Happy Mother's Day!

I hope you all had a terrific weekend and enjoyed your Mother's Day with family and friends. The children worked very hard on their writing and projects for this special day. I hope you enjoyed sharing them as much as we enjoyed making them. I especially liked our class poem the things that moms love. We could have gone on and on with our ideas! :) We have been spending some time learning about poetry and writing our own poems. The children love the idea of picking a topic and writing lists and words into poems. We will spend some more time this week creating kindergarten poems during writing workshop. We created a kindergarten 'Think Spring' bulletin board in the front hallway with some of our writing and artwork. Check it out if you are in the building! This week we will continue working in small guided reading groups during our literacy work stations. The children are all reading books at different levels, but we are working on some of the same strategies. We are working on story mapping while we read~ Who are the main characters? What is the setting? Is there a problem in the story? And what is the solution? The children are doing a great job talking about these concepts as readers. During math we completed a short unit on composing and decomposing numbers 11 - 20. We will continue learning about these numbers, but we will also begin a short math unit on measurement as well. During science we will begin a unit on water play. This will go along with all of the learning we are doing about oceans and sea creatures. We are having a lot of fun working on projects, reading, and writing all about the sea. Reminders: Tuesday, May 15th: District Budget Voting and Kids Vote Too! Bring your child to vote and he/she will be able to vote on a new snack choice in the cafeteria. Also, the May Family Timeline projects are due on Thursday, May 17th or by the end of the week. This is the last family project of the school year! Kindergarten T-shirt orders are also due this week. The cost of the shirt is $10.00. Please let me know if you need a new order form. We are looking forward to another great week of kindergarten learning! As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns. Sincerely, Eileen Browne

Thank you for coming to our Kindergarten Dinosaur Exhibit. The children were so excited to show off their projects and hard work. It was so nice to see you all. Our next family event will take place on June 14th. Please mark your calendars for this day. Our Kindergarten Graduation/Moving Up Celebration will take place during the morning of June 14th. More information will be sent home, but I wanted to make you aware of the date. Reading: This week we will continue to work through our Daily Five Literacy Stations. We will add two more heart words to our Word Wall. We are practicing reading and writing these words. We are also practicing making new words in the same word family. Now that we know the word all, we can read and write many other words in the same family: ball, call, fall, hall, mall, small...etc. This has been very exciting for us! You can practice doing this at home too. Writing: We have been doing a great job writing in our journals and responding to the many different dinosaur stories we have been reading. This week we will begin a short writing unit on poetry. I can't wait to see what our kindergarten writers create! :) Math: We are wrapping up our unit on addition and subtraction. This week we will revisit composing and decomposing numbers 11-20. We will use manipulatives along with our math pages to practice these tricky teen numbers. Science: We will soon begin a unit on water play. We will experiment with sinking and floating and many other activities with water. This will help us as we begin to explore a fun unit on oceans and ocean life! Thank you for your ongoing support. I am so very proud of how much the children have grown during these past few months. :) Sincerely, Mrs. Eileen Browne PS I am not sure why the format is not allowing me to make paragraphs. Please know that this is driving me crazy and I am trying to fix it! :)

Dinosaur Exhibit

We have been very busy in our kindergarten classroom learning all about dinosaurs! We are reading many great and interesting books. Some of the children have been bringing in dinosaur books from home as well. This has added to our learning. We have also been working with one another on many different projects. We have been painting, gluing, cutting, counting, singing, and writing all about dinosaurs this month. We will wrap up this unit with our Kindergarten Dinosaur Exhibit on Friday, April 27th at 2 pm. Please join us in our classroom where you will be able to view some of the fun projects we have been working on. The children are very excited to show off their hard work. We hope to see you there! As always, please contact me with any questions or concerns. Sincerely, Mrs. Eileen Browne

Welcome April!

I hope you had a terrific weekend! This will be a short week as we prepare for spring break, but we will pack a lot of fun learning in. :)

Reading: We will continue to add two more words to our Word Wall to help us with our reading skills. The children are doing a fantastic job reading these words and finding them on charts, poems, and stories. We will also continue working in small guided reading groups each day. This is the time where I am able to read and write with a small group of children while the rest of the class rotates through literacy work stations. We have been doing a great job following this daily routine.

Math: We are wrapping up a short unit on subtracting numbers, but we will revisit addition as we talk about how the concepts of addition and subtraction are related. We will talk about whole numbers and how they are split into parts when we add and subtract. Ex: 10 = 6 and 4; 10 = 8 and 2; 10 = 7 and 3 .... and so forth. We will learn about all the different ways we can make numbers.

Science: We will finish up our unit on properties. The children have really enjoyed learning about solids, liquids, and gases. We have sorted objects and experimented with floating and sinking. We will finish this unit with a few more interesting experiments this week. Be sure to ask your children all about it!

Additional Theme: This week we will begin learning all about dinosaurs. We will read many stories and create lots of fun projects throughout the month of April. We are hoping to end this unit by inviting families in to visit our Classroom Dinosaur Exhibit on Friday, April 27th at 2pm. Please mark your calendars and join us for this fun event!

