My Little Sister

This week's poem was about a little sister who was helping wash dishes. Even though she was doing a very nice thing to help wash the dishes, she ended up breaking 5 of them! Goodness! We practiced reading in a boring voice, as well as with good expression!

Leap Day Fun

Today, February 29th, marked a special day that only happens every 4 years, Leap Day! To help explain the reason why there is a leap day, we watched this video. I paused it several times to explain in simpler terms what was being taught. After the video, the class was a buzz with all types of questions. I was extremely excited to hear the questions my kindergarten students were asking. Below, I posted only a few of those questions. We ended up talking about Leap Day and much more relating to it for quite some time. They were very interested and I was beyond happy at how their minds were grasping the concept.

• How does the Earth move in a circle?
• If the Earth stopped moving in a circle, what would happen?
• Does the sun move around planets?
• How does the Earth know to move around the sun?
• What does the moon do?
• How does the Earth stay in one spot and not get out of the orbit?

Daily 5 Math Mini-Lesson

During our second mini-lesson today, we reviewed a Common Core standard for kindergarten. The standard we focused on was "Find the number that is one more or one less than any given number between 0-20". We used our floor number line to help us with this review. I pulled out a number from my bag of numbers and called on a student to find that number. Once the student found the number, I would either tell them to show the class what number is one more or one less than the given number. The student would then take one step forward or backward and tell the class the answer! The kids loved using the floor number line. We are excited to use it again to possibly practice addition and subtraction problems.

CAFE Mini-Lessons

We took two stories we read during our Dental Health week and compared/contrasted them. We found there were several things the same, as well as several things that were different!

Tooth Trouble:

-Wilbur went to the dentist to fix his tooth.

-The setting was outside in the snow.

-Wilbur's teeth were called tusks.

-A tusk broke.

-Wilbur felt better.

-He didn't want to go to the dentist.

Hippo's Tooth Surprise:

-The animals didn't know hippo's tooth hurt.

-They rolled him down the hill.

-When he was bouncing down the hill, his tooth came out!

-The setting was in a jungle.

-Hippo got a headache.

-There wasn't a dentist in the story.

Both:

-They had tooth problems.

-Animals were the characters.
-Animals talked, so they were fiction books.

During an Accuracy mini-lesson, we brainstormed a list of words in each of the three word families we were going to study that week. We studied words in the -it, -ip and -et word families. I was beyond impressed with how many words the class came up with on our first day with these families!

In reviewing a previously taught Comprehension strategy called "Beginning, Middle and End of a Story", we first read a book called Olive, My Love. After reading the story, we filled in the boxes on the board labeled "B" for beginning, "M" for middle and "E" for end. We found three ideas to be true for each section and in filling the different boxes out, we realized not only were we practicing this strategy, but retelling a familiar story and including key details!