50th Day of School, Thanksgiving Fun, and a New Friend!

This will be a short week, but we sure are packing a lot into it! :)  We will continue learning all about families and Thanksgiving during these three days.  We also welcome Jasmine Berryhill into our kindergarten class.  We are very excited to learn all about our new friend Jasmine!

50th Day of School! Since September, we have been counting the days of school in our kindergarten classroom.  Our friend, Zero the Hero, visits us each time we reach a new group of ten.  He visited on the 10th day, the 20th day, the 30th day, and the 40th day.  Zero the Hero will visit us on Monday and we will also have a 50th Day of School Celebration.  The kindergarten teachers will provide the activities and the treats, but please help us by dressing your child in clothes that celebrate the 1950s!  Please do not buy anything new.  Your child can wear rolled up jeans, a white shirt, rolled down socks.  Please see the letter that went home in your child's folder for some more ideas.  Use what you already have at home!

Parent Teacher Conference Days:  Tuesday is a half day due to parent teacher conferences. Please note that the children will be dismissed at 11:45 on these days. We will still eat our morning snack, but lunch will be eaten at home.  Please make sure that your child has a healthy morning snack on these three half days.  Your child's report card will be on BC@HOME the day prior to your child's conference. Please review your child's report card prior to the conference.  Feel free to contact me or the main office with any questions or concerns regarding this. Also, Wendesday is a full day of school.  Please let me know if your child will be absent or if you plan on leaving early due to traveling for the long holiday weekend.

--> ~Winter Weather and Clothing ~
As a class, we have been working very hard on putting on our coats, zippering our coats, and putting on our own hats and mittens for recess and at the end of the school day.  We are also practicing putting our gloves, mittens, and hats inside our coat sleeves after taking them off so that they do not get lost.   Please note that the kindergarten children go to lunch after recess.  Each day they take off their winter clothes in the cafeteria before sitting down to eat. Students should be putting hats and gloves in their sleeves so they don't get lost. Please also remember that students need sneakers to change into if they wear boots. Our goal is to keep our classroom neat and safe each day and to prevent clothing from entering the Lost and Found!  Thank you so much for your support in this area.  It is a huge help.

Mystery Readers:  We had our very first Mystery Reader on Friday. The children loved hearing the clues about our reader and were very excited to meet Lily's grandmother!  Thank you for sending back your clues to me.  We can stretch this out during the next couple of months to ensure that every child's family has a chance to be a Mystery Reader.  Please contact me with any questions or concerns.  It's never to late to sign up to be a Mystery Reader! :)

I am looking forward to a busy three days with your children! :)  I hope you all have a fantastic Thanksgiving holiday with family and friends.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Eileen Browne

 

Busy, Busy, Busy!

We have officially begun one of the busiest times of the school year.  Please check this blog and the dates on the left sidebar each week.  This will help you to keep track of everything that is going on.  I am also using this blog entry to clarify some of the dates!

I want to begin by thanking you for your generous donations for our Dollar Dash.  Our school raised approximately $2,000.00 during the week.  The money is going directly to the families of Long Island and Staten Island.  We are also beginning to collect school items to fill backpacks for some of the children who need to attend new schools and may have lost all of their original supplies.  We are collecting items according to grade levels for this project.  As a kindergarten team, we are in charge of collecting pencils, erasers, and primary notebooks to fill up these backpacks.  We will have collection boxes in our classrooms.  I am currently working with some teachers in Staten Island to assess some of the long term needs of children and families.  Perhaps we can connect to another school as a year long project if some of you are interested?  Please let me know your thoughts. Thank you so much for the support given so far.

Eagle's Silent Auction is coming soon!  Each grade level is in charge of filling up a gift basket for this event.  The kindergarten gift basket is all about books.  Please consider sending in a favorite picture book to put into our kindergarten gift basket for this event.  The items are due this Friday, November 16th.

American Education Week:  Please join us in our classroom this Wednesday, November 14th at 2:15.  We will be visiting the Book Fair and creating a project together in our classroom.  

Turkeys are due!  Please send in your Family Turkey Project.  We love sharing them.

Family Picture:   Please send in a picture of your family as soon as possible.  The picture should be 4 x 6 inches.    I would really love to have the pictures by Tuesday, November 13th!

