What We're Learning: Letters, Sounds, and Social Studies

We have finished two more weeks of kindergarten, and we have been busy!

We're not just learning about letters, but we're learning that letters make sounds, too.  So far, we've learned 14 letters and their sounds!  Ask your child about the sounds these letters make:  a, t, b, l, f, h, p, s, u, m, r, c, g, and i.  In addition, we've been learning how to write some capital letters. So far we've practiced the "frog jump" capitals which are F, E, D, P, B, and R.  Ask your child where we start our letters, and see if they can remember why those letters are "frog jump" capitals. One of the things that these letters have in common is that they all have a straight back.  We went on a hunt to find letters that have a straight line in them.

We've been learning how to get along with others, too.  We've learned that we have to listen, talk, take turns, and make good choices when making friends. Working on knowing how to listen has been a big focus. We talk about having a whole body that listens with not just ears, but we want to show the speaker that we're looking at him or her with our eyes. Also, we want to keep our feet and hands still and our mouth quiet.

Most importantly, we want to know what the speaker has to say!  When it's our turn to talk, we want to make sure our voices are the right size (or volume) for the conversation.  We practiced when it was time to talk and when it was time to listen.

Then we learned about the importance of having class rules and taking turns.  Here we are with our class dragon taking turns:

We made a list of the times where we should take turns in school:

We've learned how to behave, or maybe what not to do, from two of our favorite characters:  David and Pigeon.  Here are the big ideas we came up with from their stories:

Here is what we thought when we talked about making good choices:

Speaking of making good choices, we talked about a way to be proactive is to make the choice to do the thing that needs to be completed:

Finally we made a promise to remember to get along with others:

Stay tuned for updates in both reading and math!

Week in Review

It's been a great first week of school!  I think that can sometimes be easy for a teacher to say, but I truly mean it. I do have one disappointment, however--I didn't get a chance to take many pictures!

One of the things we've worked on this week is learning how to behave in school.  We read several stories to help us figure out some class rules. One of the stories was about a monster coming to school.  That brought us to talking about what things we can do at school, and what things we shouldn't do at school.  We've been calling it "above the line" and "below the line."  That discussion evolved into our management system.  I'll be talking more about the management system in this class at Meet the Teacher.  We read No, David! written by David Shannon, and we learned that it's never too late to start making good choices.  We enjoyed reading Don't Let the Pigeon Ride the Bus by Mo Willems, too.  What did we learn from Pigeon?  "No" means "no" no matter what.  Ask your child to tell you what Pigeon did to try and get his way.

Although the students seemed to enjoy reading about David and Pigeon, the favorite book of the week was Press Here written by Herve Tullet.  We had such a good team-building experience interacting with the book, and I want the students to know how enjoyable a book can be.

We talked about three letters this week:  A, T, and B.  See if your child can tell you the sounds of those three letters.  We learned how to read three words, too!  Red, yellow, and blue are three words we can read, thanks to some songs that are teaching us the color words.  We've been working on learning the days of the week and the months of the year, and specifically what day is which and what month it is.  We've been counting as well.

Lastly, we have learned about squares and rectangles this week,.  Boy, am I impressed with what they students already knew and what new observations they made.  Below is a picture of a Thinking Map we made as a class to show how a square and a rectangle are the same and different.  Thinking Maps are organizers to visually show thinking.  We'll be using Thinking Maps all year.  I'll share more about what we're doing with shapes next week!

I didn't get many pictures (boo!), but here are the few that I did get of us working in action!

Hopefully I'll get to take more pictures next week!

Dear Students: All About Mrs. Trammell

Hello, students!  I am Mrs. Trammell, and I am your kindergarten teacher.  I am super excited to be your teacher this year!  We're going to have a great year!

Scroll down a little and take a look at the picture right over here --------->
That's me!  I get to meet you on Thursday, August 4th at our Kindergarten Round-Up.  I hope to see you there!  You will get to see our class and where you will sit.  You will meet me and the rest of our classmates.  How fun!

Did you know that I have a cat?  Her name is Alice, and she is 18 years old. That's pretty old for a cat!  She loves to eat and sleep, but her favorite thing is to be brushed.  Alice loves to sleep on my son's bed, or on the stairs in the sunshine.  She has a favorite chair, too.  One time she sat on the door of the opened dishwasher.  Silly cat!

I have a brother, too.  He lives far away, so I don't get to see him that often.  When I was in kindergarten, my brother was in preschool.  Do you have a younger brother, or do you have a sister? Maybe you have both! You will have to tell me!

At my house I live with my husband and my two sons (and Alice, of course). My sons are in fifth and third grade, and they go to Carmel Elementary, too! We like to be together! Our favorite thing to do is go to the beach, but we don't get to do that often.  We love to go on vacation, and one of our goals is to visit all 50 states. So far I have been to 28 states! I've visited 15 counties as well. Other favorite things to do are to go hiking, watch movies, play games, and read books.  Guess what?  My favorite movie in when I was in kindergarten was Star Wars. When I was in kindergarten, I had a Star Wars themed bedroom. Have you seen that movie? This fall we are looking forward to watching the Colts play football. What kinds of things do you like to do with your family?

Sometimes I do things by myself.  I like to read and I like to decorate my house.  During the warm weather, I like to be in my yard, too. I garden and take care of my plants when I'm outside.  Also, I like to take long walks. What do you like to do outside?  Please let me know!

I've been in a school for a long time!  When I was finished with high school, I went to Indiana University in Bloomington.  So, I am an IU fan!  Go Hoosiers!  Do you have a favorite team?  After I went to IU, I went to graduate school at Ball State University.  I have worked at this school fourteen years.  Before I was a kindergarten teacher, I taught third grade for nine years.  You can say that I really like school.  I hope you do, too!

