Updates and Art Literacy

I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend and some quality time with friends and family. I didn't have to cook Thanksgiving dinner this year, so it was a very relaxing and enjoyable holiday. I spent the rest of the weekend working on papers for my classes with a little Black Friday shopping thrown in for some reprieve. I am also training for a half marathon with some friends of mine, so we did a long run on Sunday which, on top of a very tough boot camp class on Saturday, left me quite sore and ready for a nap! This week marks the end of my Fall term with PSU which makes me a very happy camper because it will be nice to have a month without homework! I am really looking forward to reading some books for pleasure that don't involve research! 

Back to Kindergarten....

This week in PE, Mr. Gaffney introduced the big parachute, which was a lot of fun.  One of the kids asked if it was a blow up bouncy house when he brought it in...wouldn't that be fun!

We also were lucky to have Gracie's mom, Katie Webb, come in for Art Literacy this afternoon. She showed the class how to make an impressionist painting and the PM class had a lot of fun. The morning class will have the same lesson next week. Katie has generously agreed to teach these special art lessons to both of my classes, which represents a big time commitment, so we are very happy to have her. It's not everyday that we get to break out the paints, so it's always a fun time when Miss Katie comes!

I can't believe that we are just three weeks away from our Winter break. I still have not received my second order of tote bags for the Literacy Bags, but I am hopeful they will arrive this week. On Friday I am going to send home the permission slip for participation in the Literacy Bag rotation and I will probably try to get some help from families to decorate the bags next week so Friday the 10th can be the big debut day! I have been introducing some of the games and activities in class during choice time and showing some of the bags and stories. I can tell the kiddos are really excited to start taking them home! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

I would like to wish a very Happy Thanksgiving to all those who celebrate. This year, I am very thankful to have two wonderful Kindergarten classes and kind, helpful, supportive parents! I am also thankful for friends and family that enrich my life! What are you thankful for this year? Enjoy the long weekend and stay warm!

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Next week starts the Book Fair and there are 4 times that students may purchase books. These include:

-    During library class (AM class has library Wednesday & PM class has library Tuesday.

-    After school (with parent supervision)

-    During the Family Fun Night on Tuesday, 11/30

-    By bringing a completed order form and payment to the office.  Orders will be filled and books will be delivered to children in their classrooms.

My recommendation is that you come to check out the Book Fair with your child after school or at the Family Night instead of sending money to school so you can pick out books together. The Book Fair offers lots of great books at very reasonable prices, so it's definitely worth a look!

Literacy Bag update:  My second round of bags are on the way, so I am hoping to schedule another decorating party for Monday December 6th or Tuesday December 7th. That is just dependent on when they arrive since I ordered them online! I will be sending home a note next week so that you can indicate whether or not you are interested in participating in the literacy bag program with an explanation of the rules/expectations and hopefully if all goes well I will send home the first bags on Friday December 10th! I would also like to have a preview night for our Spanish speaking families since the books and activities/directions are written in English. This will give me an opportunity to describe (in my best Spanish) how the system will work and how the games/activities work.

sight word and word building

Since we have a short week, we are not doing star of the week or focusing on a letter of the week this week, but we do still have a word of the week, which is "my." We made the "my" word with die cut letters today and practiced the "my" song to remember how to spell the word. The songs goes like this:

(to the tune of camp town races)

You can spell my if you try

m-y, m-y

first an m and then a y

my my my my

We have completed our first 30 Fast Track Phonics lessons, so I will now be introducing some new activities to help the children practice their letter sounds as well as building and writing words.

Today we used word building cards for the first time. Each child received an envelope containing 5 letters.  I started by asking them to make the word "at" and then we made additional words by changing the sounds around and adding letters. We made the words at, an, and, Dan, tan, ant, sat, sad, sand, and finally stand.

