I Can

I can learn . . .

  . . . how to do brain breaks

 . . . how to write some capital letters (F,E, D, P)

. . . how to raise my hand when I have something to say.

 . . . about the front cover, back cover, title page, title, author, and illustrator.

I can share:

  . . .  when it's time to take turns.

 . . . the materials.

. . . my thoughts with my classmates.

I can make friends:

Learn, share, and friend were three of our vocabulary words this week.  

Be Proactive

We're learning to be proactive!  We've been discussing how to be responsible for our actions, how to help others, and how we can choose our attitudes, moods, and actions.

First we read The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper.  We talked about how the clown in the story keep his attitude positive when it seemed like no train would help the toys and he kept asking for help.  Additionally we noticed how the little engine tried something new and didn't give up until he accomplished the task.  That's what being proactive is all about!

We made a chart to list some of the things we can do.  I bet each child can make his own chart longer than the one we made in class.  We can do so many things!  Additionally, we learned what the word independently means.

We have been reading other books to show how to behave at school, too.  We learned that "no" means "no" with Don't Let Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems, even when you ask nicely.  We learned that begging, pouting, and throwing a fit when we hear the word "no" doesn't work either. We learned that there can be consequences when making poor choices with No, David! by David Shannon.  And we learned that we're going to like ourselves with the book I'm Gonna Like Me by Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell.

Yesterday and today we've worked to show being proactive in the classroom.  I'm so pleased to see so many students taking responsibility for their own work and offering to help others.  Way to go!

We'll learn more about being proactive throughout the year.  Next week I'll introduce another good habit:  begin with the end in mind.

Here's a small peek into what we are learning to do each day:

Do you see what I see?  Everyone is enjoying kindergarten!

Welcome to Kindergarten!

It's time to start thinking about back to school . . .  if you haven't already started!  I'm looking forward to a great year!

Please come to school on Thursday, August 6th at 6:00 p.m. for our kindergarten round-up.  We'll get to meet each other and you'll get to see the classroom and meet your classmates.  How fun!

Don't forget to come to our Ice Cream Social on Monday, August 10th starting at 4 p.m.  You can see me and the classroom again, explore the school more, and enjoy some yummy ice cream!

Be ready for school to officially start on Tuesday, August 11th.  What a great year we'll have!

Practicing Writing Non-Fiction

We have spent some time learning about space this year.  One of the activities we did was to write about what we've learned.  It was a good way to practice writing non-fiction.  We worked together to write these paragraphs:

March Madness Winner!

We have a winner!  But before we go to the championship match, we narrowed it down to these five books:

 I can't believe this book beat The Pigeon Needs a Bath!

Five worthy books, but we can only have one winner!  It came down to Somebody and the Three Blairs and The Book with No Pictures.

Both of the books were hands-down favorites in the semi-finals, and one book continued on the winning streak.  The Book with No Pictures is this year's winner of March Madness in our kindergarten class!  I can't say that I'm surprised!  I'm lucky that another teacher tipped me off to this new book.  Will it become a perennial favorite?  I have seen students pick the book before any other during reading to self time.  We'll see!

Butterfly Surprise!

We had a spontaneous lesson about butterflies when our eagle-eyed Oliver found a black, fuzzy caterpillar on the sidewalk one afternoon.  It was at the end of the day, so my sons, Noley, and I made a caterpillar habitat for the creature. It's kind of hard to see the caterpillar in our habitat, but look to the lower right-hand corner.  He's black with a little bit of yellow.

Imagine my surprise when I came in the next day after finding the caterpillar to find the caterpillar already had created his chrysalis! This life cycle was moving quickly!  It was hard for me to capture the image--the chrysalis looks similar to webbing here.

Since I knew we were going to discuss life cycles with chicks and ladybugs, I decided to introduce the concept with butterflies.  We used Pebble Go for our research and we made a class thinking map to keep track of our learning.

Then we worked in teams to illustrate each stage of the butterfly life cycle and then put the cycle in order.  I was able to get a few pictures of most of the teams.

Then we brushed up with our non-fiction writing skills we've learned this year and wrote about butterflies.  Our target was to have a topic sentence, at least three factual sentences about butterflies, and a conclusion.  We did it!  I don't have a picture of that, but the pieces are hanging up in our room. We decorated our writing with art work we made earlier--symmetrical butterflies. We managed to get science, reading, writing, and math in this one project!

I was surprised again when a chorus of students called me over to the habitat on Friday.  The butterfly emerged from the chrysalis!  The weeks went fast!  We knew the wings needed to dry out, so we took the habitat outside so that the butterfly could be on its way when the wings were ready. Here are a few pictures we got of the butterfly before the wings were ready.

We didn't get to witness the butterfly finally flying away, but we're excited to think about his new life as a butterfly.  It was a great way for us to start learning about life cycles!