Week of December 11th

Our winter party is on Friday at 2:15.  We would love for you to join us!

Reading

This week in shared reading we continued to read different versions of The Gingerbread Man.  We talked about characters, setting, and the ending.  We compared the story we read each day to ones we read previously.

We added look and at to the word wall this week.  

At literacy stations we worked on 

Word Work

We did shadow writing this week at the word work station.  Shadow writing is focusing on handwriting.  All the kiddos have to do is copy the words in each sentence.  This activity takes away some of the stress of spelling independently so the kiddos can just focus on their handwriting.  

Math

We have been working on numbers to 20 in math and this activity has the kiddos counting and matching numbers using 20's frame.  

Star

At star station this week the kiddos got to play candy land where we practiced taking turns and playing cooperatively.  Or the kiddos could play a beginning letter sound matching game.  

Poetry

Our fluency poem this week is Gingerbread Rap.  After the kiddos added the poem to their poetry notebook and illustrated it they could play a beginning letter sounds game.  The kiddos put gingerbred cookies on the baking sheet, each cookie has a picture on it.  After the cookies are "baked" the kids can put them on the plate that matches the decorations beginning letter.  

Storytelling

We have been reading the gingerbread man during shared reading so this week at storytelling the kiddos are retelling the gingerbread man using a story map.  They cut out the pictures and put them into the correct order. 

Word Work

In fundations this week we practiced writing x and y.  We also practiced their sounds.  On Thursday and Friday we played a sight word game similar to hangman.  The kids used the word wall to come up with a word, put that many letter spaces down.  Then they called on kiddos in the class to guess letters.  If the guess was right the "teacher" put the letter in the correct spot.  If the letter guessed was wrong the "teacher" wrote it under the word and added an ornament to the tree.  This activity does so much to help kiddos learn their sight words.  They have to count letters in words, focus on where the letters are in the words and really use the whole word wall to be able to guess the word.  We had so much fun playing this game!

Writing

This week in writing we continued to talk about adding details to our story and adding more words.  We talked about being brave spellers and trying to write as many sounds as we could.  We are practicing stretching out words slowly and writing the sounds.  We are also using the word wall to find letters or words to help tell our story.  

Math

In math this week we continued to learn about numbers to 20.  We used a 20's frame (two 10's frames stacked on top of each other) to make numbers 11-20.  During this activity we touched on place value by talking about how the first tens frame is the 1 in front of each teen number and the number in the second tens frame is the second number.  We turned ourselves into elves and helped pack up toys.  Each kiddo was given a specific number to pack, wrote that number on our hat and went to pack that many toys.  

We played a gingerbread bingo game with numbers in the teens.  We also used a picture of a gingerbread house to graph how many of each candy were on it.  Then we used the graph to record how many pieces of each candy were on the gingerbread house.  

Week of December 4th

I am sorry that this is coming out so late!  The holidays are hectic and taking there toll on me!!

I hope that you had a wonderful break! We have had a very busy week back.

Reading

In shared reading we are reading different versions of The Gingerbread Man. We are focusing on characters, setting, and the ending.  We are noticing the differences in each version.

We started independent reading this week where the kids read from there book bins.  We started off at 3 minutes and worked hard to read the entire time.  In the beginning of the week we struggled with getting up to talk to me or talk to neighbors, but by the end of the week most of us were able to read for the entire time!

At literacy stations we are working on
Reading

Reading to ourselves from out book bins first, then choosing a library book to read.  

Computer

Rocket speller is a free app that has different levels and stages of support. The kids start out by matching the letters to spell words, but work to spell words by hearing the sound and identifying the letter. 

Writing

The kiddos can label pictures, write a list or card.  

Star 

The kids made a movable gingerbread man. They had to use their fine motor skills to push the brads and open the back to make the gingerbread man movable.  

Math

The kids made a gingerbread man book and had to count the animals and fill in the blank.  

Listening

Poetry

We illustrated our fluency poem, Gingerbread, Gingerbread. 

Smart board

The kids could decorate a gingerbread man or match letters uppercase and lower case.

  

Word work

The kids could do rainbow words, wiki sticks or play dough, or use stamps to spell word wall words. 

Storytelling

We continued with the same stories we had last week. 

Writing

This week we have talked about adding more words to our story.  We have talked about writing what our story is about on the line. We are practicing coming up with a sentence to tell our story. Sometimes kindergartners want to write every detail in their story but lose track of the sentence so we have talked a lot about simple sentences, I played outside. Or I went on a walk. We are also trying to use word wall words in our sentence.

Word Work

We worked on the letters v and w this week.  We practiced letter formation and letter sounds.  We also added the word "it" to the word wall and practiced spelling it.  

Math

We started a new math unit this week, numbers to 20. We have practiced writing 11-20.  We practiced counting sets, making sets of the numbers, and representing the numbers with pictures and the numeral.  We talked about how all of the teens have a 1 in the front and practiced identifying the numbers by saying the second number first and adding teen- for 16 you look at the 6 and say "six" and add "teen" to make sixteen.