As always, please contact me with any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne :)

I hope you all enjoyed the fantastic spring weather this weekend. I am hoping that this weather will continue. It will allow us to spend more time outdoors during the school week as well.

Last week was packed with exciting activities. The children and I had fun learning all about leprechauns, shamrocks, clovers, and rainbows. We worked as a class to build and decorate a trap for the leprechauns. We were hoping to catch one or two so that we could learn more about these mischievous little friends. Our trap was terrific, but we were not able to catch any leprechauns. They did, however, leave us some footprints, gold dust, and shamrock cookies! You can just imagine our excitement!

This week we will spend some time adding two more words to our word wall. We will also continue growing as readers and writers during our Daily Five literacy work stations. This is a great time for us to work independently and with partners at our many different reading and writing levels each day. I am very proud of the progress we are making.

During math we have been working on using pictures and hands on activities to help us write addition number sentences. We will continue to practice addition, but will also work on subtracting numbers as well.

During science we will wrap up our mini unit on nutrition and keeping our bodies strong and healthy. We will begin another science unit on exploring the properties of solids, liquids, and gases. During this unit we will conduct various experiments that will help us to record information and think like scientists!

Reminders:
Tuesday: 11:45 dismissal due to Parent Teacher conferences
Wednesday: Gently Used Book Sale~ Please send in money in an envelope labeled with your child's name. The children will be able to purchase books for very little money on this day.

We are looking forward to another great week in our kindergarten classroom.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne :)

Dental Health, Nutrition, Dr. Seuss & More!

Welcome to another fun week of kindergarten! Last week we were very busy reading books about Dr. Seuss and dental health. We conducted two fun experiments. The first experiment was based on dental health. We placed hard boiled eggs into cups of iced tea, soda, diet soda, and water for the week. We observed the eggs throughout the week and watched three of the eggs turn brown. On Friday we took the eggs out of the containers and practiced brushing with toothpaste. We made a bit of progress cleaning the eggs, but overall they remained an ugly brown color. We talked quite a bit about taking good care of our teeth to keep them strong, healthy, and beautiful! We have also been busy trying to guess the beautiful smiling pictures in our classroom. I have folded pictures so that only the smiles of each one of the children are showing in our classroom. This has been a fun activity.

The second experiment that we worked on was based on Dr. Seuss' book Bartholomew and the Oobleck. The children loved this book. After reading, we made two big bowls of green oobleck in our classroom and had lots of fun dipping our hands in the gooey green oobleck! We talked about how it felt both like a liquid and a solid. We will experiment more with oobleck this week. You can even make some at home by using corn starch, water, and green food coloring! Use more water to make it more liquid and less water to make it more solid. It's messy, but quite fun. :)

This week we will begin reading books about nutrition and healthy eating habits. We will also learn about rainbows and shamrocks. We are really enjoying sharing the rainbow projects that have come in so far. Please send in your March Family Rainbow Project if you have not already done so. Also, wear green on Friday. We will talk a bit about St. Patrick's Day and all things green!

During math we will continue working on number sentences as we add and subtract numbers using pictures and manipulatives. The children have been doing a terrific job during our recent math activities. I have been sending home some of the papers that support the hands on activities that we have been working on each day during math.

As always, please contact me with any questions or concerns. Thank you for your support!

Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne

Read Across America

I hope you all had a terrific weekend and were able to spend some time outdoors on Saturday. My family and I enjoyed some time simply walking through our neighborhood in the fresh air~ what a treat!

We are getting ready for another busy and fun week in our kindergarten classroom. This week we will continue participating in Read Across America activities at our school:
Monday: We will read some Dr. Seuss books throughout the day.
Tuesday: Wear green to school. We will read Green Eggs and Ham
Wednesday: Wear crazy socks to school. We will read Fox in Sox.
Thursday: Wear red and blue to school. We will read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.
Thursday, 6:30 - 7:30~ Eagle Elementary Read In Event!

This week we will also be wrapping up our Dental Health unit by conducting a fun experiment with hard boiled eggs, different kinds of drinks, and toothpaste. Be sure to ask your child all about it!

Math: We have been working hard on counting and reading numbers 1-100. We have also been practicing skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s. Counting by 2s and 5s can be tricky! Practice these skills at home too. This week we will begin focusing on reading and writing addition number sentences.

Daily Five/Literacy/Word Wall: We now have 30 heart words on our Word Wall. These words are helping us to become stronger readers. We are finding these words in our books, on our charts, on our school walls, and many other places. Your child should be finding these words at home too! This week I am spending a lot of time reading with individual children. It is so much fun for me to listen to and talk with the children about the great progress they are making as readers. Keep up the great work!

Report Card Conferences: This spring there will be only two days for report cards conferences. All kindergarten report cards will be uploaded to BC@HOME by March 28th. Please check your child's folder for a letter regarding spring report cards.

Thank you for your continued support.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne :)