Vacation Fun

Happy New Year's Eve!  I hope all of you are having a wonderful vacation with your families.  The week is going by sooo fast!  I can't wait to hear about all of the exciting things you did this week.  Add to the padlet below a picture or two or even just a sentence about something you would like to share about your vacation.  On Monday, each of us will be choosing one special moment to start a seed story.  This padlet can help with our brainstorming when we're all a little tired as we settle back into our routine. :)    

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Comfy, Cozy Day

Comfy, Cozy Day was a nice way to end a busy, excitement-filled week. The children drew themselves in their pajamas first thing Friday morning.  

  Later, they were thrilled to find out they each got their own Polar Express ticket that would be punched by Barry the Conductor.  We enjoyed watching a read aloud of the Polar Express with the other Kindergarten students in the library.  

After, we were very lucky to have Barry the Conductor lead us in a holiday sing-a-long!  To conclude our Polar Express morning, each Kindergartner received their very own silver bell!  

We had a wonderful time today!

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CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.K.1

Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose opinion pieces in which they tell a reader the topic or the name of the book they are writing about and state an opinion or preference about the topic or book (e.g., My favorite book is...).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.K.6

With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.

A time to give thanks during this busy November

We have enjoyed this month of November by thinking about all that we have to be thankful for and we have worked hard to produce neat and thoughtful work.  We sang about fall and giving thanks last week in our Thanksgiving Sing-a-Long.  If you did not have a chance to attend the children's performance or would like to hear the songs again, click here to see the videos Mrs. Carreiro recorded and uploaded to her blog.   The placemats that went home like the one below are precious keepsakes to remember this delightful age and the wonderful memories of Kindergarten.

Thank you for returning the family projects this month!  The disguised turkeys brightened up the room.  I love the creativity!  During writing, we tried to listen for the beginning, middle, and ending sounds as we labeled what our turkeys were disguised as.

Turkeys?  What turkeys?  There are no turkeys here!

The children enjoyed making turkeys out of construction paper and paper bags.  These turkeys were actually glyphs and were unique for each student. 

When the children entered the classroom after team time this morning, they were surprised and excited to be greeted by a visitor!

I didn't make the connection between my turkey and their own turkey glyphs (mine was created for a different purpose) until one boy told me I didn't have enough feathers and another child added, "I know you are definitely not 18!"   So cute and too funny!!

Instead, my turkey was a guest during our classroom feast.  In fact, I got to carve him!  Check out the video below to see what was inside him along with all the fun we had today.  Thank you to Mrs. Kennedy's second grade class for inviting us to watch their performance of a Thanksgiving Reader's Theatre.  It was a special treat and I learned some new facts about the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag's first Thanksgiving.
I want to end by saying I am thankful for each child in my class.  All of you make me smile each day and enjoy my job.  I am also thankful for my students' loving families who encourage and inspire a love of learning outside of school.  You are raising some pretty terrific children!   Happy Thanksgiving!  Enjoy this special time with your loved ones!

C is for Connection

 

This is the hand signal students use during read alouds when they have a text-to-self connection they want to share with the class.

   Has your child shared a text-to-self connection with you while reading together?  Keep the praise and encouragement coming!!  The children have been improving their abilities to connect with the text and now LOVE to share their connections! Over the past few weeks, we have been thinking hard to identify how a story relates to our own feelings and experiences.  We thought of times we were wild like Max in Where the Wild Things Are...

    

and times we felt disappointed like The Littlest Pumpkin by R.A. Herman.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the students' work for this text-to-self connection activity, but some of the ideas they thought of for when they were disappointed were when they couldn't carve a pumpkin, when they couldn't go to their friend's house, and when they couldn't buy a toy they wanted.

Finally, one of our most recent mentor texts for Global Read Aloud tied in perfectly with our current comprehension strategy.  Check out our text-to-self connections for The OK Book in the iMovie below.  The children loved using the iPad app Chatterpix to make their pictures talk!

     

 This book has such an important message for students of all ages.  (Click here to check out the book's impressive book trailer).  I feel it is important for children to see that we adults are just OK at various skills and activities as well and that is okay.  So, parents and teachers, what are you OK at?  Leave your connection in the comments section below! 

