Magazine Drive

The magazine drive at JA kicked off today with an assembly this morning. Your child should have come home with an envelope and notice explaining the magazine sale. It will run for the next 9 days and the monies raised with help support many of the special activities that the PTO puts on for our students.

 

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A Special Visitor

Today the kindergarten students had a special visitor at school...Johnny Appleseed! Johnny came in and talked about himself and told the students stories. We learned that Johnny had ELEVEN brothers and sisters and three of them had the same name as some friends in K2: Nathaniel, Elizabeth and Lucy...we thought that was pretty neat! Johnny Appleseed finished his visit by passing out an apple to each student and teacher. Thank you Johnny for a great visit!

 

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More, Fewer & Same As

In math we are learning about the relationship between two groups of objects by using the terms more than, fewer than or same as. This can sometimes be a difficult concept to grasp. To help solidify the concept I came up with a game the class played this afternoon. They had fun and really did a great job with it so I wanted to share it with you because they could easily play this at home with simple items around the house to practice the concept. All you need is a dice and two different groups of items for each player to use. (For example: ziti and elbow pasta, pennies and nickels, Cheerios and fruit loops, etc...) To play, player one rolls the dice and lines that many items up. Next, player two rolls and then lines their number of items up under player ones items being sure to line each of their items directly under each of player ones items. Once both players items are lined up ask your child which group has more, which group has fewer, how many more or fewer does player 1 have from player 2, and how many more or fewer does player 2 have from player 1. If both players roll the same number then they would answer that player 1 has the same as player 2. After they answer using the correct vocabulary (more, fewer, same as) clear your items and play again, this time having player 2 roll first. Continue playing until both players have had 5 or more turns rolling first for a total of 10 or more games. I've included some photos from this afternoon of them playing the game.

I hope you will be able to play this game at home some night soon!

 

 

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Another great week in K2

It was another GREAT week in K2! I really enjoy seeing each of my little "K2"ers' smiling faces as I meet them in the cafeteria each morning. They are all so eager to get to the classroom and get our day started. Here is a picture of our morning attendance routine in action. Along with learning letters and their sound we have been busy working on sentence segmentation (counting the number of words in sentences), rhyming, working on memorizing our sight words(I, can) and meeting at the reading table in small groups. Here are some photos from this week. One of my favorite pictures from the week was this one...I love how content the boys are listening to the "teacher" read to them. They did this for a good 5 minutes. I hope you all enjoy this last weekend of summer...Fall is just around the corner!

Fun Assembly for a Great Cause

This afternoon all of the Johnny Appleseed community went outdoors for an assembly where Superintendent Jolicoeur, Dr. O'Hearn-Curran and Mrs. King took part in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Earlier in the morning I spoke to the class (in kindergarten friendly terms) about what ALS was and we also talked about why we had hat day today and where the money would be sent. Many of the children had already heard about the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge because a number of their family members (and even some of them) took part in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge this summer. Here is a short video highlighting the assembly.

We are K2...take 2

Ok, I have been playing around with the blog all afternoon since school got out and hopefully this time it the video will play for you all.

Letters, Letters Everywhere!

This week we have been introducing letters and songs in full force. As mentioned at Open House, the first three weeks will be a quick introduction to each letter and their sound. In kindergarten the children will be introduced to all 21 consonants, 5 short-vowel sounds, as well as the digraphs ch, sh, th, wh. Since beginning our ELA curriculum we have been introducing the letters in pairs. So far the partners p/b, t/d, f/v, k/g and s/z have been introduced using the Reading with TLC program. This program, also known as Telian or Lively letters, is a great way to introduce the letters and sounds because of the pictures and stories that go with each letter...it definitely gives memory cues to the children to help them recall the letter and sound. Each letter also has a movement to go with it. Here is a poster of the letter cards that your child is seeing at school.

They definitely love listening to the songs as well. Here is a sample of the p and b song.

We are K2

It was so nice to see so many people at Open House last Thursday night. As promised I am posting the video I showed of the start of school for Room K2. I am so impressed with how quickly the students have adjusted to our schedule and routines. They truly are a wonderful group of kids...I am one lucky teacher!