I hope you enjoyed your Halloween and Harvest activities. I wanted to thank the many families for donating supplies, treats, and pumpkins today. We also had several parents who volunteered to help out during the day with carving pumpkins and our afternoon celebration. The children were very excited and we had a fun day. Thank you!
I am in the process of updating this blog to include our upcoming events for November. Most of the events are listed on the left side of this page. Check back soon!
Sincerely,
Mrs. Browne :)
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
We Are Busy!
We have been very busy in our kindergarten classroom! I will try my best to give you a brief update :)
Reading: We have been working on two parts of our Daily Five Literacy Block. We are practicing reading to ourselves (independent reading) and reading to someone (partner or buddy reading) each day. We have been doing a terrific job reading pictures, reading words, and retelling stories each day as kindergarten readers. I am very proud of the children.
Handwriting: We are continuing to practice our 'Jump Frog Letters'. We have learned how to print E, F, and D. Next we will practice writing P, B, R, N, and M. All of these letters start at the top and form a straight line down. The pencil then 'jumps' back to the top before continuing on with the letter formation.
Math: We have been working on reading and writing the numbers 1-5. We are also counting objects by actually touching and moving manipulatives as we say our numbers. This week we will read Donald Crew's Ten Black Dots and we will create our own class book! We will also read many other picture books that have counting themes.
Science: We have been learning all about our Five Senses. Last Friday we created scented pictures. The children used their sense of smell to guess the materials used to create their pictures. We had so much fun using our noses to smell our materials. After many guesses, we learned that we were using strawberry, blueberry, lime, and lemon flavored jello powder! We will continue to practice using our five senses this week as well! Be sure to ask your children all about this fun unit.
Kings and Queens: Every child has now had a turn to be king or queen for a day! This was a great way for us to learn about all of our new kindergarten friends. We created a chart for each child as we learned about one another. The charts are hanging in our classroom.
Homework: Thank you for your support in completing our first kindergarten homework assignments. We loved sharing the creative and festive pumpkins that were sent in. They are now hanging in our kindergarten hallway for others to enjoy as well. Please note that I will continue to send home homework once a week along with one monthly family project. November's family project will be sent home soon!
Halloween: Eagle's Halloween Spooktacular will be this Friday from 6 -8 pm. Our Halloween classroom party will be Monday, October 31st. Our class mothers will be helping on this day and will be contacting you if you signed up to send in any treats or supplies. In the morning, I would like the children to participate in a pumpkin activity. I am hoping to have four volunteers that would be able to help out with a messy and fun pumpkin activity from 11 - 11:45 on this day. I am also hoping to have 4 medium sized pumpkins donated for this activity. Please contact me if you are able to help!
Thank you for your ongoing support. :)
Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne
Reading: We have been working on two parts of our Daily Five Literacy Block. We are practicing reading to ourselves (independent reading) and reading to someone (partner or buddy reading) each day. We have been doing a terrific job reading pictures, reading words, and retelling stories each day as kindergarten readers. I am very proud of the children.
Handwriting: We are continuing to practice our 'Jump Frog Letters'. We have learned how to print E, F, and D. Next we will practice writing P, B, R, N, and M. All of these letters start at the top and form a straight line down. The pencil then 'jumps' back to the top before continuing on with the letter formation.
Math: We have been working on reading and writing the numbers 1-5. We are also counting objects by actually touching and moving manipulatives as we say our numbers. This week we will read Donald Crew's Ten Black Dots and we will create our own class book! We will also read many other picture books that have counting themes.
Science: We have been learning all about our Five Senses. Last Friday we created scented pictures. The children used their sense of smell to guess the materials used to create their pictures. We had so much fun using our noses to smell our materials. After many guesses, we learned that we were using strawberry, blueberry, lime, and lemon flavored jello powder! We will continue to practice using our five senses this week as well! Be sure to ask your children all about this fun unit.
Kings and Queens: Every child has now had a turn to be king or queen for a day! This was a great way for us to learn about all of our new kindergarten friends. We created a chart for each child as we learned about one another. The charts are hanging in our classroom.
Homework: Thank you for your support in completing our first kindergarten homework assignments. We loved sharing the creative and festive pumpkins that were sent in. They are now hanging in our kindergarten hallway for others to enjoy as well. Please note that I will continue to send home homework once a week along with one monthly family project. November's family project will be sent home soon!
