Gingerbread Week!

I hope you had a fantastic weekend. We are gearing up for a fun and exciting week in our kindergarten room. This week we will continue to work on our reading, writing, and math skills each day. We will also be comparing and contrasting many different gingerbread stories as we incorporate this theme into our daily activities. There are so many different fun versions of this familiar story. We are learning that the 'big idea' is the same, but sometimes the characters, the illustrations, and the endings can be different. We love the repetitive words and often join in during read aloud time each day! Try reading some of these stories at home too! We have added two new heart words to our Word Wall: run & see. We thought these were perfect words since we are finding both of these words in our gingerbread stories.

Reminders: Please join us on Thursday, December 22nd at 2:15 to help us decorate our very own gingerbread houses. You may also read some of our stories with your child and take the gingerbread houses home on this day. Thank you so much for helping with the supplies for this fun and messy project! :) Also, we will have a small festive pm snack on Friday, December 23rd during our usual snack time. If you signed up to send in a treat, please drop it off in the main office before 11:30. Thank you for your support during this very busy time of the year.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne

Teddy Bear Week!

Our bears survived Teddy Bear Week! We had so much fun learning and sharing our many different stories and activities with our cuddly friends this week. During math, we sorted our bears by color, by size, and by clothes. We also lined up our bears from tallest to smallest and practiced counting in many different ways. During reading, we read stories all about bears. We read both fiction and nonfiction stories to our teddy bears. Some of our favorites were Brown Bear, Brown Bear; Corduroy; We're Going on a Bear Hunt; and the Bear Snores On series. We also taught our bears about our word wall and the twelve heart words that we are learning to read. Our bears helped us to sing some of our letter songs each day too. We ended our bear week with a snack especially for bears...honey combs, goldfish, and teddy grahams. Boy were they hungry today! I'm sure your bears will be very tired from their busy and fun week. They will definitely need a hot bath in the washing machine and some rest!

Have a terrific weekend!

Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne :)

Welcome December!

I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving weekend and are ready for December! This is a busy month filled with report card conferences, collections for the Bethlehem Holiday Food Drive, a December Family Project, Gingerbread Fun, and our classroom holiday party. Please check the side of this blog for important dates to mark on your calendar and feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns. I will update our classroom blog during the weekend, but wanted to post our December dates. Please check back soon!:)
Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all enjoyed the beautiful weekend and are ready for a short week of kindergarten learning.

This week we will continue working on adding heart words (go & and) to our Word Wall and learning about two more letters (Qq and Yy) and their sounds. Our Word Wall Work is helping us as readers and as writers each day!

We will also spend time learning about the first Thanksgiving, Pilgrims, Native Americans, the Mayflower, Squanto, turkeys, and much more! On Wednesday we will celebrate Thanksgiving during snack time with a special friendship salad. Thank you for helping with this activity by sending in fruit on Tuesday. I'm sure we'll have a terrific Kindergarten Thanksgiving.

In addition to our many activities, I am looking forward to meeting with parents to discuss your child's progress in our classroom. Report cards will be uploaded to BC@Home the day prior to your child's conference date. Please contact me with any questions or concerns.

I'm looking forward to another great week and wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne :)

American Education Week!

Welcome to American Education Week! You are invited to visit our kindergarten classroom on Tuesday, November 15th at 11:00. We will be working on an activity to go along with our Thanksgiving unit. You are also invited to go to the Book Fair with your child at 11:40. Our recess time is at 12:00 and our lunch time is at 12:25. Please feel free to come to any of these activities on Tuesday. I look forward to seeing you!

PTO Silent Auction Fundraiser~ Our kindergarten class has teamed up with Mrs. Bogus' kindergarten class to create a basket filled with new small toys for the Silent Auction. Please see Eagle's homepage for more specific information in order to help out with this terrific fundraiser.

Report Card Conferences~ Most days and times are set for our upcoming conferences. Please return the conference form confirmations or send me a note/email if you are unsure of your time. Thank you!

Reading/Writing~ We will work on the letters sounds V, G, U, and X this week! We will also add two more words to our Word Wall. So far our Word Wall has the words a, I, the, & is. The children have been so excited to learn the new letter songs along with our heart words. They are 'spotting' these letters and words everywhere! In writing we are working hard on labeling pictures, adding words to complete sentences, and trying our best to write the sounds that we hear. I'm so proud of the children and their recent efforts to write each day!

