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 

What's New with the Crew?...

Morning Tubs: Water-color painting, light table, letter/number puzzles and activities
Writing: This week in writing we learned that writers label their pictures to help readers know more about their stories.  We can hear a sound and use our ABC chart to put a sound on our paper.  We also become fancy authors that write actual books!!!  We have writing partners that help us when we're stuck on a story.  We practiced telling our story plan across 3 fingers to know the order of our story.  When we think we're done, we can go back to see if we can add more detail or labels.  If so, we can start a new idea!  We are writing fiction or non-fiction.  Whatever inspires the authors. 
Word Study: We're all about names!  We've been doing some fun name chants.  We're also doing proper letter formation (starting letters from the top) and learning about uppercase/lowercase and letter sounds.  We'll continue to grow as readers and writers through our word work.  
Reading: Readers can reread to learn more!  Pages are connected, we can use the words "and then" to tell what happens from page to page.  We can add a pinch of us by sharing our thoughts with partners, "I think..."  We're working on building our stamina to be able to private/partner read for longer amounts of time.  
Math: Our main focus right now is number recognition and number formation.  We do lots of counting during transitions and our stations practice 1:1 and anything/all about exposure to numbers!  We're all about subitizing and looking at different ways to make each number.  We'll continue with hands on math stations next week building on vocabulary.  
Social Skills: We continued focusing on how to show our Jaguar PRIDE but really put extra focus on problem solving, how to express our feelings through an "I message" and practicing self control.  We are working hard to sit and be a learner for our 5 minute mini-lessons at the beginning of each workshop throughout the day.  This is still a little tricky for us :) 
Sight Words: I, a, am, and, the
Coming Up: 
-NO SCHOOL tomorrow or Monday!  
-I am the ER representative for a district committee and the kindergarten team representative for our Professional Learning Committee (PLC).  With that being said, there will be a total of 6 professional development days that I will be out of the building.  Please know that on days that I am out, very detailed plans are left to ensure an 'ordinary' kindergarten day goes as usual.  Thank you in advance for your understanding!  The first two dates I'll be out are 9/12 and 9/26.

Helpful Videos: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyKdUpJQBTY Letter Sounds
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMQpyjFkdtA   Number Formations 

Success in our Second Week!

Morning Tubs: Shapes to build and create with, Tic-Tac-Toe/Puzzles, Legos, Coloring and Puppets

Writing: This week in writing we learned about what writers do: think of a topic, picture it in their head and then draw their pictures.  We also made a chart on 3-Star Coloring to help us take our time and do our best.  We also had a lesson on how they are their own boss of their writing--they can decide if they're going to add to their piece or start a new one.  We do shares at the end of writing on our stage!  We also will use a motto we learned for the remainder of the year "when we're done we've just begun!"  What else can we add?  Can I put words or labels?  Can I add details?...

Reading: This week's lessons were: "We can look, we can think, we can read, we can learn!"  We were introduced to learn-about-the-world books (non-fiction) and storybooks (fiction).  We also discussed concepts of print: starting with the cover, flipping and looking at each page.  We practiced private reading (independently) and partner reading--sitting elbow/to knee book in the middle.  

Math: This week we continued to explore our manipulatives (they LOVED trying to say this!).  We also jumped right into math workshop and did stations after our whole group lessons to practice our math skills.  Before going off to stations each day, we looked over our "what a mathematician looks like" as a reminder!

Social Skills: Each day we focused on a different pride word!  All throughout their years at Edgar Road this will be common language no matter where they are. I encourage you to talk with your kinder about what this looks like at school and home.  

At Home: At home you can practice the Pledge of Allegiance and how we stand respectfully with our right hand on our hearts.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn6MnYJNSUw 

We enjoyed these songs that went along with our PRIDE words: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWp6kkz-pnQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLeUvZvuvAs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mZbzDOpylA

Reminders: Next week is Jump Start Conferences!  I'm looking forward to seeing you all!  I have 15 minute time slots, so please be respectful of your time and be here so we can make the most of our time together.  No school for students 

No school for students next Friday!

Fabulous First Week!

Routines & Procedures We Learned this Week:

• Morning routine: Move our rock to "here today" in the hallway upon arrival (students will soon start being in charge of attendance!)
• Unpack backpack-Check BEE Folder (if anything is in it put it in Mrs. Eagan basket), but BEE Folder in the basket
• Lunch/water bottle in cubby or make lunch choice
• Hang back pack up
• Find a table spot and explore and create with morning tubs and visit with friends
• Transitions: We use songs to help us move from one thing to the next.  Once at the carpet we start our day with a morning song.  Throughout the day we do a "brain break" to get our wiggles out. We learned to push our chairs in and be responsible for our materials.
• Community Circle: How we start our day!  We use our speaker voice when talking and we are listening to our friends if we don't have the 'talking piece.'  
• "Give Me 5!"  when this is said we know an adult needs our attention: EYES are watching, EARS are listening, HANDS are free, BODY is still, MOUTH is quiet.
• Bathroom: Use a level '0' voice, one pump of soap, wash hands good, shake them off in the sink, dry with paper towel and get a drink if they wish!
• Relax & Recharge: Put lunch boxes away, get towel/blanket/mat and find the best spot for them and journal or relax.  We do yoga after to get us ready for math!
• End of Day: Check mailbox, put papers on the 'keep at home' or 'return to school' side of BEE folder, put lunchbox and folder in backpack 

Writing: We read "Rocket Writes a Story" and had an intro to Writer's Workshop starting next week!  We talked about how we can tell stories through pictures, words and letters.  We also did our first self-portrait and name writing (we'll do this monthly to see changes!).
Math: We had an introduction to Math Workshop.  Talked about how we'll do a lesson together and then go off to stations.  This week we explored math manipulatives and did some work with #'s 1-8.  We'll continue next week looking more at #'s 5-10 and will have stations to support our exploration with manipulatives and number sense.  
Social Skills: We were introduced to PRIDE this week!  We talked a little about it each day and next week we'll dive into each letter one each day--the whole school will!  We talked about problem solving, how to be friends, safe and fun recess games and how to express ourselves in a nice tone of voice when talking to friends.  Kindergarten is going to really work a lot with social emotional learning this week so stay tuned as we start diving in more after PRIDE week!