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.6 With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers. 

 

Veterans Day

Last Friday, my essential question for the students was "What is a Veteran?"  After reading a book about Veterans Day, we learned that veterans are men and women who have served in the armed forces to keep our country safe.  After, we colored in pictures of people so their uniforms were the correct colors for the army, navy, air force, and marines.  We continued our discussion this week by brainstorming what soldiers are and what they do.     I am truly impressed with how thoughtful your children were when thinking about all that soldiers have done to keep us safe and how they have risked their lives so we can have the freedoms we have today.  

  Each child chose one of the sentence starters ("Soldiers are" or "Soldiers can") and finished the sentence with one of the ideas we brainstormed.  We created our own soldiers to display with our sentences.  

 

Yesterday morning, Fuller Meadow students and staff gathered together in the cafeteria to honor veterans with poems and songs.  Our class was asked to place red poppies under the flag as a symbol of honor and respect. 

 Thank you to those who have contributed to our school's Veterans Day padlet.  We have loved reading what families have written and have enjoyed seeing the projects and videos classes have posted.  It's not too late to add something if you would like.  

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  Happy Veterans Day!    

Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins!

Pumpkin day last Friday was a HUGE success! The day was filled with many pumpkin activities. Check out the fun we had!
We read to pumpkins in the Reading Patch.

We read and acted out our pumpkin life cycle poem, read our life cycle books, played a life cycle game, and even matched rhyming pumpkins.

The children were very excited for the afternoon when they got to work in partners and travel to four investigation stations that parent volunteers facilitated.

Children counted the number of lines on a pumpkin and remembered to use smart counting strategies...

They also determined if pumpkins sink or float, measured the height of their pumpkins with cubes, and had the opportunity to feel the gooey inside of a pumpkin and count its seeds.

To count all the seeds, Mrs. Brown had the children each grab a handful and put a group of ten seeds in each small cup.  At the end of the day, we arranged the cups of seeds into ten frames so we could practice counting by tens to 100 and then from there counted by hundreds, the leftover tens, and the ones.  The total number of seeds for our pumpkin was 544!!  Thank you to families who shared your seed estimates with the class.  We enjoyed reading the comments during morning meeting.

We finished up our pumpkin unit this week by reviewing what we already knew about pumpkins prior to the start of our unit and what we were hoping to learn.  The boys and girls were surprised with how much they learned about pumpkins.  Congratulate your pumpkin experts on the new knowledge they attained and have been eager to share with staff members in our school.

Yesterday, we finished up our pumpkin unit by comparing them to apples.  We were surprised to see how similar pumpkins and apples are!  Can your child share with you one way apples and pumpkins are the same and one way they are different?

Lastly, we were excited to hear Mrs. Lancaster's father-in-law was happy to bring his award winning giant pumpkin to school for all the students to see today.  The children asked Mr. Lancaster thoughtful questions about growing giant pumpkins, what the patch and seeds of a giant pumpkin look like, and how he transferred the pumpkin from the patch to the trailer.

This is a Dill Atlantic Giant Pumpkin that won 2nd place at the Topsfield Fair.  It weighs 1,954 pounds!
Thank you Mr. Lancaster for coming to Fuller Meadow!

I am impressed with the knowledge your children have gained!  I am sure you have learned a little more about pumpkins these last couple of weeks as well :).

How many seeds in our pumpkin?

We are very excited for Pumpkin Day on Friday when we will see if pumpkins sink or float, measure how tall our pumpkins are, and count the seeds of one of our pumpkins!  Before we count the seeds on Friday, we made predictions or estimates of how many seeds the children think one of our pumpkins has inside.  To help educate the children on how to make a good estimate, I read them the book How many seeds in a pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara.  We learned some important information from the book that helped us make our estimates.  Check out these cool facts we read:

• Each line on the outside of a pumpkin has a row of seeds inside.

• The longer a pumpkin grows on the vine, the darker it is and the more lines it has.

• The largest pumpkin doesn't necessarily mean it has the most seeds!

Check out our estimates!