Social Studies~ We will begin learning about families and Thanksgiving as part of our social studies unit. This is such a fun time of the year and I'm looking forward to the many different activities that we will work on together. We will be sure to send the projects home before Thanksgiving so that your family can enjoy them as well.

As you can see, we will have another busy week in our kindergarten classroom. Thank you for your support!

Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne

Welcome November!

I hope you are all enjoying this beautiful fall weather as we begin the month of November. We are getting ready for a fun and busy time of the school year. Below are some highlights.

Reading: We have been working hard on practicing some of the components of our Daily Five literacy activities. The children have been doing a great job reading to self and reading to someone. This week we will add listening to stories~ on tape, cd, and the computers. I am so proud of the children and their efforts during our literacy block each day.

Letters and Sounds: Thank you to our 'Letter Experts' last week for helping us learn all about the letters Ww, Zz, and Kk. This week is a short one. We will learn about the letters Ee and Vv. We have been singing our letter songs and working on our ABC books each day.

Handwriting: Last week we finished our unit on Jump Frog Letters. We will continue working on learning about uppercase letters with straight lines. During our handwriting time we have been practicing sitting up straight, correct pencil grips, and simply trying our best each day. We are also learning how to print our first names conventionally. The children have grown so much since September in their willingness to write. This is helping them to begin writing in their journals, labeling pictures, and creating books as well!

Math: We are learning all about counting and writing our numbers throughout the day. We are using manipulatives, playing games, reading counting stories, creating graphs, counting with our voices, and much much more! Sometimes we use paper and pencil for extra reinforcement, but we are often using hands on learning during math.

Extras:
Homework~ Thank you for working on your family turkey projects. I hope that you are having as much fun creating them as we are having sharing them! This week I ask that you dig up a family photo to send into our classroom. We will be talking about our families throughout the next two weeks as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving.

American Education Week~ You are welcome to visit our kindergarten classroom on Tuesday, November 15th at 11:00. Kindly let me know how many people will be visiting in order to help me plan accordingly.

Book Fair~ The Scholastic Book Fair will be held at Eagle during American Education Week (November 14th - November 18th) Please contact the PTO if you are able to volunteer some time help out with this event.

Parent Teacher Conferences~ I am in the process of confirming conference times. Please return the note that was recently sent home. I will do my best to honor your dates and times.

Thank you for your ongoing support. I'm looking forward to another great week of kindergarten learning!

Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne :)

Thank You!

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 :)

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

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 :)

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

Kindergarten News

Wow! We are beginning the last week of September. This will be a short, yet busy week. We will continue to read and talk about apples and Johnny Appleseed as we say goodbye to September. We will also work on some fun projects that include real apples and paint throughout the week. It may be messy, but it will also be exciting. This week we will also be working on sorting objects and identifying and creating patterns as part of our math unit. During literacy, we will have two more 'letter experts' this week. Be sure to check your child's folder to see if he/she has been selected for this important task. We have been having so much fun learning our silly letter songs and sharing objects that begin with different letter sounds. So far, Vincent helped our class learn about the letter Dd and Isha helped us learn about the letter Ff. Your child may be next! This week we will begin exploring our Handwriting Without Tears program as well. We will talk about the differences between uppercase and lowercase letters and identify which letters have curves, straight lines, and/or both. I have posted a link (to the right of this page) with more information on this program. This will help us as we begin the exciting process of writing! These are just some of the concepts that we will be working on in our classroom this week. Check back for more! I'm looking forward to a great week of learning. :)
Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne

Thank You!

It was so nice to see you at our Open House. I hope you enjoyed visiting our classroom and learning about the fun activities planned for your children this year. This week we will continue to practice our listening skills and following directions. Please reinforce these skills at home too. We will also begin learning about apples, letter sounds, counting numbers, and so much more! We will have two 'letter experts' this week for the letters Dd and Ff. Please check your child's folder each night to see if he/she is the expert! It's a very important job. Thank you. I'm looking forward to a fun week filled with learning.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne :)

First Full Week of Kindergarten

I hope you all enjoyed the beautiful weekend and are ready for our first full week of kindergarten together! We are working very hard on learning our routines and forming friendships in our classroom. This week we are reading some great books about going back to school. So far we have read two of my very favorite books...The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn and Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. We even had fun making our very own hand prints during one of our work stations on Friday. This week we will create more projects and spend time practicing our listening skills as we learn more about one another. Continue to practice listening and following directions at home too! Thank you for your support as we begin this exciting school year together. I hope to see you all on Thursday at 6:30 for our Open House!
Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne