CRAZY BUSY WEEK!!!!

Well…I hope my kindergarten friends are ready for a wild, crazy, fun week in kindergarten!!! Of course, we will be learning lots of stuff and we will be getting ready for our holiday program on Friday!!

In literacy we will be starting a brand new unit called “Wonders of Nature.” Our theme this week will be “Watch It Grow!” Our essential question will be “What do living things need to grow?” I know it is a silly time of year to be talking about this…but we will be learning more about this in the spring!! We will be singing the song “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.” The stories we will be looking at are called, “ My Garden” and “Growing Plants.” We will also be looking at some poetry….can you believe we do that in kindergarten?! As we read we will continue to look at the concepts of print, genre, and we will start to talk about the reading strategy of rereading.  We will continue to blend words and we will be using this strategy as we read “Hop Can Hop” from our crabby books. We will continue to learn about the letter ‘H’ and we will be sorting lots of picture cards and trying to decide what they start with!! This is so easy for us now:) Can you see we have a lot to do!?!

In writing we will continue to write stories from our lives. We are working super hard on sounding out words and using adjectives when we write!! This week we will be talking about pattern books and we will even try to make a few class pattern books!! In grammar we start to learn about pronouns! Crazy!!!

In math we continue to learn about teen numbers and the number of tens and ones each teen number has!! We are recognizing and writing numbers 1-20….this can be tricky!! Some of us like to get the ones place and tens place mixed around. We will also be looking at shapes and practicing sorting them by their attributes.

In unit studies we will finish up talking about Holidays Around the World and we will be doing lots of projects!!!! We are so happy to complete our passports and show you all of the great things we’ve done and learned about in our suitcases.

Of course, Twinkle will continue to watch us this week. He was so nice to bring us donuts last week!! Please remember our Holiday program will be Friday at 12:30 in the auditorium. This should last until about 1:00. Please bring your families so they can see all of the work we have been doing!!

Also, this week we will be giving lots of assessments to close out the 2^nd quarter. Please make sure your child is rested and has ate a great breakfast!! I want them to be fully ready to show me how super smart they are!!

I think that’s all!! I hope you have a great week before our winter break!!

Love-Mrs. Schroeder

Twinkle the Elf!!

Twinkle surprised us yesterday with supplies to make a snowman donut!! Of course, he broke into the donuts and had a few himself:) Silly Elf!! Enjoy our short video of our donut adventure!!!

Happy Birthday Aydin!!!

We celebrated the half birthday of Aydin today!!! We had so much fun and Twinkle had so much fun hiding in donuts!! Aydin spoiled us with oatmeal cookies...we hope you had a good half birthday:)

Birthday girl with her sign!!

With her friends!!

There is Twinkle!!!

Rock Star Havannah!!

Havannah was our rock star last week and we had a great week with her!! She loves the color yellow and her favorite book is Green Eggs & Ham!  The movie she just loves to watch is Finding Nemo and her favorite sport is soccer. She LOVES mac & cheese (who doesn't :)) Her favorite animal is a dolphin and she loves Hunter Hayes song "Wanted." When she grows up she wants to be a doctor and if she could go anywhere in the world it is Chuckie Cheese. She is a super special kid because she loves her family!!

Thanks for being such a rock star Havannah!! We are lucky to have you in our class. Please enjoy our video!!

Birthday Girl Genesis!!

Genesis celebrated her birthday last week and we had a GREAT time!! Twinkle the Elf came in his birthday outfit and made a Christmas Tree!! We were even LUCKY enough to get some delicious cookies!! We hope your day was great Genesis!!

Birthday Girl!!

With the class!!

It's Twinkle!!

Cookies!!

BUSY WEEK!!!

So as I am sure you all know our elf, Twinkle, came last week to keep an eye on us during the holiday season and has been moving around our room since he arrived in his makeshift hot air balloon! Twinkle even left us a poster with Santa’s Tips for staying on the nice! Unfortunately Twinkle left our classroom on Friday because someone touched him and we were all super sad and a little nervous because we are hoping he comes back. I just know that this week we are all going to be trying very hard to stay on the nice list! Here is a picture of the poster he left in our room.

In Unit Studies we will finish up our Around the World book and will be packing/making a suitcase and getting a passport so we can start traveling the world to learn about more cultures and their celebrations. We will be traveling after our afternoon recess to different countries/classrooms and learning about celebrations people have in Africa, Israel, Holland, and Germany. We will be learning about Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, the wooden shoe, and the Christmas tree. It is going to be a super fun week of learning about different cultures – we will also learn some songs and will start practicing for our program that is Friday, Dec. 19^th at 12:30 in the auditorium! We hope you are all able to come!

In Math we will be continuing to talk about teen numbers and seeing the group of ten and ones. We will also be looking at different attribute cards (which is a fancy name for shapes) and will be exploring with them to sort them by color, shape, and size and we will make patterns with them too! We will also be learning about the equals and not equals signs and comparing numbers. We will continue to tell and solve more story problems and a great time to practice story problems at home is during dinner – for example you could say “we had 6 rolls on the plate and we ate 3 of them, how many do we have left?” or “I ate 3 chicken nuggets and then had 2 more, how many chicken nuggets did I have altogether?” or you can even ask your child if they can come up with a problem of their own.

During Literacy our essential question this week is “How can people help to make your community better” which is a wonderful topic to discuss and I am excited to hear the conversations we will have this week about pitching in and making our community the best that it can be! We will be reading the following stories – “Roadwork”, “A Community Garden”, and “The Bundle of Sticks”. In our crabby books we will be reading “I Can You Can” and in guided reading your child will either read “Can you Fix It” or “We Clean”. Our vocabulary words are community, improve, confused, harvest, and quarrel. Again this week we will be focusing on those key details of the story and answering and asking questions when we read. This is actually a review week and next week we are suppose to learn the word “my” and focus in on the letter H but we will be switching those around because next week will be a little crazy with our program so this week we will learn about “my” and “h”! I will also be assessing quite a bit this week for report cards! Always so much to do!

It is sure to be a fast and fun week again in Kindergarten! I hope that Twinkle has nothing but good news to report!

Birthday Boy Kaden

We celebrated Kaden's birthday back in October when I was gone...so I am behind getting this up on our blog!! I hope I can keep up now that I am back in the swing of things!!! I hope that Kaden had a GREAT birthday this year!!

Holiday Time!!!

I hope that you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving and my friends had a good break. I also hope that they are ready to get back to school and are ready for a fun, fast 14 days! We will be doing a lot over the next 3 weeks and we don't have any time to waste!
I am thinking that one of Santa's scout elves will probably be coming to keep an eye on us during this crazy time to make sure we all stay on the nice list! Our elf, Charlie, came to my house this past weekend to keep on eye on Jackson and Presley so I am sure Twinkle will be arriving any day now to keep watch over my friends while they are here at school! I am crossing my fingers for excellent behavior because like I said we have lots to do!

In Literacy we will be focusing on the letter d and the word "do". Our vocabulary words are appreciate, culture, prefer, proud, and tradition. We will be reading "What Can You Do With a Paleta?", "Cultural Festivals", "A World of Festivals", and in our crabby books we will read "Sid" and in guided reading your child will read either "Neighborhood Party" or "Parade Day". If we can squeeze in any holiday books we will be doing that too! We will work on our comprehension skills as well when we are reading stories and will be talking about the character, setting, and the events that take place throughout the book. We will be blending and segmenting words and also reading silly/nonsense words this week to get ready for our Quarter 2 assessments!

In writing we will be continuing to learn more about what good writer's do - the CAPS man really helps us remember that every sentence starts with a Capital letter, we need Art work to match our story, also Punctuation marks go at the end of every sentence, and between every word we need Spaces! We will also be starting to talk about pattern books and will be making a few of our own class pattern books over the next few weeks!

In math we will be working hard on learning those teen numbers, we are going to practice solving and telling oral story problems and again reviewing the different strategies we can use to solve story problems. We will be exploring with a balance to compare how much things weigh and we will be using vertical and horizontal graphs to show our results! We will also be talking a lot about number partners and working on our counting mats!

In Unit Studies we are starting one of my favorite units (I know that I say that about all of the units but this one really is a good one) we will start learning about Holidays Around the World. It is so neat to talk about our own family traditions around the holidays but also so neat to talk about how different cultures celebrate. We will be making a booklet and talking about what we might see if we were to actually travel around the world! It is sure to be a fun busy week!

