Happy Thanksgiving!

Here is a little video about what we're all thankful for this year. A huge thank you goes out to Mrs. Klipfel who put everything together!

Enjoy and have a happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from Mrs. Inconiglios' Class

Where did all the turkeys go?!

We sent home turkeys for the families to decorate, but I'm not sure they made it back! Here are the wonderful disguises you all came up with for our classroom turkeys!

Busy Bees - Nov. 18

Language Arts

As this is the week before Thanksgiving, we've been working on a few great Thanksgiving and turkey related activities!

We read the book A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting this week and discussed her word choice when she wrote the book. She used great describing words like quietly, lumbered, blundered and crunched to described how each of the characters in the book made their way to Mr. and Mrs. Moose's house for Thanksgiving dinner. For our writing block, we did the same thing by discussing how we would get to their house and came up with some great words like quietly, fast, scrunched and crunched. 

Our sight word, my, for this week is a tricky word. This is one that we cannot sound out and need to memorize. Please be sure to continue working with your student on practicing reading these words.

We had a busy week in Fundations this week learning three new letters - Hh, Kk and Ll. As next week is a very short week for us, we'll continue to work on these letters on Tuesday and Wednesday to get extra practice with these letters.

Language Arts

We continue to work on decomposing and composing numbers to 5. Math In Focus uses specific language to help teach flexibility in student thinking. When you begin to see homework or classwork come home, you'll notice that we're using language that looks like "2 and 2 makes 4" or "4 is 2 and 2." It's very important that we understand how these numbers work together before we can begin using more traditional mathematical words like addition, subtraction and equals. 

Science

We've completed learning about our Five Senses! The students loved having our taste test on Tuesday and are remembering where we taste certain tastes (sweet, salty, sour, bitter) on our tongues. I'm impressed with how much we've learned about our senses over the past month!

Important Messages

*Wednesday is an early release at 12 noon. Please remember no lunch will be served, but we will still have snack in class that morning.

*Parent/Teacher conference reminders will be sent home on Tuesday, December 3.

*Parent/Teacher conferences for the 3-day program will be held on Friday, December 13.

Two Week Update! - Nov 4-15

It's been a few busy weeks! Sorry for the lateness of the posts!

Language Arts

Over the past two weeks we've been learning a lot and putting our newly acquired skills to good use!

In our Daily 5 routine we've added in two new activities - read to someone and listen to reading. We rotate our stations each Daily 5 time and the students will have the opportunity to read to self and read to someone each day. On Fridays, we're lucky enough to have the iPads in our classroom and use the Storia app from Scholastic to listen to reading. The students used the iPads as a whole class on Wednesday this week and nine students used the iPads on Friday and did an amazing job!

Fundations has been moving along and we've learned four new letters! Ee, Rr, Jj and Pp are the new letters from the past two weeks we've been working on. Please continue to work with your student on their letters both the sounds they make and how to write them the kindergarten way.

We've learned two new site words, are and for, over the last two weeks. We now have 10 sight words that the students have been introduced to. It's very important that you add the new sight words to your sight word ring and practice the words with your student at home.

Math

 We've completed chapter two and have started chapter 4. Last week we wrapped up chapter 2 with assessments that will be coming home shortly.

This week, we began learning the very important skill of composing and decomposing numbers to 5. This chapter will also focus on counting from 0 to 10.

Science

We continue to learn about our senses and learned about our sense of smell this week. We smelled different jars that contained four different smells - orange, onion, coffee and peppermint. The students did blind smell tests and had to decide as a group what they thought was in each. Next week - the sense of taste!

Important Messages

*The Kindergarten teachers will be giving the book There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow as our gift to each Kindergarten student next month during our book swap!
*Early release on Wednesday, November 27th at noon - no lunch is served that day.
*Parent/Teacher conferences will take place on Friday, December 13th. This day is also an early release, lunch will not be served.
*Our Kindergarten Winter Concert is scheduled for Wednesday, December 18th at 9:15 am. We will have the holiday part immediately following the concert.
*Your student will participate in a Holiday Book Swap! Please make sure that the book is suitable for either a boy or a girl and the book is no more than $4.00. Please wrap the book and have your student's name on the gift as the giver.

A Hauntingly Fun Week! - October 29

Language Arts

This week we did a lot! We have finally reached our stamina goal of reading independently for 15 minutes. We've now moved on to practicing reading to someone else and taking turns reading during our 15 minutes. Next week, our goal is for each student to read for 15 minutes independently and read to someone else for 15 minutes.

In Fundations, we learned two new letters - Dd and Ss. The students are really beginning to own the sounds they're learning in Fundations and are beginning to apply them to their writing. Our next goal is for us to apply our letter formations to our writing as well as the sounds. We practiced writing the letters we've already learned by only hearing the sound they make. That is also a great activity for you to do at home with your student if you're looking for something else to practice with them at home.

I sent home on Wednesday our two new site words from last week and this week - at and to. I found an extra set on the ground after the party. If you're missing those words from your student's word ring, please let me know so I can send it home! Your student also brought home their very first sight word book for "I" on Wednesday. This is a book that we've practiced since September and will be able to read to you! Please make sure to have your student practice reading with this "just right fit" book.

The class was given a difficult task on Friday afternoon. We practiced our story retelling skills all by ourselves! On the whole, we did a great job for so early in the year! During November, we'll be focusing on only two parts of our story retelling - setting and characters - so that we can really begin to understand all of the parts of story retelling.

Math

We've almost completed Chapter 2 in Math in Focus! We've gotten through 8 and 9 this week and will focus on the number 10 on Tuesday. This week, we'll focus on assessments and finishing up the chapter!

Science

We've moved on to learn about our sense of hearing. We took a hearing walk around the school stopping at various locations, closed our eyes, and listened to everything that was going on. We heard doors opening and closing, machines humming, talking, laughing, cars, birds, honking horns and lots of footsteps.

Important Messages

*Thank you to all of the parents for making an exceptionally fun Halloween Parade and Party! I'm so happy that you were all able to make it!

*Our volunteer schedule has begun. If you're unsure of whether or not you've signed up to volunteer, please contact me via email. If you've lost your schedule, please let me know and I will resend it to you.

*We will be learning about our sense of taste on Tuesday, November 19th. If you would like a list of foods being given out for our taste test, please let me know.

*There is an early release on Friday at 1:15.