Planting Fun...

We have planted our spring plants and the children had a blast.  The children are know observing the changes that are occurring and keeping a science journal.  The children will be writing about what is happening and what they are observing!

Sunflower...

I was thrilled when I opened my email today to find an email from a former parent.  She informed me that her son wanted to send me a picture from the summer.  She then informed me that picture happened to be from the seed we planted in class in late April.  I love that the sunflower is getting close to being as tall as him.  I loved seeing this and wanted to share!

Planting a Garden...

Today we started a garden. Our class planted flower seeds and Mrs. Franz's class planted vegetable seeds! The children had a blast and we look forward to watching them grow. At the end of the year we will move them outside and plant them around the school!

Plant Growing...

May Flowers!

This week we will be learning a lot in kindergarten.  We will be completing Unit 5 in Reading Street.  We will be reading "This is the Way We Go to School."  We will be working on the comprehension skill drawing conclusions.  We will culminate the unit by going back to the big question "How do people get from here to there?"  We will pull all of our knowledge from Unit 5 and transportation to answer this particular question.  I hope the children have been coming home telling you about their learning in Reading Street and I hope you have seen improvement in their comprehension ability.  We have also been working hard on story writing.  The children have been writing stories all week and are making final copies.  It has been a lot of fun to read the children's writing and listen to the stories they have written.  The children have come a long way in the writing development.  We will be using these stories to help us with their writing assessment.  We will be assessing letter formation, spacing, punctuation, capital letters, and spelling.  When we assess for spelling we are looking to see if the children write what they hear; therefore, if a child was trying to write the word "monkey" we would expect the child to possibly write "muke."

We are currently still working on our sight words: where and come.  Please continue to work on these words.  In addition, we will be sending home a list of all sight words which should be mastered by the end of Kindergarten.  The words on the list are words we have been working on all year.  Your child should know these words in less than 3 seconds and should not try to sound them out.  Also, we are working on letter naming fluency (speed), letter sounds, and segmentation.  We will be sending home a new practice sheet this week.  We have our DIBELS assessment beginning next week; therefore, we want the children to do the best they can!

In math, we are continuing our work with addition and subtraction.  We are working with stories which delve into both addition and subtraction.  The children have to be able to determine if the story is an addition or subtraction.  We are also working on having the children identify the addition symbol and subtraction symbol as they are working.  This helps the children look to see what they are suppose to do before thinking they must add on everything or subtract on everything.

Finally, we are beginning one of my favorite units in science.  We will be working with plants.  The children will begin to learn about how plants live, grow, and the parts of a plant.  This will be what our centers revolve around over the next 2 weeks.  All the children will plant a seed and watch the first stages of a plant.  We will label a plant at our art center.  We will work with various seeds to help us with our addition and subtraction at the math center.  At our writing center the children will be writing about plants.  This helps children begin to develop a non-fiction writing piece.

I hope your children have as much fun this week as I plan on having!  Enjoy the week...

Plants Galore...

I hope all the children made it home with their plants this past week. I know the children were excited to take them home and plant them. If you planted them and you want to take a picture of your child with them, please send it in because I would love to see it. I also know the children would love to share their picture and story about planting the plant at school too. I hope they all grow and you have beautiful flowers!

Our Garden of...Seeds

We planted our seeds yesterday; therefore, we have a garden of seeds! We hopefully will have a garden of sprouts and then flowers! We learned plants need sun, water, and air to grow. We will be taking care of the flowers so they will grow. Check back for updates on how our flowers are going. Also, if anyone knows of any master gardeners or botanists who would like to talk about plants, we would love to have them in class with us!

Excitement is Growing...

We are beginning our plant unit! The children are quite excited. We read "I'm a Seed" to learn how to identify the parts of a plant. We also learned what plants need to survive. We will be planting our own seeds tomorrow and will observe how they change. Each child will have the opportunity to plant various seeds. It should be neat to see the roots since we will be using clear cups and most of the time we never see roots. I cannot wait to see the children make their observations and begin to notice the differences between the plants each child plants. The children will need to make sure their plant is in the sun and to give it water! Ask your child about plants and if you are out and see some plants, take some time to use some of your five senses to observe them. In addition, feel free to comment about our planting and any suggestions you may have!

Fun with Plants...

Last we started our plant unit in literacy and science. We started off reading a nonfiction book regarding plants. We learned about the parts of the plant and then drew a diagram with labels. The children did a fantastic job on learning the parts of a plant and the jobs of each part. We then came the exciting part of planting our own plants! The children then learned about observations and recording what they observe. Today was a highlight for many children in the classroom. About half of our seeds sprouted and the children were THRILLED! The children drew what they saw and then wrote at least one sentence about what they see. I am AMAZED by their observations and what they are writing. These young learners are becoming scientists! I cannot wait for the next few days to watch their excitement continue as we continue to learn about plants!