Reading Parade- Reading Rocks

Every year our school holds a reading parade where students who read books over the summer are able to walk in a reading parade. Students dress up as their favorite book character. Kindergarten dresses up and watches the parade. 

A few of our characters!

Patiently waiting for the parade to begin!

We have our pompoms ready!

Here comes the band!

AHS drumline and flagline. 

Here are our readers grades 1st-5th.

Our counselor and SRO.

Principal, Assistant Principal, and Instructional Coach

The Cat in the Hat

Teacher of the Year

 Of course our K team dressed up as well! 

Math Tubs

We have started our math tubs during math workshop time. Each tub has a shape activity to help us practice our shapes! Soon we will incorporate number activities as we begin to preview our upcoming number unit.

Matching 3D shapes to their faces. Faces are the flat parts of 3D shapes.

Creating pictures with pattern block shapes.

Sorting 2D and 3D shapes.

Using shapes to extend and create patterns.

Sorting objects based on their 3D shape.

Drawing shapes using watercolors and scrap paper.

Creating shapes with playdoh.

Sorting buttons

Daily 5/ Reading

We have started retelling stories by using characters and pictures to help us. We learned that in retelling we use words like first, next, then, last. We talked about the words beginning, middle, and end. We read The Three Little Pigs and retold it by singing a song and using pictures. We also read The Little Red Hen and retold it by using pictures.

Our poem was Higglety, Pigglety, Pop! 

We practiced reading it daily and finding our sight words in it. 

 

We are really working hard with tracking our words and reading the poem together. We worked with pointers to help us read our poem. 

 

Shapes, shapes, and more shapes!

We will be finishing up our shape unit in the next 2 weeks! We have learned about 2D shapes, 3D shapes, compared 2D and 3D, found shapes in our environment, used position words to tell where shapes are, sorted manipulatives by size, color and shape, and built large shapes from simple shapes. 

Here we practiced making squares on Geoboards.

  

          

          

      

 

   

Here we traced and painted 2D shapes.

We sorted 3D shape snacks! Thank you to the parents that donated these snacks!! :)

We love these songs to help us practice and learn shapes!

3D Shapes I Know

Shape Song

Week one, done!

The first few weeks of Kindergarten are a HUGE transition time for 5 year olds but they are also full of learning and growth. No longer do students get to play all day in centers as they did in PreK. I hear multiple times a day- When can I play in housekeeping? When do we get to play blocks? Kindergarten is a change for many students. Students go from having up to an hour of recess time in PreK to 15 minutes in Kindergarten.  They go from having an hour nap to 30 minutes or none at all.

We often use books, games, chants, songs, and rhymes to help us learn Kindergarten standards. We do a lot of authentic reading, writing, and problem solving. We practice routines and rules daily. We introduce new things slowly. We explain EVERY thing from exactly how they should unpack their book bags to how to open a glue bottle to how much soap to use. 

We review our school and classroom rules/expectations daily. We have put a movement with each rule to help students remember it. See if your child can tell you them! We have 3 school rules- Respect Yourself, Respect Others, and Respect Property. We have 5 classroom rules- 1. Follow directions quickly, 2. Raise your hand to speak, 3. Listen when someone is speaking, 4. Always do your best work, 5. Be a caring friend

During this first week of Kindergarten we have practiced sorting objects by color, shape, and size.

 

We brainstormed a list of shapes we know! We knew a lot of shapes already!! 

We practiced our poem of the week, ABCs, each day and on Friday recited it together. 

 

I am excited about week 2! They are working so hard! You will be amazed at how far they go this year!

First Day of Kindergarten 2014

(Sorry for the delay in posting!) 

What a fantastic first day of Kindergarten we had! 

 

We started off the day reading The Kissing Hand by Aubrey Penn and went on a school tour by trying to find Chester the Raccoon who had jumped out of the book! We visited the library, computer lab, gym, front office, counselor, art, music, and the lunchroom.  

At the end, we chased Chester back to our room where he jumped back into the book. But, he left us a special surprise before he went- cookies! 

We talked a lot about the rules and expectations in Kindergarten. We will continue talking a lot about those over the next 2 weeks.