Now that you know a little bit about me, I can't wait for you to tell me all about you!  See you Thursday!

Writing Addition and Subtraction Problems

We have been busy working on computation in kindergarten math! Today we took the idea of the game "Growing and Disappearing Train" and added a step. We wrote number models, or number sentences to go along with the game. Writing on dry erase boards with dry erase markers made writing equations so much more fun!

We've been working on creating our own story problems with Dr. Seuss books, too!  If you have three yellow fish and two blue fish, how many fish do you have all together?  Five fish!

Every day we work on coming up with an equation to make ten.  Today's number is 3.  Each day I use the number of the day and ask:  I have three and I need to get to ten.  How many more do I need? The class calls out 7! Then we write 3 + 7 = 10. 

These are things that are quick and easy to do at home, too!  When driving in the car, encourage your kiddo to come up with story problems like:  Two ducks are in the pond.  One more duck flew to the pond. How many ducks are there now?  Also, practicing writing number models is fun to do, too. Maybe you don't have a dry erase board, but maybe you have paper and pencil, a chalk board, or other way of writing.  Maybe while cooking dinner your child can practice writing equations like:  I put in one cup of milk and one cup of water.  How many cups did I put in?  1 + 1 = 2.

Happy adding and subtracting!

100 Days of Kindergarten

I whipped up this little video during indoor recess today.  It's one of my favorite things about kindergarten!

Math Update

Hello!

My 2016 resolution, starting today, will be to take more pictures than I did during the first semester. For some reason I feel like I have to have pictures to go with all of my blog posts, and since I don't have any recent photos, I feel like it's been hard to update.  I'm going to get over it!  :)

Here's what we've been up to in math, and I'm sharing what you and your child can do at home, if so inclined.

Counting
We love counting in kindergarten!  We count by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s and we count backwards by 1s as well.  I'm so happy with our progress so far with counting, and I have to think that there are lots of families working on counting at home.  Thank you!  It's paying off!  Here are some videos we like to use in class to help get us moving and counting at the same time.  When my own boys were younger, I'd play these videos at home to get the wiggles out on these cold, winter days.

Count to 100 by 1s with Jack Hartmann

Count by 10s with Have Fun Teaching

Count by 5s with Have Fun Teaching

Count by 2s with Have Fun Teaching

Count back from 20 with Have Fun Teaching

Number Sense

We've been doing lots of things to help us develop a strong number sense.  One of the games we have played this week is called Top-It.  It's like the card game War that you might have played when you were younger.  What I love about Top-It is that players practice both number identification and they decide which number is greater.  We're using the terms greater than and less than when playing Top-It.  It's easy to play at home, too!  You can use a deck of cards; just remove the face cards.  For students who could practice with larger numbers, write larger numbers on index cards and play the game.  Which is bigger:  36 or 63?  On days where it's harder to get outside, this game might be a fun way to pass the time and your child is practicing number sense at the same time.  

Another game we like to play is called Guess My Number.  Here's how you play:  Say "I'm thinking of a number that is a teen number with a 5 in it."  Your child should guess 15.  Another example:  "How many legs does an insect have?"  6!  "Now add ten to that number."  16!  "I'm thinking of a number with a 2 and a 7."  27!  "What other number has a 2 and a 7?"  72!

Measurement
We work with a calendar every day in math.  We've learned that calendars are a way to measure time. We work with knowing all of the days of the week and the months of the year, in order.  We practice knowing which day is yesterday and what day tomorrow will be.  In addition, we talk about what happens in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening.  When my children were younger we would talk in the car about what day is today, what was yesterday, etc.  We sequenced our events of the day, too.  The measurement of time can be tricky for kindergarten students, so any practice they can do helps solidify their understanding of time.  In upcoming weeks we'll be talking about how clocks measure time.  If you want to get a jump start on it, we'll be learning about telling time at the hour and half-hour.

There's more coming up with measurement, so stay tuned!

Money
Learning the different coins can be tricky for many kindergarteners.  We've been talking about the coins casually and observing their attributes.  We'll get into more specifics soon, but in the meantime, having your child sort coins at home will help him or her recognize the differences between the coins much more quickly.  Here are some videos we like to watch, too:

Penny, You're the One!

Nickelish!

Dime and Dime Again!

Quarteriffic

Look for more math updates to come soon!

Working on Predicting

One of our focuses in reading lately has been predicting what might happen in the text.  When readers make predictions, they are focused on what is happening in the text.  Readers are able to take what is happening in the book, add it to their background knowledge and make a prediction as to what happens next.

We've been talking about predictions that make sense, and boy have I been impressed!  The class seems to get that making a prediction that actually might happen is key.  We've been working on knowing that it's okay for predictions to be wrong--we just have to make sure we find out whether our predictions came true in the text.

Readers can make predictions using any book, and we make predictions on every book we've read. When reading all of the gingerbread man books, we were able to predict what might happen based on knowing the other stories we've read.  These books were a few of our favorites in helping us learn to make predictions while we read:

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey is a great book to work on predictions while reading the text.  If you are familiar with the story, you'll know that the actions of Sal and the Little Bear mirror each other, which makes it easier to make connections and predict what will happen next.

Wolf's Coming by Joe Kulka is another book where students can easily make predictions based on what they already know.  It has a surprising ending which makes checking our predictions fun because then we can go back and look at the clues we might have missed.

Suddenly! by Colin McNaughton is just a fun book.  We were able to make many correct predictions, especially when we noticed the author's style and pattern.

We will continue talking about making predictions all year.  When reading at home, see what predictions your child can make and don't forget to see if he or she was correct.  Happy reading!