We had another awesome week of learning in Room 143! We had a beautiful round of Spring SLCs! The SLCs were a true celebration of the tremendous growth our Kinders have made this year. It was exciting to hear them talk about curiosity, proudly read a book, or teach us how to play "Domino Addition." It was especially lovely listening to their Kindergarten reflections--reflections on their favorite projects or what they could do NOW that they could not do in the beginning of the year. Our Kinders have come a long way and it is hard to believe we are nearing the end of our school year. Time DOES fly when you are having fun!
Our Field Trip to the Carlsbad Flower Fields was another highlight of our week! From wiggly worms to sunflower seeds, our field work was a great success! Thank you to our awesome chaperones for your time, gas, energy! All of these valuable outside learning experiences would not be possible without your continued support. We launched our "Happy and Healthy Me" project with the help of Cecilia To, HTe Parent and B2B Personal Trainer. Ms. Cecilia led us in "Kindergarten Bootcamp," a kids' fitness class specially designed for our class. We engaged in various cardio exercises such as jumping jacks, running, hopping, and relay races. We were also able to try out various exercise equipment like resistance ropes and balance balls. The Kinders enjoyed every minute! Our "Happy and Healthy Me" project will be rooted in health, nutrition, and wellness. We will be guided by the Essential Question: "How can I keep my mind, heart, and body healthy?" We will investigate body systems, fun ways to stay active (exercise), yoga as exercise and stress relief, feelings, self-esteem, nutrition, and hygiene. We will continue to work with Ms. Cecilia and will also work with Ms. Sunje, a Children's Yoga Teacher. Ms. Sunje will lead us in a Yoga Assembly on Friday, May 4 at 10:00 a.m. If you are interested in joining us, please let me know. We would love to have you! Warmest Regards, Mrs. Rosemarie
0 Comments
We have had an awesome two weeks back! We met and worked with Ms. Karen, our new UCSD Classroom Teaching Assistant. Ms. Karen is completing her coursework in Education and will be volunteering in our class every Friday. Welcome, Ms. Karen!
The children have gotten back into the swing of things and are eager to begin their next project. I am planning our next project, connecting with Experts, and scouting out field work experiences. In the mean time, we have begun work on our "Word Wizard" routines. Throughout the year, we have engaged in a variety of activities to strengthen our knowledge of words. Our Kinders understand that in order to become even better readers and writers, we have to be Word Wizards! In our quest to become "Word Wizards," we have learned about word families such as the -at and -an families. We have also practiced manipulating beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words to make new words. For instance, the students begin with the word "mat." Then they are asked to change one sound which would turn the word "mat" into "bat." From there they are asked to change one sound in "bat" and turn it into "bag" and so forth. The practice of making words is a great way to examine letter-sound relationships, strengthen phonological awareness (letter sounds), and practice early writing skills. We have also begun our addition unit in Math. We launched the unit with story problems and "experience" related activities in which students acted out various addition stories. We then created our own addition stories in partners and used different strategies (counters, drawing pictures) to help us solve them. After our experiences creating and solving addition stories, we began our work with mathematical symbols (+, =) and reading/writing number sentences. We talked about math as a language, the use of symbols, and how to write and read "math." We will continue our work with addition next week by using different tools (ten-frames and number lines). You can help your child with this unit by creating your own addition stories. An example of an addition story is:
Thank you for your help! You are your child's first and most important teacher. The extra practice and support goes a long way! For Writer's Workshop, we have engaged in a lot of written reflection of Kindergarten so far. We have written about our favorite projects and what we could do now that we could not do in the beginning of the year. Some responses were:
We look forward to sharing our reflections at our second round of SLCs. SLCs begin on Tuesday, April 24. We will have half days to accommodate the conferences. If you have not yet signed up for a Student Led Conference, please sign up here:http://www.SignUpGenius.com/go/20F0548ADAE22A31-spring This week we introduced our Water Play tables! The Kinders absolutely LOVE them and they are a hit on the playground. I overheard one of our Kinders say to a friend, "We are having so much fun out here, right?" Some children have had so much fun that they were in need of a brand new outfit! We kindly ask that you pack an extra set of clothes and shoes in your child's backpack. I even had one friend come to me and ask, "Mrs. Rosemarie, will you please help put water in this? We are trying to create a tide pool." Comments like hers validate the power of play and project-based learning. It is on the playground that I often observe our Kinders exhibit their understanding of current and past projects. Whether its grabbing the magnifying glass to get a closer look at a interesting bug or soliciting friends for a playground trash clean up, the Kinders demonstrate their understanding daily--and authentically. One of the best things about teaching and learning alongside young children is witnessing just that--a simple act, interaction, or saying that shows that they "Got It." I look forward to starting our next project and seeing where the children take it. To another magical week of learning, Mrs. Rosemarie The Kindergarten "Trash" project was our strongest project to date! Not only did the Kinders learn so much about the trash process, they became change agents! They identified a problem, conducted research, engaged in field work, and ultimately came up with a creative way to bring awareness to our trash problem! We have gotten so much positive feedback on the Public Service Announcement. We even had Environmental Science students from High Tech High give us a huge THUMBS UP! I even overheard one of them say, "This PSA is better than ours!" I am so proud of the Kinders' teamwork and creativity!
We would like to personally thank the following people and organizations for making this such a successful project:
I look forward to our next project! In Gratitude, Mrs. Rosemarie |
Welcome!Please check the blog often to read all about the wonderful learning happening in Kindergarten! CategoriesArchives
September 2017
|