Friday, September 27, 2013

September is almost over!

WOW! It is hard to believe that the first month of school is almost over! How did that happen so fast? It feels like the kids of G-3 have been in school longer than just one month because they are AMAZING! I am sooooo proud of all they do and how they will try anything! I wanted to post some pictures of some of the things we have done this past month. Enjoy!


Zero the Hero


Zero the Hero comes to school only when we have been in school for an amount of days that ends in zero. This means that Zero the Hero came during math time on the tenth day of school and recently on the twentieth day of school. Here are some pictures of our Zero the Hero thus far.
 



Name Punch

One day as a center we practiced writing our name by punching it in cardboard with a push pin. I was a little scared to attempt this, giving kinders something sharp. Yikes! However, my fear was unfounded because these children did wonderful and they had a ton of fun.


Tools at School


In social studies one week we learned about tools we use at home and tools we use at school. After the lesson we made our own school tools bags. Inside them were pictures of a glue stick, scissors, crayons, pencils, and other fun things.

 

Letters Galore!


Our current phonics program is called Discovery Phonics and it moves at a fast pace. So far the kids have learned the letters: A, B, F, D, and G. They have also learned the slides ba, fa, ga, and da. Along with the slides and letters they have also learned the sight words a, I, and, the, and of. Take a look at some of our cute activities so far!


I hope you enjoyed seeing what we have been learning and doing over the past couple of weeks! Have a great weekend.


Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Bus and Playground Safety

Hello again! This past week has been an exciting one so far. The kids are starting to come out of their 'shells' so to speak and they really seem to be adjusting to our class schedule. This year Mrs. Howell wanted teachers to teach children how to play on the playground safely and how to ride the bus safely. This turned out to be a fantastic idea!

 Bus Safety

In order to learn more about bus safety our vice principal Mr. Haber setup a special meeting with a couple of our wonderful bus drivers! Students were able to board the bus and listen to the bus driver.


The bus driver explained that there are some important rules to follow when riding a bus.

1). Stay sitting in the seat "bottom to bottom, back to back". This means that kids should be sitting with their bottom on the bottom of the seat and their back against the back of the seat.
2). Do not eat any food, candy, or drinks on the bus.
3). Be aware of what is going on around you when you get off the bus.
4). Tell the bus driver if anything (such as bulling, or name calling) happens on the bus.

Playground Safety

On the playground we have been learning how to properly use the slides, swings and playground equipment.


To help us learn playground safety the kids in Mrs. Amsterdam's class made us a video. The kids loved seeing the 'big kids' being a little silly in the video. Hope you all have a great week!

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

First weeks of school are a success!

Thank you sooooooooooooo much to ALL parents and guardians for all your help, understanding, and for filling out all the paperwork I had to send home and for coming out to Open House Monday night! I loved meeting you all. It seems that this year's transition from summer to full day school has been an easy one for the kids. Some have had a couple tears here and there but to me they have all been AMAZING!

The Class Dojo monsters you helped you kids create have been one of my favorite things this year! Never before have I used that feature of Class Dojo! Check out some of the monsters they kids have created!

 

If you want to receive your child's weekly behavior report, link your e-mail to your child's account. If you need me to send you an invite to join Class Dojo just let me know that and I will get right on it!

On another note, I tried to take pictures of what we have done over the past three weeks. Each day we started off the morning playing with blocks, cubes, puzzles, Legos, finger puppets or play-doh.


The kids are absolutely awesome at sharing and helping each other! One day the kids created their own finger puppet show! It was one of the cutest things I have seen in my six years of teaching.




Some of the books we have been reading include The Kissing Hand, No David!, David Goes to School, The Big Mouthed Frog, David Gets in Trouble and Wimberly Worried.


All the kids seemed to like the David books the best! My favorite part was when students made their own Davids! We made them as part of our Peacemakers and Peacebreakers lesson which connected to what we have been learning in Social Studies about citizenship. We learned that Peacemakers follow rules and Peacebreakers break the rules.



Last week we started our reading and math curriculum. In reading we learned the letter A, and we practiced counting the words in a sentence.


This week we will be learning the letter B and the ba- blend. If you want to see some of the videos and songs we learned to go along with these letters click on the dots located on each individual letter!




I hope everyone enjoyed the kindergarten keepsake boxes the kids made for you at Open House. If you were unable to come then keep your eyes open for a bag to come home soon with your child's box inside it.



Once again thank you all! I don't think this school year would have been as successful without your help! Also thank you for all the school supplies you provided to the classroom! As always if you have questions or concerns don't hesitate to e-mail me or post on our Facebook page.