50th Day of School~  We have been counting the days in our kindergarten classroom.   Our friend, Zero the Hero, visits us each time we reach a new group of ten.  He visited on the 10th day, the 20th day, the 30th day, and the 40th day.  The 50th day of school will be on Monday, November 19th.  Zero the Hero will visit us on this day AND we will also have a 50th Celebration.  The kindergarten teachers will provide the activities and the treats, but please help us by dressing your child in clothes that celebrate the 1950s!  Please do not buy anything new.  Your child can wear rolled up jeans, a white shirt, rolled down socks...  Use what you already have at home. 

Report Cards:  Parent Teacher Conference Days are approaching.  Please note that the children will be dismissed at 11:45 on these days.  Your child's report card will be on BC@HOME the day prior to your child's conference.  Please contact me with any questions or concerns.

Thank you for  your ongoing support during this busy time of the year! 

Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne :)

Mrs. Wishy Washy, Five Senses, and The Dollar Dash

Below is a peek at some of our kindergarten learning for this week ~

We will be reading Mrs. Wishy Washy and learning all about farm animals.  This is a fun rhyming story.  We will use this story to learn about rhyming words, story sequencing, and retelling the different parts of a story.  We will also create a few fun projects to go along with this story.

Our focus letters for this week will be Ii, Vv, and Zz.  We will have three new 'letter experts' to help us learn about the letter sounds, the sentences, and the poems.  The children have been creating pages for each letter as we learn about them.  They are getting much better at drawing and labeling their pictures during these activities. This is something that can easily be worked on at home too! :)  Encourage your child to stretch out letter sounds and to write the sounds they hear during writing activities.  I am not concerned about perfect spelling for most children.  The goal is to become more confident in writing and to take risks in writing even when it's hard!  We will soon begin writing our own personal stories during Writing Workshop.

During math, we will continue our work with exploring numbers numbers to 20.  We are showing numbers in different ways, exploring ten frames, and learning all about more, fewer, less, and equal.  The teen numbers can be tricky for many children.  We are using various materials and playing different math games to help us with our learning.  The children love using cards and dominoes to identify numbers!

During science, we will dig a bit deeper into our Five Senses unit.  We will be working with many different hands on materials while asking and answering questions.  Our goals is to explore our five senses and to think, observe, and write like scientists!

This Friday, we will be having a Dollar Dash to raise money for families who were affected by Hurricane Sandy.  Please think about sending in a donation for this very important fundraiser.  As some of you may know, I am originally from Staten Island, NY.  I spent this past weekend visiting with family and was overwhelmed by the destruction that took place.  My family is very fortunate and are safe, but there are so many families in need.  Please help our school to help others in need. Our goal is to ensure that all proceeds go directly to families in need.  Thank you!

I am looking forward to a great week in our kindergarten classroom.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne

Pumpkin Fun!

Thank you to my four parent volunteers...Megan's mom, Lauren's mom, Tucker's mom, and Amanda's mom!   We had a lot of fun exploring pumpkins in our classroom this morning.  We measured and weighed the pumpkins.  We counted the ribs on the outside of the pumpkin.  We even carved the pumpkins, scooped out the pulp and seeds, and named the pumpkins.  It was messy, but we had fun and learned a lot too!  I hope your child was able to tell you all about it.

This week we will be wrapping up our unit on pumpkins as well as some of our fall themes.  We will, however, continue to explore our Five Senses during the month of November as part of our science curriculum.  Working with leaves and pumpkins has certainly helped us to begin exploring our Five Senses. 

During November we will also begin learning about families as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving.  We will compare and contrast families of today and families of long ago.  We will also spend time talking about our own families and what makes our families special.  Please think about having a family photo available for an upcoming November family project!  As part of our family unit, I would like to have a Mystery Reader from your family come in during the month of November or December.  This person can be mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, an aunt, an uncle...you decide!  The children love having visitors come in to read them a story.  I will send home more information about this in your child's folder next week.   I will also be sending home information about our November Family Project.  I hope that you enjoy working on these projects as much as we enjoy sharing them. 

During our literacy activities, we are continuing our work on the different parts of Daily Five.  So far we have practiced:  Reading to Self, Reading to Someone, Listening to Stories, and Writing.  This is the time during the day where the children will eventually work in different literacy stations throughout the week while I meet with small groups of children.  Right now we are working on building stamina and independence in these areas each day.   We are also learning about more letter sounds, thanks to our Letter Experts each week.  We have recently learned about the letters Cc and Pp.  We will learn about the letters Oo, Ii, and Gg this week.  During Word Wall activities we are also practicing reading sentences, stretching our letter sounds, and reading sight words (the, is, at..) to help us build our reading and writing skills.  I am so proud of the children and their excitement about reading and writing!

