What's New with the Crew...

Morning Tubs: Fall art, fine motor tracing/seek-and-finds, building numbers, math games, letter/number writing
Writing: We continued to look at what we could do as a writer to grow: add more details, labels, sentences.  This unit has ended, work will come home soon!  We'll be focusing on word study and building sentences next week before our fall writing unit.
Phonics: In our word work station we are learning color words.  We are also working hard to slowly stretch words out (pretending like we are stretching out a rubber band with our hands)
Reading: We are in our "We are Storybook Readers" Unit.  The skills we've learned and practiced: 

Math: We worked with our names to build name towers, used cubes to measure things around the room, learned and used tally marks and continued number sense.  Some of our math vocab. from the week: same/different, longer/shorter, bigger/smaller, taller/shorter, more/less, patterns, colors, both.
STEAM: As weather watchers today we used thermometers to observe the temperature inside and outside and explored shadows.
Next Week: Next week we'll be focusing on Community!  We'll take a look at community helpers and careers.  We will have parent visitors Tues-Fri to share some fun insight on lots of different jobs.  We are very excited! While students are not visiting with a parent, they'll be exploring career centers. I will be out on Wednesday, 10/3 for district math professional development.
Tips for Home: Practice tracking words at home of a familiar text, reading like the characters, talk about the sequence of the story, find sight words/letters/words they recognize. 
Sight Words We've Added: a, and, am, I, the, like 
Mystery Reader Sign Up Link: Mystery Reader!

News Report: Room 105!

Morning Exploring: Puppets/oral storytelling, apple fine motor, animals, color matching/sorting, building

Morning Stations (while testing this week): We did our first NWEA testing this week, which to the students we referred to as an iPad game, while we rotated students in and out of the testing room others chose different stations to collaborate at: apple books/sorting, math games, literacy games, puppets/oral story telling, puzzles, light table, yoga, being weather watchers outside, writing and coloring.  Everyone had so much fun and was so engaged!
Math: Continued number sense work.  Our mini-lessons included some games to practice careful counting, number id and number formation.  Stations supported these lessons.  We are working hard to be sure that during math stations our hands/brains/mouths/eyes are used as a mathematician instead of being silly and not using the stations properly.

Science: We are all about being weather watchers!  We look at the sky, think about what people are wearing, look at what's happening outside and feel for the temperature.  We'll continue our work with weather next week.  We were also introduced to seasons.

Phonics: Using our names to practice letter formation and take a look at vowels we also compared our name bags with classmates!  

Social Skills: Our theme for the week was "treat others how you want to be treated."  We are having some issues with kindness and I really try to help them through by asking how they'd like someone to treat them in that particular situation.  We will continue working on throwing kindness around like confetti!  A great book to reread at home (if you don't own it, it's on youtube) is "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?"
At-Home: Find a favorite book that your kinder loves and read it each night!  Next week we'll talk about falling in love with books and being able to read them over and over again.  By doing this we'll be able to match pictures to the words and know what each page says.  In class we'll be working with "The Three Billy Goats Fluff." 

Next Week: I will be out on Wednesday on behalf of the kindergarten team for professional development.  Mr. Stahl will be with us again!  Please let the office know day of if dismissal plans change or you need immediate assistance I will have limited email during the day. 

Here's the Scoop!

Morning Exploring: Construction, gems and letters with pattern pages, tree pieces and bears, racing around numbers and letters with cars and an art activity with dots!  Lots of fun was had. 
Writing: We worked on oral story telling and made up a group story.  Oral story telling is SO important at this age and really helps thcm grow as writers.  They continued to tell their story across their fingers planning each page.  As a choice they could uses puppets, animals and retell story kits to explore with story telling.  We also focused on adding details to pictures and stories!
Reading: We learned that readers can "sound like teachers." Meaning that they can read fluently when reading familiar stories.  We used Brown Bear, Brown Bear as our story for the week to use pictures as clues to help us match our words to print.  We also created our own Brown Bear books as our first book to add to our book boxes that we'll start next week!
Word Study: We were introduced to vowels this week!  We'll be building off this introduction in the coming weeks.  We used the song "Apples and Bananas" to check out the different sounds of vowels. 
Math: We continued our work with number sense and subitizing through lots of hands on stations: How many ways can you show 1-10?, Tens Frames, Flip and Build, Read, Roll and Cover 
Science: We're all about weather!  Today we collaborated with Mrs. Cocos' friends to explore shadows.  We have some new science materials coming soon that will be an everyday choice during free time to support our science goals.
Social Skills: We continued talking about our "Be the Best YOU" chart and being the boss of ourselves and we also covered tattles vs. reports.  
Next Week: We will do NWEA testing next week on the iPads so our mornings Tues-Fri will look different and we'll be doing more center work in one kindergarten room while another group tests.  We'll do a baseline for reading and math.  Please be sure your kiddo gets a good night sleep and a healthy breakfast!
Ideas for Home: Oral story tell asking for details as you go :) 

Here's the Scoop...

Morning Tubs: Tracing letters in sand, finger lasers for ABC books (letter sounds/formation), color by # (using our color word wall), Legos, ABC magnets + pictures and sticker art
Writing: We worked really hard at stretching our words out to add labels and words to our work and details to our pictures.  Stay tuned next week to see what your kinder has completed in writer's workshop thus far with a checklist of all the skills we've been introduced to and tried out! 
Reading: Our mini-lessons this week focused on: 3 ways to read: 1) Read the pictures, 2) Read the words, 3) Retell the story in our own words and we discussed what it looks like "real read" vs. "fake reading"--eyes moving on the page, brain thinking about the text or connections, mouth stretching words out.  They are really working hard building stamina to private read (they sit around the room in the best spot for them)!  Partner reading is sitting side by side book in middle sharing stories.  Next week will be a fun week in reading with retelling stories. 
Phonics: We are working a lot with names and will continue this work next week.  The focus is on letter sound/proper formation.  Our "STAR" letters we've looked at: M, S, T, N, R (next week).  I am proud of their hard work to shift from all uppercase to capital at the beginning of their name and then lowercase.
Math: Math workshop: finding and identifying numbers 1-20, subitizing, number sense/id, and working with a tens frame.  We'll be continuing number sense next week.  This is an important foundation for the rest of the year!  They also get to really be hands on with creating and exploring with numbers which I love seeing them get excited about.
Science: During our Friday collaboration with Mrs. Cocos' class we kicked off our weather unit today!  We brainstormed different kinds of weather, listened to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and talked about the silly kinds of weather from the story, brainstormed and drew a plan for a type of shelter to protect them from weather and then they created with various building materials.  Some used animals and people to try it out!  
Social Skills: This week we focused on whole-body listening, problem solving and most importantly, being the best 'you'!  We came up with this list together and I put it on the SmartBoard so we can start our days by remembering how to make our day awesome.  Dr. Wuch even popped in when we talked about it and loved hearing how the crew is going to work on being the best Jaguars they can be!

Coming Up: Picture day is next week on the 12th!  I will be out for professional development all day but they will have a 'normal' day per usual.  If there is something that needs immediate attention that day for pick-up, please call the office.  Otherwise, I will have email access. 

Edgar Road and Webster Groves Spirit Wear!

Woo Hoo! The Spirit Wear Store is open!  Please see the link below to purchase any of the awesome items we have available!  They will be delivered to school shortly after the store closes (September 14th), and sent home with your child.

https://edgarroad2018.itemorder.com/sale