The Year of the Snake

We are quickly approaching the Lunar New Year (January 29) so, "Happy New Year!", to those celebrating!  This Spring Festival is celebrated by 1/5 of the World's Population.  This is the Year of the Snake. 

Foundational Skills in Phonological Awareness and Literacy:  we are continuing to practice tapping out sounds in words and using this skill to do more writing in our classwork.  Students are surprising me everyday with all they have learned!  We are also practicing all the uppercase letters and reviewing how to form the lowercase letters.

We explore further the elements of a story with a closer look at what a "Setting" is (when and where a story takes place) and what a "Character" is (a who or what in a story that has a role in the telling the story.  While learning about these we've learned about prepositions and how to extend sentences to tell more details.  We've also talk about adjectives and how descriptions are an important element to writing.  Last week we made a mural in our classroom to show the various characters and settings in Three Little Pigs and we discussed the importance of describing words for characters.  Students contemplated what the story would become if there was not a "Big Bad Wolf", but a "Nice, Friendly Wolf" instead. Here is our "almost finished" mural.

Our latest "wordless book" is called Red Barn Farm about a dairy farm.  There are 2 more books to introduce and then students will take home the next black and white book of 3 stories to practice retelling at home.  I may move through the next 6 stories a little quicker to reach the books that have student reading portions where we'll use our knowledge of tapping out the sounds to figure out new words. 

    

We are also enjoying various read alouds including our progression through the Mercy Watson books (we're almost done with Book 2) by Kate DiCamillo. These are great books to check out at the library and reading with your child at home.

   

Math: In the last two weeks we have been busy learning how to subtract and also learning the math symbols of "+" and "-".  Vocabulary practice is important during these introductions because there are so many different ways to talk about adding (altogether, total, plus, add, and, sum) and subtracting (minus, take away, subtraction, left over, remaining, difference).  

There is a bit of excitement as we slowly approach the 100th day of Kindergarten (around Feb. 20th, depending on if we have any snow delays).  Friday was our 84th day and we noticed that our 10's column of daily "x's" is getting quite full with only room for 2 more 10's frames before we'll have to transfer the 10 groups of 10 over to the 100's column.  In Kindergarten we'll celebrate this day with several 100-themed activities.  More information will come about this as we get closer.

Social Emotional Learning (SEL):  We are talking more about how to use what we know already to help us and those around us; building our independence.  These include, practicing staying calm when we get upset or "lose" a game; how to handle ourselves if a friend is verbally mean or pushes/hits us, what to do when we're disappointed in a decision or outcome.  

Grout's focus character trait this month is PERSEVERANCE so we've revisited what this means and learned a bit about the "knowledge pit".  When we are learning something new it is not always easy, just like it isn't easy climbing up out of a hole.  If we choose to never go down into the hole and just take the easy way across the bridge, we don't have the opportunity to learn as much (for example, just copying from someone else's paper or asking a grown up how to spell something without trying on our own first).  Friday the 31st will be our school assembly to present awards for students showing perseverance at school.

Content (Social Studies/Science/Health):  We finished our Health Unit on nutrition after learning about how important it is to try new things, how to eat a balanced diet (at this age that just means we're trying to think about food colors and eat a variety of colors, we did not go in depth about Proteins, Fats, and Carbohydrates), and to drink plenty of water.  

In the last two weeks we also talked about Martin Luther King Jr. and a little about the Civil Rights Movement and Slavery in our country.  We'll explore these topics more during February, Black History Month, and throughout the rest of the year.  

Our Garden time this month, with Ms. Abby and a couple parent volunteers, was lots of fun spending time outside the Grout Garden and walking at Kenilworth Park to see and hear birds.  We saw Robins, Crows, and some even saw a Hawk being chased by some crows. If you don't know already, there typically are a few Eagles that live in this park so keep your eyes out for a sighting.