Moms, dads, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and babysitters, we would love to hear YOUR predictions! In the comment section below, add your name and your prediction of how many seeds in this pumpkin!  

Check back the beginning of next week for pictures of our Pumpkin Investigation Stations and to find out the actual number of seeds!

This is how we label!

Essential Question: What do good writers do?

Parents, do you know what it means to label? After today’s lesson, I hope your children have a better understanding of what it means to label a picture. A label gives the reader information about the picture.

Last week we labeled the parts of an apple diagram and our pictures about our apple picking field trip. Today they got to label me, the teacher! 

Yes, they can!

The children thought I looked hysterical!  Who could disagree?!

After, they had the opportunity to practice labeling on their own.  They each got two post-its and labeled something in the room.

 

            

 

I encouraged the children to go home and label the things around their homes – the sofa, a table, a fork, a hockey stick, book, cat, anything! Rumor has it that you the parents might be getting labeled tonight – just a warning ;). When they labeled, I asked the children to listen for and write the first sound of the object and, if they were able to, listen for the last sound as well.  For those who like a challenge, they tried the first, a middle, and a final sound! Associating the sound with a word they are familiar with is always helpful (i.e. /t/ like top if they are trying to spell table).

Labeling helps us to understand information in pictures and is a precursor to writing sentences. Recently, we started Writer’s Workshop.  I have modeled and the children have practiced beginning with an idea, illustrating it with great detail, and then labeling the people and things in their pictures. Eventually, they will be able to use those labels to develop their story and formulate sentences.  This week, we will go back and label pictures of stories we have been working on.  Good writers have enough detail in their pictures to tell the story.  By the end of the week, your child should be able to confidently say "I can label a picture!"

When completing homework each night, encourage your child to listen for the beginning and ending sounds or the beginning, a middle, and an ending sound when labeling their illustrations.

Leave a comment below with how your child tried labeling at home. I would love to share the comments with the class!

We are Readers!

Hello Families!

Since the beginning of school, your children have learned that letters make up words, words make up sentences, and sentences make up stories.  We have been practicing identifying and categorizing examples of letters, words, and sentences.

We created this interactive anchor chart as a class
 for students to use as a reference while reading and writing.

For the past week, the students have been learning that good readers touch each word as they read. We started out simple, pointing to the dots below a strip of pictures or letters as we read. 

Next, we practiced recognizing and spelling the word “see” so we could create our own “I see…” statement by drawing a picture to complete the sentence. From there, they excitedly accepted the challenge to point to each word while reading a short story. (Of course they read the pictures first before reading the words as good readers do!). The children have practiced each of these activities both independently and with a partner.

Students can now confidently say “I can touch each word as I read!” and are eager to share with you their new reading skill. Today, your child should have a paper book called “Pets” in their homework folder. The black dots below the words help remind our young readers to point as they read. Commend them on this important reading milestone!


The next time you read a favorite book together, ask your child questions similar to these:

Can you point to the letter ___?

Can you find an uppercase/lowercase ___?

Can you point to the words as I read?

What do I do when I get to the end of a line? (Return sweep; start at the beginning of the next line of text)

Happy Reading!

Mrs. Libby

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.1
Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.1.A
Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.1.B
Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.1.C
Understand that words are separated by spaces in print.

We are off to a great start!

We’ve made it through the first 6 days of Kindergarten!!   The children are doing well learning the morning routines and are doing them on their own now (with some reminders).  We also practiced walking outside for a fire drill and they did a wonderful job staying in a quiet line. 

All of the children seem to be adjusting well to coming to school whether on the bus or being dropped off.  On Thursday, they began the regular morning routine with the first and second graders and now wait in the gym before heading down to the classroom.  They are all doing well getting ready for dismissal at the end of the school day.  I am gradually trying to get them to be more independent with placing papers in the pockets of their folders and packing their backpacks on their own.

We have been busy learning each other’s names, practicing our cutting and gluing skills, learning the daily routines, and the expectations of school behavior.  We have also been learning the terms “before,” “after”, “alike,” and “different” in math and even started math stations on Friday and practiced counting up to 20 objects and writing numbers to 10.