Please make sure you are free to come to our Holidays Around the World Program on Friday, Dec. 19th at 12:30 in the auditorium. You will be getting an invitation soon but wanted to give you a heads up that it will probably last around 30 minutes. I hope that you are all able to make it!

I can't believe it is December and we are almost done with the second quarter of kindergarten!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Hello everyone!!!
I am so THANKFUL to be back in kindergarten with all of my friends!!! I was sad to leave Presley, but I have loved seeing how much my kindergarten friends have learned!! They are SUPER smart. We were busy during our short week, but we talked about a lot of important things! We really focused on things that we have in our lives that we are so thankful for...and I heard some amazing responses! We did a lot of turkey activities, along with reading some funny stories and singing some fun songs!

I just want to take this opportunity to say THANK YOU for letting me work with all of your wonderful children every day!! I feel so blessed to have 23 AMAZING students in my room.

I am also reflecting on all of the things I am thankful for these days. I feel blessed to have a healthy family, a job I LOVE, and these days I am REALLY thankful for sleep:)

I know your kindergarten kids are thankful for all of you...and they should be...they are so lucky to have you in their lives.

I hope you have a wonderful day spent making memories with family and of course LOTS of yummy food!!!

Please enjoy our video!!

Practice Makes Perfect!!

Your child brought home a packet of papers on Friday and I explained that all of these papers will help us practice the skills we have been working so hard on in kindergarten! I showed them all how to put the papers in our binders so we can practice over and over again J

Please continue to use the alphabet chart to practice the letters and sounds, we have been working hard to blending sounds together to make words, especially in writing.

We are continuing to work hard on making all of the letters correctly – if you notice your child is consistently writing letters or numbers backwards please use these strokes to help your child!

The blue sheet of words are all of the words we are learning in the 2^nd quarter – remember my friends need to be able to read and write these words! Please ask your child to tell you the chants we use for each word.

This yellow sheet is full of activities to use with the colored boxes. Of course you can always make up your own activities. We use something very similar to this everyday during daily math routines to practice writing our numbers in isolation.

We are focusing on our numbers 1-10 and it is so important to be able to write them – please use this sheet to have your child practice.

This week we will be taking our Unit 2 math test – so any extra practice you do at home would be awesome! We will be reviewing this week in preparation for our test!

We are having soo much fun experimenting with different objects to see if they will sink or float. We did our own experiments and watched a video of Cookie Monster testing out different objects. We learned words like hypothesis, displacement, and density – geez we are sure learning lot in kindergarten! We will continue to learn more about why objects sink or float. I sure hope you had fun experimenting at home!

In Literacy we will start Week 3 of Unit 3. We will be reading “Please Take Me For A Walk” and “Field Trips” and will be talking about the different places we go during the week and also focusing on the character, setting, and events that happen in the stories. In our crabby books we will be reading “We Go To See Nan” and “Can We Go?” We will be focusing on the letter c and learning how to read and write the word go! Our vocabulary words will be neighborhood, routine, intelligent, local, and volunteer. During guided reading your child will either be reading “We Can Go” or “Going by Cab”. During writer’s workshop we are continuing to write stories from our lives and are working hard on sounding out words that we don’t know how to spell using turtle talk.

Please have your child wear red, white, and blue on Tuesday – because we will be observing Veterans Day and will be making a few things for our Veterans and of course taking some pictures for this special day. What a busy week we have ahead of us!

Fall Fun!!

Last week  my friends had a SUPER fun time celebrating the fall season. I was really jealous that I had to miss out on all of the fun:) They carved a pumpkin (a MAGIC pumpkin!) and played lots of fun games. Please enjoy a couple videos of the fun!!

A BIG THANKS to Mrs. Woita for arranging all of the fun:)









Here is some photo booth fun!!

Time is FLYING!!!

I was SO happy to see my friends SUPER quick this morning! It looks like they are learning a lot!! It is hard to believe that I will be back in 3 short weeks!! I am ready to see them every day, but not sure about leaving sweet Presley at daycare!! I am sure there will be lots of tears!!

