During Jesus time today we worked on a little emergent reader entitled See Me Obey. We learned how Noah trusted God's Word to build the ark and followed God's lead. He trusted that the Lord would keep His promise to save him. We can also trust God's promises and we have hope that we will have eternal life in heaven. It was fun for the students to add details to the pictures and highlight some important sight words as well. Also we watched a special video with a song to help us practice our memory work for tomorrow. Please help your child learn "Trust in the Lord with all your heart." Proverbs 3:5
We continued another rotation of literacy centers and thematic centers in the morning. We also made an analysis of our August weather graph and noticed that most of our school days in August have been sunny. We worked on the meaning of the words "most" and "least". I had to point out that 0 is less than 4 and so the least kind of weather was snowy. Later we also worked on discriminating Mm with Nn. The number of points and curves does make a difference. I have noticed a few children think lowercase m has 3 curves and lowercase n has 2. Some others think that an N is written just like M. We are working hard to correct this discrimination error. Make sure your child prints letters from the top first. No letters or numerals start at the bottom. An N is not made by going down, up, and down. Then it will be backwards. We print the two outside straight lines first going from top to bottom. Then we pick up our pencil and print a slanted line going from the top of the first line to the bottom of the second line. A few of the children are also printing a curve from the bottom up and around and down. Then they place a strange little line on the top of the curve. This is not the correct formation for m or n. To make these letters a straight line is made first from the midline to the baseline. Then the curve begins almost near the top of the first straight line. So the straight line goes all the way down on the left side of these letters. Check to correct your child if he/she is still placing a little line on top of the curve. The students went on a 3D shape hunt. We found countless cylinders around our school and spheres were also easy to identify. Cubes and cones proved more challenging to find. Most of the shapes that students thought were cubes were actually flat square shapes or rectangular prisms. We built a cube out of 6 squares to help the students understand the concept. I also showed them a video about 3D shapes. What a busy day! We learned a variety of ways to help us trust in the Lord like Noah did. We put special stickers on a page to remind all of us of different things that strengthen our faith and trust in God. Thanks be to God that He still loves us and never leaves us even when we doubt His promises!
We continued our literacy centers and it is amazing to see how far the students have come since the first day of school. Their independence has grown significantly as they complete tasks and find special activities to do while others are still working on their centers. We also started special thematic centers based on space and sunflowers. Students at the blue table were able to paint a sunflower picture and we even brought in some of the petals from our sunflowers outside our window to observe. The green table is making a special book about space that also helps them to learn the sight word "see". It is fun for them to see a model of the solar system as they work on the book. The yellow table has an activity where the students learn to sequence the life cycle of the sunflower. It is fun for them to glue real sunflower seeds in the middle. At the red table the students are practicing the correct formation of Ss as well as learning what words have the initial /s/ sound. They are being creative as they write space or sunflower stories in their journals. We had fun practicing locomotor movements in the gym. Our exercise leader, Avry, had fun leading us in the dinosaur stomp and a variety of other movements. We also had fun learning to dance and freeze to a couple of fun songs. We are learning to hop on one foot and jump with feet together on two feet. We worked on a book that is designed after the format of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See" It is called "Moon, Moon, What Do You See?" This predictable emergent reader is great for learning some very important beginning high frequency words. It was fun to experiment and look for ways to make a hexagon using other pattern block shapes. Many kids thought of different combinations to form a hexagon. We cut one of our sunflower heads off of the stem today. Tomorrow students look forward to saving some seeds to plant in the spring. We are also thankful to have Ayden's grandmother as a very special helper on Tuesday afternoons. She is a teacher herself and her parents were also professors. We welcome her assistance. Finally, the students brought home their OSLS school 2018-2019 theme shirts to wear on spirit days. Look for it in your child's backpack. Today we learned about Noah and the ark. When you get past the "cute" part of the animals going on the boat two by two, you realize that this was just a beginning glimpse of how our God loved humanity so much. He did what it took to save us. Jesus is our "ark" and He came into the world to save us from a total separation from God. We can be sure that God keeps His promises and we have the hope of eternal life in heaven.
We started a new set of rotating literacy centers this week. At the alphabet table the students are learning to make letters out of playdough as they roll snakes and form each letter using straight lines, curves, or a combination. They are then able to use some cookie cutters that help practice initial sounds of words. The word work table gives the students a chance to make a flip book where they use beginning sounds to match words to pictures of school supplies. The phonemic awareness table gives the students a chance to decide if a card has a pair of rhyming words or not. They sort the cards and put them on the bus if they rhyme or back in the house if they do not rhyme. Then they color appropriate pictures to match cards that have rhyming words. At the writing center the students play "I Spy" and search for words of school supplies. The reading center gives the chance to sequence picture cards. We worked quite a bit to form uppercase and lowercase Ss correctly. We also worked on identifying the beginning sound of words that began with m, s, or t. If they heard a word beginning with s, they made a snake. If the word began with t, they pretended to be a tall tree. If the word began with m, they rubbed their tummy in the middle and said "Mmmmmm." We read a few good books about sunflowers and learned about its growth cycle. Then we went outside to take our photo in front of our sunflowers and to talk about those that were hanging with developed seeds. Throughout the week we will pick some of the seeds to save. During Math, the students used geoboards to form rectangles and "perfect rectangles" called squares. We also completed two more pages in our "Color Train" books. Today it was fun to read a German book about the creation. The kids did a pretty good job repeating some of the German words. It is important for them to realize that other countries learn about God too and how important it is that God's Word is translated into other languages. We especially liked the photo of the hand holding "Adam" and "Eve". Seeing this photo helped us to try to imagine what it must be like for God to have us in the palm of His hand. I purchased this book in Germany when I sang in the Concordia acapella choir in 1985 and have treasured sharing it with my students ever since. Some years later I had the privilege of visiting a German kindergarten (which by the way is early childhood over there) and in that kindergarten they had a large drawing of a hand and each child's handprint was hanging over it. The words on the wall translated from German said, "He holds us all in His hand." This is such a comfort to know. We had fun singing "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" several times this week and as we sing, we thank God for His tender loving care.
We had a busy morning with another rotation of literacy centers and thematic centers. Later in the day we sorted shapes by curves and no curves. Look for curves and straight lines around your home and have your child identify them for you. We were going to go on another hunt for them when we discovered a need for sorting in our room. All of the toys were poured out on the floor, mixed up, and some were broken. So we discussed the need for sorting and what things could be done differently. We also learned that if we have ideas to use things differently it is wise to think about what would be appropriate. If in doubt, it is wise to ask a teacher. You never know what positive things could result from consulting the teacher about your ideas. We learned that there may be new opportunities to develop and it is helpful to speak up and share thoughts and ideas. We look forward to working together to start a restaurant and will plan what items could be used in the new restaurant. This morning we started our day with chapel. Mr. Borcherding taught us how we can share the light of Jesus to others as we help them. We watched a video of the kids in Kenya singing praise to Jesus and we are so glad that our chapel offerings will be helping them out. Some day we will meet these brothers and sisters in Christ in heaven to praise God together! How great is our God's love that we will be gathered together to give glory to God eternally!
We sorted lowercase letters by tall, small, and "fall down" letters. It is so important that young children are exposed to lowercase letters. None of the uppercase letters are small or have tails. However, the lowercase letters come in three sizes. Our reading material has more lowercase letters than uppercase and without lowercase recognition, reading becomes rather difficult. The same is true for handwriting and meeting the standards of writing sentences. The Indiana kindergarten standards have the kids learn to print a sentence that begins with an uppercase letter. Then they need to separate words by spaces and end with punctuation. Without learning which ones are tall or small you would never know which is an uppercase S or lowercase s for instance. We had fun moving to a DVD song to learn to recognize which letters touch the headline, midline, and baseline. We put our hands in the air if the letter was tall, our hands in the middle if the letter was small, and our hands down low if the letter "falls down" with a tail. We work quite a bit on concept of word. I show the students a simple sentence and we count out how many words are in the sentence. We spent a significant amount of time learning that words are letters put together and when they are put in a sentence they are separated by spaces. We compare the number of words to the number of letters in a sentence. With a couple of different books, the students are highlighting various words as we go on a variety of word hunts. Continue to help your child point to words as you read together. Use vocabulary such as letter, numeral, space, word, sentence, period, etc. with your child. These are very important print concepts to learn in kindergarten. I also am trying very hard to instill a strong work ethic among the children in our class. This trait is one of the key predictors of success in life. Praise your child for working hard as opposed to how smart he or she may be. Also, please go through your child's backpack daily with your child. Talk about the work together and have your child tell you about it. Discuss what things were learned. Work on things with your child that may be difficult. I will never forget a family from Sweden that I taught. That mother who was a native of Sweden never left the school parking lot until she took time to go through the backpacks of her two children and talk about things with them. I have many relatives in Germany and it is the same for them. Many European nations score well on the PISA test in my opinion because of the family dynamic. Our nation is much more hurried and lives seem to be very busy and scheduled. Two key predictors of success in life are work ethic and family communication/support. It is good for you to be aware of what your child is learning. A parent is a child's first and most important teacher. You can help to make such a difference in your child by taking time to read, talk, listen, and play together regularly. Today was a special day in kindergarten because it was the 10th day. It was a "Zero Hero" day. The students learned that on every 10th day 0 comes to help because another set of 10 is made. The students put a tenth dot on their ten frame and moved it to the tens place in their pocket place value page in their calendar books. Kindergarten standards require that students learn that a number in the teens is composed of one set of ten and so many extra ones. We had fun dancing to a "Zero Hero" number song where we sing by ones to one hundred and dance on every 10th number.
During Jesus Time the students learned just how sad it was for Adam and Eve to leave the garden after they sinned. Life on Earth was never the same and it still affects us today. Thankfully God still loved us and sent Jesus to save us. Now we can look forward to a day in heaven where there will be no more suffering, tears, pain, or sadness. Thanks be to God! We continued our literacy centers today and then after a morning recess began some thematic centers that focused on transportation. Thematic centers rotate in four table groups from Tuesday through Friday. The blue table made "I Can Travel" books and they had fun illustrating different means of transportation as well as focusing on the predictable sentence frame..."I can _____." The yellow table had fun experimenting with float and sink as they made aluminum foil boats. They predicted the amount of various materials that it would take to sink the boat and then they recorded the information with tally marks. The green table made a sight word practice book called "Go Up". Not only does this book teach the words go and up, but it also teaches some color words. The red table drew a picture of how many teeth they lost, printed Tt, made a sentence, and wrote in their journals about how they like to travel. In gym the students had fun moving to locomotor movements and animals. Our exercise leader, Caleb, also had fun giving them a variety of ways to exercise. We continued to practice printing the numerals 1-5 and also had fun playing a numeral and set bingo game. Some extra copies were sent home so that you can play together at home. Today was a pretty exciting day in kindergarten. We began the day praising God that He made the world and all that is in it....including us! It was wonderful to praise the Lord with the song "My God Is so Great!" especially since today we were thinking about the sun, moon, and stars. One of the verses praises God with the words...."The mountains are His, the rivers are His, the stars are His handiwork too!" The second verse reinforces that God loved us so much He sent Jesus to save us. Some of the words are: "My God loves me so. His love is so mighty. He sent His son Jesus for me.....He died for my sins. He rose from the grave. He'll come back in glory for me." We continue to sing the song "God's Creation" which reviews the days of creation and reminds the kids that God sent a Savior to save us from our sin.
We also started a new five day rotation of literacy centers today. Each day a group of 3-4 students goes to a different table that works on one of the following skills: alphabet, word work, phonemic awareness, writing, and reading. At the alphabet table the students are sorting cards to find a, m, s, or t, etc. in a variety of fonts. Books have more than one way to print letter a, for instance. It is not always a circle with a straight stick. Lowercase t is not always composed of two straight lines. Sometimes lowercase t has a curve at the bottom. Lowercase g can be extremely confusing for students as we only print one circle and then we put on a tail. However in many books a g has two loops. Having kids sort and recognize letters in various fonts is a very important skill in order to read a variety of stories from different books. At the word work center students are making a predictable book with the sentence frame "See the _____". They are beginning to learn the concept of word and are cutting apart the words that are mixed up and then they have to put the words in the correct order. I noticed that many of the students do not know that words are separated by spaces. As much as possible take your child's finger and point to the words as you read together. Count how many words are in a sentence. We also underlined words that began with letter t today. I could easily tell which kids did not have concept of word because some students underlined every t that they came across. Some underlined an entire sentence with one line. The phonemic awareness table had a spinner game where students had to match words that rhyme. At the writing center students made mini pictionaries and looked for words that began with b, d, m, s, and t. At the reading center students were book detectives as they looked for books with animals, numbers, abcs, and people. We also had a variety of other reading and math activities. |
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