April--So Far!

Does time just go faster when you get closer to the end of kindergarten? It seems that way. Here is what we've been up to lately.

Today we brought in stuffed animals to hear us read. It was a treat to see so many excited faces and involved readers this morning. We read to ourselves each school day, but today's reading was extra special.

We do get to read to classmates, too. During partner reading, we work on our reading goals by playing games, pretending, or playing school. Ask your child which partner reading activity is his or her favorite.

These past few weeks we've been working on characters. We've been learning that readers can tell about a character from what he or she says or does. We can also look at the characters' bodies and decide how they feel. We can make connections to those characters, too, when we think about how the characters are alike to us or other characters we know. Learning about character traits and feelings, besides just happy and sad, has been another one of our targets. Ask your child about his or her favorite character. Why is it a favorite? What can he or she tell you about the character? Who is like that character? How?

We've been writing about opinions, too. We've been thinking of a problem, writing about it by sharing reasons and solutions. The arrival of spring has brought a blossoming patch of writers, too. This class' writing overall has just blossomed.

Sometimes we practice writing group sentences. We work on spacing, letter formation, making sure each syllable has a vowel, and using the word wall for common words. Sometimes we write in our own books or dry erase boards, and sometimes we write on one shared piece of paper.

In math, we've been working on 3-d shapes. We've been learning about their attributes and comparing them with other 3-d shapes and 2-d shapes.

We worked on our counting skills by counting how many steps it took to move from one spot to another. Then we experimented; what happened to the number of steps when we moved faster? slower? Ask your child!

We've also been hard a work with addition, especially ways to make ten. Ask your child: if there are ten birds total on a wire and one side has five, how many birds are on the other side? Keep asking with different combinations!

Here are some other pictures of these past two weeks:

And then for fun, let's caption this picture:

Last, but not least, we've been working so hard on learning 84 sight word before the end of the year. All students are improving. Ask your child: how many does he or she know?