The time has changed and hopefully you all enjoyed your extra hour of sleep as much as I did! This week we will be trying to get back into our normal routine after the super fun week we had last week! Although we will be gearing up for Veterans Day and Thanksgiving will be here before we know it. Last week you should have gotten a "candy challenge" paper in your child's Wednesday Folder - we will be collecting candy this week to give to the Veterans - I am hoping we will be collecting a lot... my friends always say "sharing is caring"!

In Literacy we will be starting Week 2 in Unit 3. Our essential question is “What are the different sounds we hear?” and we will be reading a super fun book called “Clang! Clang! Beep! Beep! Listen to the City” and also “The Turtle and the Flute”. We are learning about different genres of books and also strategies that readers use – we are getting really good at visualizing the pictures in our mind. In our crabby books we will be reading “Nat and Tip” and “Tim and Nan”, and let me tell you we really enjoy reading those crabby books! We will be focusing on the letter “Nn” and learning how to read, write, and spell the word “and”. Our vocabulary words this week are listen, volume, chat, exclaimed, and familiar. We are continuing to work on finding words that rhyme and sorting words by the beginning and ending sounds. We are getting really good at blending words with turtle talk and like writing down the sounds we hear in our sound boxes! This week I will be sending home a few things to put in your binders for you to practice with at home!

In Math we will be practicing writing the number 10 as well as making patterns and showing numbers 1-10 on our counting mats. We will continue to solve addition and subtraction story problems and try and come up with our own problems. We are getting really good at repeating story problems so we know what the problem is asking us. We will also be looking at addition and subtraction equations closely to see what patterns we find.

In writing we will be go over what we should do if our friends try to help us spell words (we are working very hard on becoming independent writers) and also talking about how sometimes we spell the same words differently and how that is okay! We will learn that good writers touch(point) to their words and reread while they are writing their sentences to make sure that they make sense and also remembering to use punctuation marks at the end of each sentence.

During Unit Studies we finished up our drug safety unit and will now be starting our science unit – Sink or Float! Be prepared to test things at home – I just know that my friends will love experimenting and making predictions about what objects will sink to the bottom and which objects will float! I can’t wait to see all of the fun we have during this unit!

On Friday your child should have given you their report cards along with the pumpkins, toys, and snacks! I heard it was a very busy day but full of fun! Please let me know if you have any questions about your child’s report card – you get to the keep the actual report card but please send back the envelope so we can reuse it. 

Hopefully this week I will be getting a video up of our fun Fall Party! We have another fun week ahead of us! Here are some pictures of my sweet baby girl...she loves to eat and is growing quickly!! Her brother is growing up right along with her!!

Minne Mouse on Halloween!!

Getting big!!

Rock Star Ayla!!

Ayla was our Rockstar a few weeks back and she had a fabulous week! Her favorite color is purple and she loves the movie Frozen. Her favorite sport is sword fighting and she loves dogs! Ayla likes the book “Lion and the Place Between” and her mom even came in and read it to the class! She likes to eat macaroni and cheese, which of course is delicious! Her favorite song is Mad World by Gary Jules and if she could go anywhere she would go to Lost in Fun! Ayla is a special kid because she is a great big sister and she is a fun and smart little girl! When she grows up she wants to be a dentist! Ayla you ROCK!!

Rock Star Aydin!!

Aydin was our Rockstar of the week a few weeks back and we had a FABULOUS time learning all about her! She loves the color pink and her favorite book is Fancy Nancy! Her favorite movie is Cinderella and she also likes unicorns. She enjoys soccer and macaroni and cheese. Her favorite song is “Let It Go” which seems to be a common trend now days! She is a special kid because she loves her whole family and I just bet her whole family loves her so very much too! If she could go anywhere she would go to the mountains and when she grows up she wants to be a doctor! Aydin was an awesome Rockstar and she had a great week! You ROCK! Please check out her special video!

Rock Star Ariauna!!!

