Ms. Rowntree's Kindergarten: The Week of September 2nd

This week has been b-u-s-y! We are enjoying getting to know each other better; are practicing classroom expectations and are really feeling comfortable with our routines and systems. I'm seeing children really taking care of each other and our classroom and I am so pleased about the safe, joyful, caring community we are building!

The children enjoyed working on their first calendars of the school year. I hope that they pointed out their new friends! Each month the activities around filling in the numbers will get a bit more challenging (such as filling in blank spaces).

We read the classic Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

And then made our own trees. This was a great opportunity to practice using scissors safely, and using the glue sticks.

Working hard.

Proud kindergarten student!

Tracing numbers on the September calendar.

Ready to share the names of kindergarten friends.

The kindergarten kids really had fun with this name activity. They picked out stickers and placed them over their names. This is really great fine motor practice, which helps with pencil grips. The names are hanging in our classroom for all the students to enjoy.

Mrs. Brady, a literacy teacher, joined us for a read a loud of More Spaghetti, I Say. She introduced the sight word, "me". I then wrote the word and hung it on our Word Wall so children can refer to it if they need a reminder of how to write it. Throughout the year, we hang sight words, which are words we can read and write quickly, on the a Word Wall.

The children practiced "sky writing" the word "me".

The children were then excused to draw a picture of themselves standing on a mountain of spaghetti, as in the book.

They also practiced writing the word " me".

This is a sorting activity where children decided if upper and lower case letters look alike or different.

The children rotated through math work stations this week and explored some math materials we will be using in the upcoming weeks. These are unifex cubes...

...pattern blocks....

....polydrons....

....and geoboards and geobands.

Here is an example of a morning message. Children filled in the missing date and beginning sounds. We also kept track of answers using ten-frames.

This is one of my all-time favorite books (you'll find I say this a lot!).

I read it to introduce the monthly self portraits I invite children to do. Each month I will read a book about our differences and uniqueness and will instruct children on how to make detailed self portraits. I display them in the room. By the end of the year the children have made self portrait books to take home. It is so amazing to see the growth in your children in these drawings alone...