Week in Review--Apples

Reading:

In reading this week, we learned about “Reality vs Fantasy” and rhyming. We talked about the difference between books that are about real topics and real things can happen and things that are fantasy and cannot happen in real life. A few of our favorites are that when animals talk, or do things that people do and when toys move and talk on their own that is fantasy and books about people and animals that teach us something with real life examples, things we could actually DO are real stories. Our focus on rhyming this week was specifically on the “-at” and “-ag” word families. We built and read words in those families and listened for words if they rhymed or if they didn’t rhyme. We will work on rhyming words all year long, rhyming is a skills that helps in both reading and writing.  

We also learned how to “shop” for new books for our book boxes this week. We learned that we first return a book from our book box back to our classroom library, choose a new book and then return leveled books and get new leveled readers. Each student gets to shop for new books one time a week on a specific shopping day. If they are absent on their shopping day, Fridays are reserved for any student who was absent and missed their scheduled shopping day.

Our vocabulary words this week went with the story Apples, Apples, Apples. We loved learning all about apples this week and our vocabulary words fit right in!

Our new sight words: look, it

**Be sure to keep the white sight word cards from week to week and continue to practice all of them as new ones are sent home every week.

Our Poem of the Week:

iPad Fun:

Reading

• QR Codes Listening: This week we used classroom books from our library that have QR codes inside the cover. These codes link to a sound clip that has the story on “tape” for the students to follow along and listen to while holding the book in their hands.
• ABC Magic: We practiced several reading and decoding strategies using the game apps ABC Magic. They are free apps that offer sorting, beginning/ending sounds, rhyming, building words and more!

Math

• This week we practiced 1,2,3 Ninja and Animal Math. Both apps have students practicing recognizing numbers, shapes, counting, patterns and more!

Writing:

This week we FINISHED our focus on writing specific letters in the alphabet. The letters this week were Xx, Kk, and Zz. Everyday we go through an alphabet chart, sing a song all about that specific letter, trace a letter page with the uppercase and lowercase letter and complete another activity or craft that goes along with the letter. We love learning what each new letter will be everyday!  We finished the week with an Alphabet Celebration! We practiced building, tracing, painting and writing all of the letters in the alphabet Aa-Zz at different ABC stations.

Math:

Our math vocabulary words this week were...side and corner. We practiced labeling the 2D shapes we have been working on by labeling the sides and corners. We built shapes this week using GEOboards, talked about shapes of objects in real life and continued to practice the number of sides and corners with a partner playing the shape race game!

Content:

This week was all about APPLES!

• Monday--We came up with words that we knew that describe apples!
• Tuesday--We completed an apple investigation experiment.
• Wednesday--We practiced patterns using different colors of apples.
• Thursday--We learned all about the different stages of an apple tree throughout the year.
• Friday--We had an apple taste test where we tried red, yellow and green apples, apple muffins, apple sauce, apple juice, apple cider and apple pie. Thank you to everyone who donated items for this fun afternoon. Our tummies were stuffed and we loved trying things we haven’t had before!

Social Emotional Learning (SEL):

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.

This week’s focus was all about The Power of YET. The word YET is so incredibly powerful when we verbalize challenges and things that might be hard for us. We add the word yet to the end of the sentence and it immediately becomes a positive thought and a goal of something we will eventually achieve. Saying the words “I can’t” or “I don’t know how” can be so negative and bring a person down, but when you add the word yet to the end it automatically tells you that might not be able to do that idea right now but you will one day! We completed several activities throughout the week practicing the word YET and listened to the story “The Most Magnificent Thing”. This book was about a little girl who wanted to build the most magnificent thing, but every time she tried to build it, it never turned out the way she wanted it to turn out. She tried and tried again and finally gave up after the 10th time of trying. She looked back at all of the “mistakes” she made and then learned something from each of those mistakes that helped her finally on her 11th try build the project she had in her mind that she wanted to create. It was a great message of not giving up and knowing that you might not learn something the very first time or even the second, third or even longer time you try it...but with persistence you will and can get there!

**A few discussion questions to talk with your child at home about this topic:

1. Name a time you were afraid to ask for help. Why were you afraid? (Both parent and student should pick a moment to share)
2. How can you improve the phrase "I can't do this?”
3. Think of a time where you just didn't get “it.” What could you do in that situation?

A few students sharing things they can't do...YET!

Something EXTRA:

• We had the author Jerry Pallotta visit our school this week. We have read several of his books and he talked to the kindergarten students about being a writer, how he gets his ideas for writing, how he doesn't always get the writing correct the first time and story telling. It was a great presentation with a lot of laughter!

PRACTICE AT HOME:

Talk about words in the “-at” and “-ag” word families and try to come up with other words that rhyme either with words in those word families or other words that rhyme in general!

Next Week:

• In reading we will practice Name the Characters
• In writing we will begin Writer’s Workshop!
• In math we will learn all about subitizing!
• Our theme next week is all about PUMPKINS!

**DONATION REQUEST**

We are in need of paper plates this next week. We have a few pumpkin crafts that require plates and last week we ended up needing to eat our apple tasting on coffee filters because we were out of plates. If you are able to send in a package of paper plates, that would be so incredibly helpful. Thank you!

 

Important Dates/Information:

**Go to our classroom webpage if you want to see important dates on a calendar! I will update this classroom calendar as dates and events come about.

• 10/14 End of 1st Nine Weeks
• Week of 10/17-10/21 Parent/Teacher Conferences (PLEASE RETURN THE YELLOW FORM THAT WAS SENT HOME)
• 10/26--Grandparent Fair 10-11 AM (more info to come)