Halloween: Eagle's Halloween Spooktacular will be this Friday from 6 -8 pm. Our Halloween classroom party will be Monday, October 31st. Our class mothers will be helping on this day and will be contacting you if you signed up to send in any treats or supplies. In the morning, I would like the children to participate in a pumpkin activity. I am hoping to have four volunteers that would be able to help out with a messy and fun pumpkin activity from 11 - 11:45 on this day. I am also hoping to have 4 medium sized pumpkins donated for this activity. Please contact me if you are able to help!
Thank you for your ongoing support. :)
Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne
Monday, October 10, 2011
October Highlights
Reminders: Picture Day is Wednesday, October 12th
Scholastic Book Orders due Friday, October 14th (online or by check)
October Family Pumpkin Project due Monday, October 17th
I hope you all enjoyed the beautiful long weekend and are ready for a fun week of kindergarten learning. Last week was very busy! Our fantastic letter experts helped us to learn about the letters Bb, Nn, and Hh. This week we will have two more experts to help us learn about the letters Jj and Tt. Be sure to check your child's folder to see if he/she is the expert this week! Last week we also finished up our apple unit and our unit on patterns. We learned about Christopher Columbus and practiced saying the names of his three famous ships: Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. We had many interesting conversations about this famous explorer and even completed a project that will be sent home this week! We will have another busy week of learning. We will continue to practice our reading skills during our Daily Five Literacy block each day. So far we have practiced reading words, reading pictures, and retelling stories while 'reading to self' each day. We are working on building up our stamina as readers. We will also begin practicing reading with a partner which is always very fun! During math we will explore and identify different kinds of shapes throughout this week. We will also have an assembly about bus safety later on in the week. Be sure to ask your children all about it! As always, please contact me with any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne :)
Scholastic Book Orders due Friday, October 14th (online or by check)
October Family Pumpkin Project due Monday, October 17th
I hope you all enjoyed the beautiful long weekend and are ready for a fun week of kindergarten learning. Last week was very busy! Our fantastic letter experts helped us to learn about the letters Bb, Nn, and Hh. This week we will have two more experts to help us learn about the letters Jj and Tt. Be sure to check your child's folder to see if he/she is the expert this week! Last week we also finished up our apple unit and our unit on patterns. We learned about Christopher Columbus and practiced saying the names of his three famous ships: Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. We had many interesting conversations about this famous explorer and even completed a project that will be sent home this week! We will have another busy week of learning. We will continue to practice our reading skills during our Daily Five Literacy block each day. So far we have practiced reading words, reading pictures, and retelling stories while 'reading to self' each day. We are working on building up our stamina as readers. We will also begin practicing reading with a partner which is always very fun! During math we will explore and identify different kinds of shapes throughout this week. We will also have an assembly about bus safety later on in the week. Be sure to ask your children all about it! As always, please contact me with any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne :)
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Welcome October
We are getting ready for another busy week of kindergarten learning! We plan on wrapping up our unit on apples this Tuesday. We have been reading many great fiction and nonfiction books about apples. We also worked on some fun projects that included tearing paper, finger painting, and actually tasting different kinds of apples. After using our sense of taste, we created a graph and discovered that most of the children in our class liked yellow apples the best! My prediction was wrong. I secretly guessed that the red apples would be the favorite. From our class discussion I learned that the yellow apples tasted the sweetest and, as a result, came in as the favorite choice. We have had so much fun during this unit that I'm sad to see it end. This week we will, however, use real apples to help us create patterns during math. We will continue to learn about identifying and creating different patterns that repeat and grow. We will use shapes, colors, and objects to work on this skill each day. We will also continue to work on our Handwriting Without Tears program. So far we learned about Mat Man and the different shapes used to create letters. We have been sorting our letters and discovering that some letters use only straight lines, some letters use only curves, and some letters use both. We will begin printing our letters this week. We will also continue to learn about different letter sounds this week. Thank you to our Letter Experts in helping us to learn our silly songs and sounds. Be sure to ask your child all about it. One last important item~ This month we will begin family projects. Each month your child will come with a fun family project to work on. The goal is for you to work with your child on a topic that we are learning about in the classroom. It is a terrific way to connect home, school, and learning. Once completed, the children will bring in their projects to share and display. This month the theme will be all about pumpkins! Please be sure to check your child's folder for more information. As always, call or email me with any questions or concerns. I'm looking forward to a great month of learning.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne
Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne
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