October Learning

I hope you enjoyed another beautiful fall weekend with family and friends. We have been having great fun in our kindergarten classroom with many fall activities.

Last week, after reading Lois Ehlert's Leaf Man,we went on our very own kindergarten leaf hunt outside our school building. We were so excited to find many different kinds of leaves. We loved the bright and changing colors. We also tried to figure out which types of trees the leaves came from. We were very good at matching maple leaves. After gathering leaves, we flattened them out using our pencil boxes. The next day we worked on creating our own leaf artwork along with some writing just like Lois Ehlert! Our final products are now hanging in the kindergarten hallway. We also hung up or Pumpkin Projects in our hallway. We loved sharing our pumpkin projects with one another and learning about the different ways that families worked together. Thank you so much for sending them in. Our hallway is looking quite festive!

This week we will continue reading and writing about fall, but we will also begin a short author study. We will read various books written and illustrated by Donald Crews. He has written many books about transportation vehicles. We will compare and contrast his different books and even write our own class book using some of Donald Crew's writing techniques.

We will also have three letter experts this week! We will work on the letters Tt, Ll, and Rr. In addition to these letters, we are working on our Daily Five literacy activities. This week we are working on three different parts of Daily Five: Reading to Self, Listening to Stories, and Reading to Someone (partner/buddy reading). We are learning that readers take their time, readers care for books, and readers are quiet in order to respect other readers in the room. This week I will be sending home a reading log in your child's folder so that he/she can practice these skills at home too. You may read to your child, your child may read to you, or your child may listen to a story. The important thing is that your child is spending 10-15 minutes at home each day with books.

During math, we are working on comparing groups of numbers. We are creating groups that have 1 more, 2 more, 3 more, 1 less, 2 less, 3 less, etc. We will also begin working on numbers 6 - 10. In addition to our math pages, we are playing many different math games during work stations each day. Last week we used dominoes to play 'domino parking' The children loved counting the dots on the dominoes and parking them in the appropriate parking spaces on different mats.

I hope this post gives you an idea of some of the fun learning that is taking place in our kindergarten classroom. I will be sending home a hard copy of some October Reminders in your child's folder.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns. I am looking forward to another fun and busy week in our kindergarten classroom!

Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne :)