WRAD!

     Did you know that March 7th was World Read Aloud Day?  This is a new celebration to me, but my students sure loved the special visit from from super 5th grade readers!  The kids were extremely well-behaved as they sat and listened to their new friends read to them.  Young students always look up to older kids, so it's wonderful to have some good role models visit our classroom!

     It was pretty amazing to observe the 5th graders naturally checking for comprehension with their questions as they read!  A big thank you to Mrs. Carr for the idea!

We Love Amy!

     I am so grateful for my volunteer, Amy, who comes faithfully twice a week!  She is so wonderful with the kids!  When she arrives, she begins working 1:1 with each child on his or her poetry notebook.  They work on fluency as they practice each week's special poem. 

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

     Schools across America celebrate the birthday of Dr. Seuss on March 2nd.  At Pence, the entire building came to a halt and we all sat in the hall and read together.  What a wonderful way to share our love of reading!

“The more that you read, 

the more things you will know. 

The more that you learn, 

the more places you'll go.” -- Dr. Seuss

 

Feelin' the Love!

     One highlight of the week was Valentine's Day.  Our late start Tuesday morning cut us a little short on time, but we squeezed in as many our of planned activities as we could.  The majority of our time was spent on Math.  We estimated with candy hearts, sorted them, graphed them, and ate them!  In the afternoon, we let our creative juices flow while we created our valentine mail bags.  Finally, we ended the day with some yummy treats, some mail delivering, and the opening of all our mail!  It warmed my heart to hear them exclaim about each other's cards while shouting out words of thanks.

 Sorting!

 Graphing!

 Designing!

and....Delivering!

P.S.  Please visit the Fairfieldsfuture.org website and schedule your parent-teacher conference for next Tuesday or Thursday.  I look forward to talking with you about your child's progress!

Down in the Valley.....

     The song that I learned as a child keeps playing in my mind this week as we study landforms.  One of our science benchmarks states that each child will be able to identify the earth's landforms.  We played games, looked at books, wrote in our journals, and built the landforms out of play dough this week.  Hopefully, these activities will trigger the names of the four landforms in each child's head as I question them next week!  Now, back to my song.....the valley so low..... hang your head over, hear the wind blow..... :) 

   The plain

 A valley

Look at that mountain!

Happy 100th Day!

     Monday was a great, busy day!  It was crammed with fun, meaningful activities centered around the number 100.  Take a look at our photos to see what we did!

Wow!  We've been here 100 days!

 

To kick off our day, we made our 100th day hats.

      Our story about Miss Bindergarten inspired a class book.  The students had to answer the question, "What could you eat 100 of?" 

      For Math, we counted Froot Loops into groups of 10.  I was pleased that the kids knew we would need 10 groups of 10 to make 100.

 

 Once we had them counted, we strung them to make a necklace!

This activity was good for our fine motor skills, too!

     I was thrilled with your kind donations of ingredients for our special snack.  The children enjoyed counting out 10 of each type of food.  Yummy!  Thank you for your generosity.

      We ended the day with a scavenger hunt for Hershey's kisses.  Each kiss had a sticker number on it.  Every child had to find his or her matching number on a chart.  (Of course I let them eat their kisses at the end!)

All in all, the day was a success!

Back At It!

     Apparently, I have been on vacation from my blog!  I vow to renew my commitment to weekly updates and snapshots of what is happening in the wonderful world of kindergarten!  Next week, expect an exciting post about Day 100 -- Monday will be filled with many fun activities centered around the number 100.  I always look forward to the students' enthusiasm that day.
    As I reflect on the first 98 days of the year, I realize how much we have grown and progressed.  Check out these photos from this fall.  The kids look so little!

     
     In the above pictures, we are meeting with our 3rd grade reading buddies.  Each week, we spend a little time with our older friends who read to us and help us practice our skills, too!  It is a great way for the third graders to strengthen their fluency and the kindergartners love the attention of the "big kids."