I have been encouraging the children to go home each day and share one thing they have learned.  If your child has not shared what we have been doing, here are a few suggestions of what you can ask them about:

• Can you show me how you write the numbers one and two?

• Can you teach me the days of the week song?

• What does a 5 star listener look like? (I am looking for children sitting with legs crossed, hands still and in their laps, ears listening, eyes watching the speaker, and lips that are zipped)

• Who were the characters? or What was your favorite part of the books The Kissing Hand, Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten, The Wheels on the Bus, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, and Fox Makes Friends?  (The underlined titles take you to read alouds of the stories).

We will be discussing much more at Open House next Thursday, September 17 so I hope you will be able to attend.  Please look for the Open House notice I sent home on Friday for more information.

Here’s a quick peek at the past week through pictures!

We LOVE the Smart Board and have used it to practice writing letters and numbers.  We even created a graph to show how many letters in our names, which gave us the opportunity to use our math words "most" and "least".

Each day during morning meeting, we read the morning message.  Here is where we will review and practice important skills and concepts.  This week we learned about punctuation marks, which we call stop signs at the beginning of Kindergarten.  Already, the children are spotting stop signs and remembering that these marks tell us it is the end of a sentence and that they need to stop and take a breath before continuing to read.

The children are already learning so much and I'm looking forward to the fun and excitement the rest of the year will bring! 



CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.3
With prompting and support, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.2.b
Recognize and name end punctuation.       

CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.A.3
Write numbers from 0 to 20. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral 0-20 (with 0 representing a count of no objects).      

CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.B.4.a
When counting objects, say the number names in the standard order, pairing each object with one and only one number name and each number name with one and only one object.

                                                                       

Welcome to our class blog!

Hello!  Thanks for stopping by!  This is my first year blogging about the exciting activities and learning that is happening in our classroom.  I feel like this forum will be a terrific way to keep you informed of all that is taking place in room 117. Be sure to enter your email under "Follow by email" located in the right sidebar to be notified each time I share a new post.

We had a great first two days together and the year is off to a wonderful start!  Our first few weeks together will be very busy.  We will focus on getting to know each other, learning about our school, and mastering daily routines.  It is amazing all that the children learn during their Kindergarten year and I love watching their confidence build as they begin to see themselves as readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, and historians.

Here is some important information regarding classroom policies and procedures:

Classroom Policies:
Please remember to label all of your child's belongings. This includes folders, backpacks, lunch boxes, coats, hats, etc.

Please place all notes, lunch money, milk money, and homework in your child's folder. It is much easier for them to hand in the papers if they are all located in the same place!

Fuller Meadow has incorporated http://www.myschoolbucks.com into the school lunch program. Please see the school website for further information.

Please refer to the Fuller Meadow School website and/or your student handbook for further information regarding school-wide policies.

Expanding Learning At Home:

The Kindergarten Team encourages you to expand your child’s learning experience at home as much as possible. The following educational websites are a fun way for you and your child to learn and explore together.

www.Starfall.com

www.Scholastic.com

www.Storylineonline.net

www.ixl.com

Specialist Schedule:

Monday: Computers

Tuesday: Library

Wednesday: Physical Education (please remember to wear your sneakers!)

Thursday: Music

Friday: Art

Important Dates:

First Day of School for Kindergarten: September 2^nd

Open House: September 17^th at 6:00 p.m.

Early Release: September 21^st  @ 1:15 (Lunch will be served)

Field Trip to Ingladsby Farm: TBA  (field trip permission forms will be coming home soon!)

Planning Ahead: 

Conferences: Wednesday, December 9^th and Thursday, December 10^th

                  Wednesday, April 6^th and Thursday, April 7^th

Progress Notes: Friday, October 16th

                        Friday, January 29th

                        Friday, May   6^th                  

Report Cards: Friday, December 4^th

                      Friday, April 1^st  

                      Last Day of School (tentatively June 14^th with no snow days)        

* * * * *

I look forward to getting to know you and your family over the course of the school year.  If you feel your child needs extra help at any time, please contact me to discuss things further.

You may contact me with all questions and/or concerns through email (alibby@middletonps.org), phone (978.750.4756), or notes placed in your child's folder.

~Mrs. Libby