Ariauna was a GREAT rock star of the week!!!! It has been so long since she was the rock star, but I am FINALLY getting this up!!! Her favorite color is pink and she loves the book “Frozen!” Can you guess her favorite movie? You got it…..it is Frozen!!!!! Ariauna loves to play soccer and her favorite food is meatloaf. The animal she loves most is snakes (I am not a big fan of these J).  She loves the song “Let it Shine!” When she grows up she wants to be a dentist. If she could go anywhere in the world it would be Champions.  She is special because she is a great helper to her cousin Baylee Jo and she can hold her breath under water. Thanks for being such a great rock star Ariauna!!!! We are SO lucky to have you in our class!!!

Birthday Girl Jayne!!!

On October 15th Jayne celebrated her birthday with her kindergarten friends!! Her mom and sisters even came to school to celebrate with everyone!!! They even brought a surprise for everyone in the class!!! We hope you had a great birthday Jayne!!!

Silly Elf!!!

My friends think I am SPECIAL!!

I found him!!

With my mom and sisters!!!

Birthday Girl Ariauna!!!

I am behind on birthdays...but we still want to make sure that Ariauna had a GREAT birthday on October 4th!! Isis the Elf came to visit AND our friends had a great time making the birthday sign for Ariauna!! We all think she is a SUPER special girl!!

Ariauna with her class!!!

Birthday Girl with Isis!!

ISIS!!!

My friends ROCK!!!

More Learning!!!

I hope all of my friends enjoyed their 5 day break from school and they got to do something fun over Fall Break! I have missed seeing all of your smiling faces every day in kindergarten. Although, I really do love cuddling Presley every day!!  I can’t believe we are already starting the 2^nd quarter because I feel like school just started! Time goes by so quick when you are having fun!

This short week we will be reviewing a lot about our school rules! We will talk a lot about what kindergarteners look like and sound like when they are working!

We will be finishing up week 2 in Literacy and starting Week 3 – so I will post more on that next week – please just know we will keep on learning more about what good readers do! We will keep practicing our letters and sounds and blending them together to make words! Please continue to practice at home using the packet I sent home at Literacy night!

In Math we will be continuing to tell math stories using addition and subtraction. We will start comparing numbers to see if they are equal or not equal. We will review how to do dot-to-dots using straight lines and going in counting order and we will also practice making the number 7.

In Writing we will review what good writers do and we will also talk about what the teacher does during writing time – the teachers in the room during writing time will go around to individual students and conference with them about their writing (which is a fancy way to say talk about their writing). During the conference the teacher is going to give each student a helpful hint to help them become a better writer – for example using turtle talk, adding more details to the picture or taking your time when drawing, or even helping come up with a sentence to write. Now that we are in the 2^nd quarter we are going to start thinking of sentences to go with our stories – so we will think of a sentence and say it out loud a few times– then we will say it again and count how many words are in the sentence (this will help us remember what we are suppose to write hopefully). We will also hopefully be using our writer’s workshop folder as a tool to help us because it has an alphabet chart and all of our kindergarten words in there! I can’t wait to see all of the stories during writing time!

For Unit Studies we are going to jump back to Health and talk about drug safety – which ties in very well with Red Ribbon Week that is coming up. We will have discussions about drugs and how they can hurt our bodies if they are not used correctly. We will also be decorating our door this week with a drug free message and I encourage you to do the same at home – in the school newsletter you should have seen the information about this, but if you decorate your door and people vote for you – you have the chance to win money for Meadow Lane and an ipad for your family! This Friday the 17^th is also Inside Out day so please have your child wear their clothes inside out if you can!

It is sure to be a fun week – I am looking forward to another great quarter in Kindergarten!

I can't wait to come and visit all of you and hear all of the things you are learning!!!

Also....I am really working hard on updating the blog with videos. However, my computer decided to quit working so it is currently getting fixed:) Me and technology have not loved each other lately!!

Love- Mrs. Schroeder

Happy LATE Birthday Kalai!!!

We celebrated Kalai's birthday early because he got to take a awesome trip to Kansas City!! He had his family in to enjoy cupcakes with us!! His birthday was on September 29th (he shares a birthday with Presley:)) Sorry that I am posting this late Kalai! I hope that you had a wonderful birthday!!

Singing to the birthday boy!!!

Kalai with is birthday gift...all the things we love about Kalai!!

Isis the birthday elf!!!

Yummy cupcakes!!

Love- Mrs. Schroeder