Each list of words contains a "mystery word" that uses all of the letters in the envelope. For today, that mystery word was stand. I didn't tell the class what word to make, but instead asked them to try and figure out what word used all of our letters. They did a great job and worked hard to  break down the words I was saying in order to find the letters they needed to use in order to spell it. This is a great activity to build spelling skills and to reinforce the process the children need to go through when they are thinking about how to write a word and what sounds they hear.

The hallway is looking beautiful with all of the unique turkeys we have. They look great! We have also collected quite a bit of toilet paper for the hygiene drive, which is wonderful! I am not sure if we should really be expecting snow or not, but it sure has gotten cold out! Stay warm! Our district website posts information about school delays and closures just in case we do actually get some bad weather. There is also instructions on the site that allow you to get notified via email if there is a school closure or delay, which makes it really easy to get the news.

Good to be back!

It was so nice to be back in the classroom today after being out for training two days in a row. Both classes had a very productive day and worked hard. I completed the final assessment of our Fast Track Phonics today with the writing piece. Students had to independently write 6 words after I read the word aloud and "broke it down" (hit, shop, zap, fox, lid, and jug). I will take a look at those assessments and try to send them home in the Friday Folders tomorrow so you can take a look at how your child did. We are really working on mastering all the sounds and now that we have completed all 30 lessons, I am going back to review the tricky sounds like /ch/, /sh/, /th/, and /ng/. These are the sounds that are giving the kids the most trouble since they are a bit more challenging. I will also send home a copy of our letter/sound pictures tomorrow so that you can help your child practice at home. Mastery of all of the sounds is the first very important step in learning to read. Most of the kiddos are doing a great job remembering the sounds, but there are some gaps, so we will continue to practice until everyone has them down!

Progress reports will be going home tomorrow, so you can get an idea of how your child is doing. Children receive either developing, proficient, or above grade level in the areas of Reading, Writing, and Math. This is not as detailed as the report cards that will go home next time. If you have any questions about progress reports, please don't hesitate to ask!

I was extremely happy to find out that my request for some additional funds to complete the Literacy Bags project was approved by the PSO. That means I can order some more plain canvas bags to create another class set of Literacy Bags. I placed an order for some books this afternoon through amazon.com to add a name bag, a camping bag, a pets bag, and a Hawaii bag as well as a few more books to complete bags that I already have in progress. I originally found the bags for decorating at Micahel's, but they no longer carry them. I found some similar ones online at Oriental Trading, so I ordered them, but they won't be delivered until December 1st. My goal is to get all other aspects of the Literacy Bags ready so that we can have another decorating session and get those bags in rotation by our Winter Break at the latest. Once the books arrive, I will have all of the books I need and then I just need to make sure each bag has an activity to go along with the books and the theme.

The turkeys that have been coming back are wonderful! Our hallway is looking fantastic and I love the creativity and effort that is going into this project. We have also collected quite a bit of toilet paper, so we are definitely doing our part for the Hygiene Drive.

Thanks for everything that you do to support our classroom and Durham Elementary!

Quite an Artistic Bunch!

I would like to extend a HUGE thank you to the families who helped decorate literacy bags at our work party this afternoon. It was so wonderful to have your help and the bags came out better than I ever could have imagined! So much hard work was put into them and they look awesome!

A big thanks to:

Ron Sapp

Kristin Trerise

Nikole, Gabe, and Ellie Emerson

Keri and Grace Larsen

Sheri LeDrew (our Literacy Specialist)

Quindlan, Kim, Rowan, Tristan, and Gareth Kelleher

I have requested a little more funding from the PSO in order to ensure that I have one bag per child, so that each week every child gets to take home a bag. I will find out this week if that funding has been granted. If so, I will need to get another class set of bags (so there will be more bag decorating in the future!) and with some more organizing, I am hoping to get these bags in motion by the end of the month or first week in December!

Also, speaking of great art work, some of the letter page projects that have come back have just blown me away. The creativity is astounding! I hope that you are having fun creating these projects because it sure looks like a lot of work is going into them. Some kids are drawing pictures, some are coloring, and others are getting really creative with different art mediums and techniques. Here are a few of the really interesting ones that have come in (and there are many more!)

