow!

Love,
Mrs. Huettl

A little of this-A little of that

Yikes!  Two posts in one, yet again!  Let me get you up to date!

On Friday we celebrated Alex V.'s birthday!  Happy Birthday Alex!!!

We also met with our buddies and played a dice game with the 100 grid.  It was lots of fun-sort of like Chutes and Ladders, without the Chutes.

We also read with our buddies.

We worked on nouns for more than one on Friday and matched words to their pictures.  We can change a word to mean more than one by adding an s at the end.

Today was Monday.  We had four new word work stations:

Writing in sand.

Stamping our sight words.

Making our sight words by gluing letters onto paper.

Searching for sight words in a bottle of rice.

We also work on more -at and -am words, adding the /s/ sound in the beginning, making sat and Sam.  We have a friend named Sam!!!

This afternoon we went on a wood hunt in our classroom.  Mrs. Huettl his a bunch of wood samples.  We had to find them and then get them into the correct bin by looking at the different characteristics.  We decided that it was hardest to distinguish between basswood and pine.  Particle board and plywood seemed to be the easiest to differentiate.

Afterwards, we each took a label that read, "This is made of wood."  We had to go around the room and stick the label to something made of wood. We have labels everywhere-doors, furniture, walls, and of course our wood floor!

We had a great day together.

Love,
Mrs. Huettl