All The Places To Love

To begin our Writer's Workshop this year,  our class has been discussing how writer's take their own experiences and memories to write their own stories. We also discuss that in kindergarten we write stories about things we know and that have happened to us in our own lives. This helps us to add lots of details to our writing. (This is part of our Common Core writing standards for students to narrate a single event that happened to them through drawings, dictation and writing.)

During Writer's Workshop, we read the book, All the Places to Love by Patricia MacLachlan. This book has wonderful, detailed illustrations of all the places the little boy and his family loves best on their farm. In the end, the little boy cannot wait to begin to share his favorite places with his new little sister.

After reading the book, we discussed the places that we love best and a place we might want to share with someone in our own lives. We came up with some really great ideas, some of them are...

After brainstorming, we then began writing about our own place we love best. This early in kindergarten, we're looking for students to add details to their drawings, but don't expect lots of writing (or much more than one letter for each word!). Below are a few places we love best with lots of details in our drawings - and even a few labels!

My little sister is lying on a towel and I'm in a chair. I'm at the beach!

I was at Virginia for Easter. I had an egg hunt with my family and Eric and Emily.

Kindergarten Scientists

We've begun to learn about what a scientists is and how they do what they do. Our class discussed "what is a scientist" this week and came up with some really great ideas. In the words of our kindergarteners, a scientist is:
*someone who discovers things
*someone who finds dinosaur bones
*someone who looks at stuff to try to make new stuff
*someone who asks questions
*someone who knows a lot about outside

After we thought about what we think a scientist is, we read a book and found out they observe, write, draw pictures, make predictions, experiment many times, measure, and keep on trying.

After we did all of this thinking and listening, we were ready for our own experiment! I asked them to make a prediction of where water would go away faster - the sun or the shade. We had a 50/50 prediction on where it would go away faster, so we decided to jump right in an experiment ourselves.

As scientists, we tried to find out if the water would disappear faster in the sun or in the shade. So, we painted water in both areas.

We painted water lines all over the pavement! 

Most of us found that the water disappeared faster in the sun, others were thinking the shade might make the water disappear faster. 

Once we had tested our predictions with the water, we went back inside to write and draw about our findings. Most of the children noticed that the water went away faster in the sun. Here are some examples of their work:

Parent Night and Happy Weekend!

Hello!

I'm hoping that each of you have had a wonderful end to your weeks since seeing you on Tuesday evening.

I wanted to pass along my teacher introduction to you all just in case you missed it!

I also wanted to be sure that everyone knows that I'll be working on the student share calendar and volunteer schedule shortly and should have it posted to our classroom site soon!

If you have any questions on the curriculum packet, housekeeping items or general classroom items, please feel free to email me at binconiglios@topsfieldps.org.

Welcome to Kindergarten!

Welcome to Room 309!

Hello Kindergarten Families!

I am so excited to begin the 2014/2015 school year with you today!

I am looking forward to teaching and getting to know your student. I can't wait to start learning about each student individually and as a community of kindergarten learners.

Our first few weeks together will be focused on learning about our school and classroom. Your student will soon be learning a lot about math, reading, writing and how they can become scientists in their world each day in the coming weeks. I can't wait to see them look at the world inquisitively and ask many of the million questions that are running through their heads each day. 

The first few weeks will be a lot of work for them and they'll most likely come home tired, but I hope, excited about what they're doing each day! Keep encouraging them that they're learning a lot and should feel proud of themselves and what they're able to accomplish each and every day of kindergarten. 

If you have any questions as our year kicks off, please feel free to email me any time at binconiglios@topsfieldps.org.

Sincerely, 

Mrs. I.