I will be out of the classroom Tuesday and Wednesday for my Courageous Conversations work with the district. I hate to be away from the kids, but I believe very much in the work we are doing and I feel privileged to be able to work with so many other great educators and administrators within TTSD. Tomorrow I will be continuing work on the PASS team (Partnerships for the Academic Achievement of Students) and Wednesday our Equity teams are meeting. This work correlates a lot with my passions as an educator and my doctoral work as well, so I am looking forward to these days of teamwork and collaboration.

If you need to contact me in the next few days, I am still reachable by email. I am always checking in!

A few reminders

Next Monday Durham is starting the hygiene drive. My classes have been assigned toilet paper and I will be collecting rolls beginning Monday the 15th!

Speaking of Monday the 15th, that is the day of our Literacy Bag Work Party (yay!!) Please come help out from 2:30-3:30. Children will be writing thank you cards/pictures to the generous donors who contributed to my project on Donorschoose.org and decorating the canvas bags that will become our fabulous Literacy Bags. Once we get all the bags decorated and filled, the children can start taking them home on the weekends! This activity is for children and their families (siblings are welcome!!)

Have a terrific weekend!

What are those boxes for?

You may have noticed that our new math program uses a lot of big empty boxes on the math worksheets. When those sheets go home for homework, I noticed that the boxes are often left empty when they get returned. It appears as though there are no directions that go with them, yet they are just a bit hidden. The directions for what to draw in the box are on the bottom of the front side. Mystery solved! It's a bit silly, but that is where they are!

You will see in this week's edition of the Nifty News that we are having a hygiene drive at Durham during the month of November. My classes have been assigned toilet paper, so please help out by contributing some! I will be collecting contributions between Monday November 15th and Wednesday November 24th. Thanks for your support!

Also, tomorrow I will be sending home our "Gorgeous Gobbler" turkey project. Your child will be taking home a large piece of card stock with the outline of a turkey drawn on it. Instructions for the project will be stapled to the card stock. This is a fun and creative art project that I will hang in the hallway so make those gobblers gorgeous!

P.S. Library books are due for the PM class tomorrow!

T is for ties

Today, in honor of our letter of the week, we made ties! We talked about what kinds of patterns we have seen on ties and then each child got to decorate his/her own. Both classes did a great job coming up with words that start with T and we enjoyed some alphabet cookies and Teddy Grahams for our star of the week snacks!

Reminder for the PM class: library books are due on Friday!

Math Tiles

I recently introduced some new math games during choice time and they have become a big hit! (in the morning group). These games were created by Marcy Cook and when my first grade team and I went to one of her workshops a few years ago, we knew we had to have her activities and games for our classrooms. I used these a lot in my first grade classroom, but they are great and very appropriate for Kindergarten as well.

In order to play, students need tiles with the numbers 0-9 on them. There are numbered cards in each set and students need to figure out where each number belongs on each card. I check student answers and then put a star on their sheet over the number of the card they completed. They are pretty excited because when they complete a whole set (20 cards) they get a small prize for their hard work and they get to move on to a more challenging set. The sets relate to counting, number recognition, 1:1 correspondence, addition, more than, less than, and other number sense concepts. We are working hard with our new math curriculum, but these activities are a great supplement to our other math activities!

New Sight Word & New Groups

This week we are focusing on the letter T and the sight word "see." I will introduce our "see" song tomorrow and it goes like this:

I can spell "see", s-e-e,

All you need is an s-e-e

Also, I switched seats around, so the kiddos are now sitting at different table groups with different classmates. Ask your child who his/her new table mates are!

I sent home November calendars today on which I marked the days when library books are due. We have had a lot of kids forgetting to return their books on our library day which means they don't get to choose another one. I try to give a reminder the day before when it's time to go home, but sometimes I forget, so please keep track on your calendar too! Thanks!