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

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