During math, we continue to explore the numbers 6-10.  We are learning about adding one more, two more, one fewer, and two fewer to make larger numbers.  Please note that the math papers are just a small part of the math lessons and activities that we do each day.  We work with math manipulatives, white boards, math vocabulary, whole group discussions, and small group activities to enrich our math lessons each day. 

I hope this gives you a sneak peek at some of the learning that is taking place in our kindergarten classroom.  We sure are busy!  :)

Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne

Pumpkins, Spiders, & Fall Fun!

This week we will be busy reading all about pumpkins, spiders, and fall activities. We will be reading, writing, and working on several projects to go along with these fun themes. On Friday we will use our five senses to explore real pumpkins in our classroom. A special thank you to our four parent volunteers!

During literacy, we are reading many books by Donald Crews as part of an author study. We are very busy comparing and contrasting his different books. We love his pictures and how he uses labels throughout many of his stories. We also continue to work on our Daily Five activities each day. So far we have learned all about three parts: Read to Self (independent reading), Read to Someone (partner reading), and Listening to Stories (cd, computer, adult). You can do these activities at home too. A Reading Activity Log has been sent home in each child's folder. Please choose to do at least one reading activity each day at home. Your child should color in a smiley face after completing his/her reading choice for the day. Thank you for your support.

We have also been working on our Handwriting Without Tears program in our kindergarten classroom. We are working very hard on holding our pencils the correct way, 'stacking our blocks' when we are sitting, and starting our letters at the top! We often listen to 'writing music' to help us do our best work. Be sure to ask your child all about his/her orange handwriting books.

During math we are learning all about the numbers 6-10. We will practice using five frames, ten frames, and various math manipulatives to help us identify these numbers. We love using dominoes in our kindergarten classroom!

Please note that the Eagle Spooktacular is this Friday from 6-8 PM. This is a great time for students to show off their costumes with friends. Please note that costumes may not be worn to school on Halloween. Instead we can wear orange and black! Families are welcome to visit our classroom on Wednesday, October 31st at 2:30 PM. We will be making a pumpkin life cycle craft and having snack. We hope to see you!

Pancake Breakfast Reminder!
Please don't forget to order your tickets for the Pancake Breakfast on Saturday, November 17th at Applebee's. It is a fundraiser for our school. Please go to Eagle's homepage for more information!

As always, please feel free to contact me any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne :)

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 :)

Fall is Here!

I hope that you enjoyed your long weekend. It certainly feels like autumn is officially upon us! Below is a peek at some of the things we are working on in our kindergarten classroom.

This week we will work on the letters Jj and Tt. We will have two more letter experts to help us with the sounds, sentences, and songs for these letters. Be sure to check your child's folder for this important job! We will also continue to work on our Daily Five literacy activities. So far we have worked on what 'Reading to Self' looks and sounds like in our classroom. The children have been doing a great job using their reading bins and reading quietly each day. We have been practicing 'Word Work' activities as well. During Word Work we use magnetic letters to build names and words that we find on charts in our classroom. We are also having fun using white boards and expo markers during this activity. This week we will add 'Listening to Stories' as another Daily Five literacy choice. We will listen to stories on tape as well as on the computer while following along. The children are really enjoying our time spent reading each day.

In addition to handwriting, we are also beginning to explore Writing Workshop. Much like reading, we are talking about what Writing Workshop looks and sounds like in our classroom. We are noticing that there are many different reasons for writing: writing lists, writing letters, writing cards, writing labels, writing stories, etc. Some writers use pictures, some writers use words, and some writers use a combination of the two. Please encourage your children's writing skills at home too!

During Math we have been working on creating number books. We are also using objects and hands on materials in our classroom to show numbers in different ways. Some of the children have also been joining materials together to practice adding and counting. A practice book will be sent home this week for additional practice. Work on this book at your own pace. You may send the book back when your child has completed it or you may keep it at home. This is optional, but some of the children may enjoy completing 'homework' :)

One last item...Throughout the month of October, we will be reading and learning about fall leaves, spiders, and pumpkins. I am hoping to have four volunteers come into our classroom on Friday, October 26th at 10:45 to help with pumpkin activities. If you are interested in bringing in a medium sized pumpkin to weigh, measure, and carve with a group of children, please contact me by email or by sending in a note. I only need four volunteers on October 26th, but all families will be invited into our classroom on Wednesday, October 31st at 2:30 for some fall fun!

Thank you.

Mrs. Eileen Browne :)