A few things...

• Today is the last day of extended day reading services. Starting Tuesday, all AM students will leave school at 10:40 and all PM students will arrive at 11:55. Bus stop times may shift a little due to additional stops/children be added back to the routes, so please review the revised bus schedule that is in your child's Friday folder. When I received the schedules, I noticed that several names are missing and the lists don't seem to be entirely correct, so please let me know if there is an error involving your child and I will pass the information to the office.

• Don't forget to turn in a permission slip for our fishing trip. Students who do not return permission slips will not be able to attend. Mrs. Kolb pointed out that when she created the permission slip, the wrong date was printed....our fishing trip will be on TUESDAY JUNE 14th (not the 11th). The correct date is on the June calendars that I sent home today.

• So far I only have one PM parent volunteer for the fishing trip. If any other PM parents can come along, please let me know. It is going to be a really fun day!!

I hope you have a great weekend! I am headed to California tonight to see my in-laws for the weekend. I am looking forward to some relaxation, good food, and time with family and I am hoping to finalize my very long Core paper that I have been working on all year!

Teen Numbers Hip Hop Style & Butterfly Songs

This week, I showed the kiddos this fun video to help them remember the teen numbers. We sang it a few times and then we also changed the words a bit in order to remember that the 1 in every teen number really stands for a ten.

It's kind of one of those songs you can't get out of your head...
which is exactly the point!

We've also been practicing a few butterfly songs:

Fuzzy Fuzzy Caterpillar

(to the tune of the Itsy Bitsy Spider)
 

The fuzzy caterpillar
Curled up on a leaf,
Spun her little chrysalis
And then fell fast asleep.
While she was sleeping
She dreamed that she could fly,
And later when she woke up
She was a butterfly!

I just may have to take a little video during class tomorrow!

We are still working on the other one which is sung to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat. That one is a bit longer, so we are learning just one verse at a time.

BOB on the iPad!

I have recently been playing around with finding some iPad apps for kids and I came across a few that I really like. These are more on the basic side (better for beginning Kinder), but there are tons out there, so surely there are more that could be more geared towards students at the end of Kindergarten or even (gasp!)--FIRST graders!

I am in denial that my kiddos are only with me for 14 more school days....

I recently got an iphone, so I am having fun using the video function.
Yes, recording my iPad with my iPhone makes me a bit of a technology freak :0)

It's a whole new generation of BOB!

I love how kiddos can hear the sounds and hear them blended into words!

app name: BB Magic Lite-FREE

(I don't recommend the lite version because there isn't much to it, but there are other more comprehensive versions for sale with different levels of books)

This game is great for vocabulary building and phoneme segmentation.

app name: Word Magic

app name: ABC Tracer

There is a free "lite" version, but it didn't include the whole alphabet, so I paid for the real one, but it was on sale. 

I also downloaded:

PBS Kids

Sight Words Lite (this version doesn't have the complete list that the full version does)

ABC Phonics

KidsMathFun

Kindergarten

Count Magic

Math Series (fill in the missing number game)

I haven't played with all of them yet, but so far the ones I have played or used with kids have worked well!

Butterflies

We were so excited on Friday to see three butterflies come out of their cocoons! 

Our examination station

the children can practice putting the life cycle in order

I ransacked the Washington County library system for all the books I could find about caterpillars and butterflies and the kiddos are enjoying looking at the pictures and reading them to learn more about the life cycle of butterflies!

Our book shelf is fully stocked :0)

I am hoping that by Monday all of the butterflies are out and about. We will have five in all. At some point in the near future, we will release them (on a day that is 55 degrees or more) and send them on their way. With the goal of having both classes get to see butterflies released, I decided to have the AM class join Mrs. Kolb's class or Mrs. McLean's class when they release theirs and then the PM class can release the ones from our classroom. I ordered my caterpillars a little bit sooner than they did, so it may be another week before they are ready to let them fly away!

Snacks

I hope I am not inundating you with requests for snacks, but I tried sending out an email to both of my class group lists and I haven't gotten a single response (usually when I ask for help I have lots of willing volunteers, so I am thinking there has been an issue with the group list emails again).

Anyway, since every child has now had a turn to be the star of the week, we don't have anyone else scheduled to bring in our Wednesday snack. Since the kiddos really look forward to it, I would like to keep having that snack for the rest of the school year. So, I need some help in order to make that happen.

If you want to provide a snack and would like a specific date to send it on let me know, or else just send in a snack that I can keep in the cupboard until needed. Thanks!We now have 22 kiddos in the AM class and 21 in the PM class.

Updates

You may be wondering what we have been up to lately since it has been too long since I last posted! Sorry about that! Here is a look at this week:

Reading and Writing:

Q is our letter this week, so we are working on an alphabet quilt where the kiddos write one word for each letter of the alphabet and illustrate it. This is a fun activity because they get to think of things that are important to them for each letter and make a cool quilt all about what they like. Another Q activity that we will do this week is Q-tip painting. It's always a fun time when Mrs. Toppel brings out paint! We are also working on some non-fiction writing where the kids read information in non-fiction books (mostly about animals) and then write down information that they learned in a "four-square" organizer. This helps them practice writing multiple sentences on a single topic.

I am seeing lots of improvement in the children's writing as they work on different writing projects and in their journals. If your child writes at home, it's always good to remind him/her to use spaces in between the words, to use a capital letter at the beginning of the sentence, to use a period at the end of the sentence, and to write down the sounds they hear in the words they want to write. Spelling does not need to be accurate for emerging writers, but I do look to see that they are writing the sounds that can be heard. At this point, the children should be able to hear all of the sounds in short 3-letter words and should be able to correctly spell the sight words we have been working on. Longer words are more challenging, so we will continue to spend a lot of time on different writing activities.

Math:

This week we are focusing on graphing. Each day the children will poll 10 other students in order to find out their answer to the daily question. They will color their graph according to the answers their classmates give and will be able to tell which answer they got the most of and which answer they got the least of. The questions for the week are:

• Which team do you prefer? The Ducks, The Beavers, or a different team?
• Which special do you like the most? PE, Music, Library, or Computers
• Do you have a Brother, Sister, Both, or No Siblings?
• Do you prefer Choice Time or Outside Recess?

The kids did a great job today of asking each other the daily question and coloring their graphs to show the results. They especially loved being out of their seats and active during math time! 

Science:
We have caterpillars in our classroom! We are learning about butterflies, so I got caterpillars from amazon.com so that we can watch them as they change and see the lifecycle of a butterfly in action! It's pretty cool to be able to order live caterpillars from the internet and have them delivered two days later! The children have been really excited to see the caterpillars each day and to notice how they are changing. I am heading to the library after school, so I plan to check out some additional books on butterflies so we can learn lots of interesting information.

Fun Stuff:

Our second field trip will be on Tuesday June 14th and we are going fishing!
Tomorrow night is Family Reading Night starting at 6:30 pm and you can also visit the Book Fair as well! Books are buy one get one FREE! What a deal!

I cannot believe how quickly the end of the school year is approaching! Time has flown by this year and I am just amazed at all the growth I have seen from both of my classes. I was looking back at some photos from the beginning of the year thinking how little the kids looked back then and how grown up they seem now! (I think I will make sure to have a few extra boxes of tissues by my side on the last day of school!).

Speaking of the last day, the last day of Kindergarten is June 15th. This is different than the last day for other grades. There will not be any 1/2 Kindergarten on June 16th even though other children will be at school.