LUCK OF THE IRISH

That is exactly what we are hoping for this week. The children excitedly prepared all week to work with their groups to build their leprechaun traps. The groups were responsible for bringing in all needed materials, designing a plan, and finally the fun part of building their traps. They are hoping to catch one of these tricky little fellows so that we may get his pot of gold and be granted wishes. Log on to our  kidblog page by clicking on the link below to see what our wishes would be if we are successful.

http://kidblog.org/MrsSilversteinsClass/dbfe1806-3345-4589-ba15-ae0417c1c939/89/

 

Working with Words

The children and I continue to create and recognize CVC words on a daily basis. At this point, remarkably the children are able to read almost all CVC words they come across. It was time then to touch upon long vowel sounds using Silent e; also known as Magic e. It's amazing what a small amount of exposure to this spelling rule will do for some of the children's decoding abilities. The children were able to see the power Magic "e" has on his fellow vowels by viewing this cute YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3oA4wfUBak&feature=share

We will continue identifying & working with Silent/Magic e in our words throughout the remainder of the school year.

Reading and writing

The children listened to many stories about St. Patrick's Day. They learned about many things surrounding this day like clovers, shamrocks, shillelaghs, and of course the mythical tricky leprechauns. Many questions were asked about these wee folks and their pots of gold; some of which we needed to research. What the children were most interested in was catching a leprechaun, so most of our research was about that.  They did however, spend some time sequencing stories, writing about what is more important to them than gold, and sorting shamrock word families. But it wasn't hard to see that their minds were anxiously creating the plans to make the perfect leprechaun traps.

READ ACROSS AMERICA WEEK

& 

Dr. Seuss' Birthday

To kick off Read Across America Week the whole school participated in a pep rally. The lower grades created different styles of Dr. Seuss themed hats to show their enthusiasm. Pictured below is the kindergarten Thing hats. The children looked absolutely adorable. You can view Bayview's kickoff celebration by logging onto the Middletown Township's school district website or Bayview's website. Many of our friends and their writing made it onto the big screen. :)

http://middletownk12.org/site/default.aspx?PageID=1

clearlykindergarten.com

 

Working with Words

Dr. Seuss is known as the King of Rhyme. So how could we not celebrate this magical man without perfecting our own rhyming skills. The children spent the week happily creating words and nonsense (Dr. Seuss) words that rhymed. It appears that we have several rhyming kings and queens in kindergarten. :)

Reading and Writing

It's almost guaranteed that the most beloved characters of Dr. Seuss are Thing 1 and Thing 2. They are magically mischievous and the children are instantly drawn to them. Whenever I read Dr. Seuss' Cat In The Hat, Thing 1 & Thing 2 get the biggest reaction from my class, along with the Cat's Thingamajig mobile. All the excitement that surrounds these two colorful characters lends itself to many fantastical conversations amongst the children. What would a day spent with Thing 1 & Thing 2 look like? You would get a chuckle or two from some of their written responses. I certainly did!

 

Blogging Spotlight

The children continue to blog their responses to questions related to our weekly themes. Dr. Seuss's birthday was the perfect opportunity to practice our opinion writing skills. The children had the fabulous opportunity of reading and listening to many of Dr. Seuss' books throughout the week; especially those read by our Mystery Readers. And they all had an opinion & a reason as to which books they liked better than others. Naturally the blog prompt had to be:

Which is your favorite Dr. Seuss book and why?

Please log on to our kidblog page by clicking on the link below to read your child's post.

http://kidblog.org/MrsSilversteinsClass/wp-admin/post.php?post=36&action=edit

 

Culminating Activity

To end our very exciting week, we spent that Friday comparing the book and movie version of Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears A Who! The best part was our movie snack of choice: Green eggs.

A special thank you goes out to all our Mystery Readers who surprised us during Read Across America week. The children & I are still talking about your visits & probably will be for days to come. Thank you! 

We are a blogging classroom and I LOVE IT! 

Kidblog is an educational blog site that has been developed for teachers, by teachers. Using Kidblog, teachers and students can create conversations on the web. The children will be blogging their responses to different activities in the classroom from time to time. I encourage you to log on to your child's blog page and read what they have blogged so far. You should have received information this week from me guiding you through the process of logging on to and accessing our class blog. Several students have already blogged from home about their adventures and/or simply made a comment.  Please encourage your children to keep on blogging! I'm eager to read what they have to say.

Can you believe that your little one has been a kindergartener for 100 days?  It is at this time of year where I can see all the dots being connected. Your children are starting to take all the information given to them so far and make fabulous connections.  Their reading and writing is becoming more fluent and their confidence is making them eager for more. 100 days is a wonderful and fascinating time in kindergarten, so why not spend the day celebrating. The children spent the afternoon creating, discovering and investigating 100!

 

 

 

 

 

Describing Me

We spend most of our year learning about nouns and verbs, but what is an adjective and why is it important? The word adjective & it's meaning can be very intimidating to a kindergartener;  a  word that describes a noun that makes writing and reading so much more interesting. However, I have found that the easiest and most successful way to introduce adjectives is to have the children describe something they know everything about...THEMSELVES.  The introduction to adjectives was simple...the children were asked to tell me about a lollipop and we listed all the describing words on a chart. Then during the week we moved forward by filling in our own charts that described us. After conferencing throughout the week with each student, we were finally ready to write a paragraph about who we are using adjectives. I was so pleased with the results that we created covers for our writing and laminated it into a book. We will share our All About Me books with each other during Read Across America Week.

teachingwithloveandlaughter.com

The H Brothers

 

Charlie, Theo, Whit, and Sherman became the newest members of our class this week. The story of these four brothers is a fun way for the children to remember the H digraphs: wh, sh, ch, and th. We spent a great deal of time working with these digraphs and we will continue to do so throughout the remainder of the school year.

 

Teachwithlaughter.com

 

 

 

President's Day

 

The question of the week was who is our President of the United States (POTUS) today and who came before him? Most of the children were able to answer Barack Obama to the first question, but only a handful could name George Washington. So for President's week we read several nonfiction books about the lives of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Using our map of the US we were able to see where NJ is in comparison to the birthplaces of both presidents; Virginia and Kentucky. The children were amazed to see just how close Washington, DC is to NJ and how far the states of Kentucky and Virginia are from NJ. As the week went on, we researched a little further into how we choose a new president and what the job of the POTUS entails. So You Want To Be President is a fun book filled with all kinds of interesting facts about all previous 42 presidents. It takes some of the mystery out of the presidency and let's the children know that anyone can grow up to be president. After reading Grace for President, the children were eager to write their own campaign speeches and promises in hopes of being voted class president for the day. On our election day, the candidates stood at the podium and read their promises as we the voters listened intently. Throughout the morning, each student entered the "voting booth" and placed their vote in the ballot box. The votes were tallied at the end of the day and we had a class president for the day: President Adrian.
Congratulations Adrian!!
We concluded the week by creating a President's Day book with each page being a craft about the presidents and symbols of our country. It was a very exciting week for us!

 

 

Ashley Laver @ TPT

 

mrsriccaskindergarten.blogspot