Tag Archives: cool tools

What a wonderful class…

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Hello Kindergarten Families,

We had a fun packed five day week, where we all grew closer as a classroom team! I am so proud of all of them for their ability to quickly pick up our classroom procedures and follow our classroom promises. Thank you for doing a great job of developing a new back to school schedule, getting them to bed on time, as that has been essential to our classroom success this week!

We had 5 great explorers of the week! Wow! I was impressed in how well each of them did in leading our calendar time and presenting their projects to our class! Way to go, Lexi, Brendan, Isaiah, Hayley and Chloe! 

Cool Tools for the week included: The Shoe (to know when to walk away from a situation), the Ice Cube (to have self control when things are uncomfortable), the Microphone (to check the sound and tone of our voice towards others), the Kaleidoscope (seeing the beauty and importance in the differences others bring), and finally a Bug and a Wish (to help us learn how to approach and voice to others to stop when we are being treated unfairly).  More information regarding the tools learned this week were sent home with your child daily.

I was proud this week when I saw so many of the students applying these cool tools to our classroom, as we all learned to communicate effectively and peacefully to get along. I am so excited to see them keep these tools in mind all year!

 This weeks academic highlights included, learning how to graph our commonalities and differences, learning how to write numbers 0-3 in handwriting, continued practice and review of our zoophonics, setting the classroom environment for our writing workshop, and learning to create math scenes to represent quanties of 2 and 3.

We also have been busy each afternoon visiting with Mrs. Bast, our school reading specialist to see our knowledge of letters and sounds, as we prepare to begin the planning stages for our literacy centers (small reading groups) this year.  We are just about completed with these assessments for all students.

“Red” was our Popcorn word (sight word) for the week.  In connection, we learned a song and created a mini flip book.  We will continue to practice reading this books and other beginning readers in our reading workshop time. We learned to use our eagle eye , using the pictures to help us with the words and our reading finger to point as we read the words this week! Please hold on to this book at home and others that come home too to re-read (those shoeboxes will return soon creatively decorated for this storage purpose). 

Explorers of the Jungle for next week include, Megan, Xavier, Ivy, Ethan and Ashley!

Enjoying our new butterfly rug!

        

Exploring new centers during L.I.P. (Learning in Play) time: 

    

 

Important Information and Reminders:

 

**Picture day – Monday, Sept 17.  If interested in purchasing, don’t forget to send in your child’s envelope with payment and selection choice (an order form arrived home with your child this past week).

**Please review our September Calendar, as it contains the theme and popcorn words for each week, as well as important reminders. 

**Please pack a healthy daily snack for your child


Hope your enjoying the beautiful sunshine this weekend!

Ms. Yankee 🙂 

 


Our Wonderful First Week!

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Wow! What a wonderful class of Kindergarteners I have!  It has been a lot of fun getting to know one another this week!  We have worked hard at developing routines and procedures to set up a peaceful and cooperative classroom community.

Our big focus this week was on creating our “Classroom Promise” we did this together by asking ourselves, “How do you want to be treated? ” and “What will we do if their is a problem?” As a class team we complied all of our ideas to create a promise that will fit right under our sign for “Rules of the Jungle”. We even made a pinkie promise to each other on it and signed our names. Each time one of us makes a mistake, breaking our promise they will be asked to move their clip on our rainbow chart. If I see that this student is making better choices again they will have a chance to move their way back up!

We also focused on getting to know one another through our “Me Bags”, it was fun to see all the common interests our classroom team had. I think I have everyone’s name down now and know a little more about each of you!

We have begun to learn the importance of treating others nicely, and with the help of our “Cool Tools,” we have read many books and fun ways to remember how to use them in our daily lives.  We learned about the eraser tool with the help of the book Rainbow Fish, by Marcus Pfister to learn the importance of forgiving others mistakes, as well as our own.  We learned about the toothpaste tool after reading the book Chrysanthemum, by Kevin Henkes, which helped us to understand that it is hard to take back a hurtful word we may say, just like it is hard to put toothpaste back into it’s tube.  The last tool we learned this week was the nice dice by reading the book ish, by Peter A. Reynolds.  This book helped us see the importance of  giving nice compliments and how good it makes our the hearts of others feel, as well as how nice it makes our own feel.  We are excited to learn a few more next week, and best of all, use them with our friends each day as all of these “tools” are apart of our promise to each other.

We also had the opportunity to celebrate two birthdays already this week, Maggie and Faith’s special day! I hope they enjoyed their Birthday Banana’s from me 🙂

Learning and playing together during our L.I.P (Learning in Play) time and recess time, made for some fun times during our first week of school. This helped us learn to work through conflict and make new friends!

It was fun to have our first Reading Workshop lesson of learning how we can read the pictures! Here the students are reading and LOVING their books! 🙂

We also had some special visitors on Friday! We were introduced to Georgia, the school lizard. And Milo, Mrs. Reagan’s dog 🙂

 

A Few Important Reminders:

*A shoebox covered in aluminum foil is due Wednesday! Your can send this in starting Monday with your child!

*Explorers next week will be Lexi, Brendan, Isaiah, Chloe and Hayley. Please check the tab “Schedules” for when your child will have this special job.

*Please send a healthy snack for your child each day.

*Blue folders are to be sent to school each day (you are all doing a great job with this!  Thank you!!)

*If ordering a hot lunch or milk, please discuss with your child what they will be ordering so that they are comfortable and secure with their selections.

*A Birthday Schedule, listing full and 1/2 birthdays is posted under “Schedules” for your reference.

*Finally, rest!  It was a full first four days of school, and I am sure a schedule adjustment for many of these little ones.  Thank you for all you do in helping them be ready to learn! I am looking forward to our next week ahead!

Have a nice weekend!

Ms. Yankee