Our week was short and oh so sweet! We began our time together by sharing about what we did over the Family Day long weekend and the kiddos worked SO hard to represent one of their weekend memories through a detailed drawing. We used our new drawing checklist to help us remember the important elements of a quality drawing. We're getting SO GOOD at adding detail and backgrounds to our pictures!
This week's letter focus was N and we spent a lot of time talking about NUMBERS!
We used writing, building, modeling and loose parts to practice number formation this week. We're learning to double check our work using posted numbers in the classroom and make corrections when we have accidentally made our numbers backwards.
Inspired by Jasper Johns, an artist who is famous for using numbers in his artwork, we created our very own Jasper Johns number drawings using oil pastels.
During the first 20 minutes of each morning and afternoon in kindergarten, children engage independently in activities that help to reinforce some basic skills we are working on. Skills we are practicing at this time in the year include:
Learning to consistently write our name using an uppercase letter at the beginning, followed by all lowercase letters.
Learning to read/sound-out simple 3 letter CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant).
Writing words with beginning, middle and ending sounds, recording the dominant letters they hear (perfect spelling is NOT expected...it's all about taking risks as writers right now!)
Identifying a greater number of lowercase letters. Now that we are readers (YAY), I'm noticing that our kiddos are much less confident identifying lowercase letters. Matching games have been helping us to connect each uppercase letter with it's lowercase match.
Beginning to recognize "Popcorn Words" in books we read together in class. We call them popcorn words (sight words) becuase they keep POP, POP, POPPING up all over the place! We focus on one or two new words each week. So far, we know a, I, the, on, go, and
The morning class played a super fun game called WORD SMASH! Ask your child how to play!
Extra practice with ANY of these skills at home would be fantastic!
We decided we needed to convert our classroom bakery into something new and worked collaboratively to brainstorm ideas, vote to choose our favourite and then plan materials and supplies we would need to create it. Believe it or not, the most popular and desired idea was to convert our bakery into...an OFFICE! They are all so proud to share about their parents who work in an office and want to be just like YOU! It's so sweet. The morning class hasn't seen the finished product yet. They'll enjoy this on Monday :)
Have a wonderful weekend everyone! Mrs. Planden will be in on Friday next week so I'll see you all again on Monday!
Miss Roberts
