Learning to add

Hi everyone! I hope you had a nice Valentine's Day!  I know the kids enjoyed their time at Kinder Club, and I hope they had a fun time opening their mailboxes and looking at everyone's Valentine's!  Thank you to everyone for our Valentine treats, too!  

This week was a fast one, but next week will probably go even quicker since there are only four school days.  What's everyone doing this three day weekend? Hopefully something fun!  While you are out and about enjoying yourself, please keep our friend Erik in your prayers - the poor little guy fell off the play equipment and fractured his right arm.  Thank goodness for the quick actions of Mrs. Frawley and our parent supervision- they are always on the lookout for such events.  He was such a tough cookie- we were very proud of him for being so brave.  When he returns to school on Tuesday, we will be sure to have a cast-signing event! Feel better soon Erik!

Well, this week we began really diving into the wonderful world of addition.  When these kiddos enter First Grade, they will be practicing MANY addition facts all year long, then memorizing their addition facts up to about 30.  Memorizing addition facts is crucial to many later math skills, such as multiplication and division.  This is an important foundation to their math education, and that is why you will find your kindergartner practicing many different ways of adding numbers in this kindergarten classroom.  Using manipulatives is one important way to show addition, and it also helps guide the way to using manipulatives when we subtract.  We are also learning to use a number line to solve addition problems, as well as drawing pictures.  Here are some kiddos demonstrating their newfound math skills:

Using the document camera to show adding with counters

some drawing on whiteboards during math tubs

using our gumball math activity center to show circling groups of ten

coming up to the whiteboard to show how to count the cubes to find the answer

using two different colored cubes to show the two numbers we are adding together

Using two different colored counters to show adding

As you can see, we are adding in so many different ways!  I'm going to make sure these kiddos are ready for all of the addition that happens in First Grade! 

Do you know what else I'd like to make sure these kiddos know before entering First Grade? Their sight words!  Some days, it feels like we eat, drink, and breath sight words!  Of course, I'm always looking for fun ways to learn their sight words. Sight words are tricky- most of them are not able to be sounded out like traditional Consonant-vowel-consonant words.  Therefore, exposing your child to the sight words as often as possible is really the best way to teach them.  Here is one of our sight word activities this week:

This kiddo is reading, writing, and coloring the sight word look.

This week, the kids were introduced to another wonderful skill to help us become better readers and spellers- word families.  We will be practicing a lot of different word families for the remainder of the year.  Our first word family was words that end with -ad.  Each kid came up to the carpet to roll a large dice.  Then, that child read the word from the column that corresponded with the number on the dice.  The whole class traced that word, and then we continued!  It was a lot of fun! 

Word family fun!

We played a similar dice game with some sight words on Valentine's Day, too! 

   

On Wednesday, we were able to meet with our Study Buddies for a little Charlie Brown Valentine's Day cartoon, as well as a little Valentines exchange!  We made Valentine's for our study buddies in class last week, and we were really excited to share them with our buddies! 

 We also had the pleasure of playing with Luci for the afternoon.  We decided to show Luci one of our favorite wiggle breaks- Cotton Eyed Joe- on the whiteboard.  Luci really loves dancing!

A little lasso action!

Do-see-do!

On Thursday, we had a special opportunity to view the beautiful missions (models of missions) created by the Fourth Grade class. This is a St. Jude tradition, as it is in many other schools, too.  Here are some of the kids looking at one of the missions:

We did such a great job with our hands behind our backs, or in our pockets, as if we were in a real museum!

 We also had a lot of fun singing another song in Spanish class with Senora.  The kiddos really get into singing with puppets!  This song was about animals on the farm:

 We also had time to pass out our Valentine's into everyone's mailbox.  They looked like little postal workers!  During centers earlier in the week, the students wrote down their address (just the numbers) onto a piece of paper and glued that to their mailboxes to make them seem like the real deal.  Don't forget to practice memorizing your address this month! 

Now, believe it or not, I didn't take one solitary photo during our Valentine's Day Kinder Club!  I apologize! I know cameras were snapping photos here and there, so hopefully we will see more photos on our Shutterfly account.  I guess I was just a busy lady!  I did manage to snap two photos from our morning art project... the kids didn't quite get my little nickname for the art project, but I know you parents will appreciate it!  This is our little "Valen-swine!" Ha ha ha...

Art projects like this Valenswine serve a few purposes- following directions, cutting skills, gluing skills, and, well, having fun!  Hopefully your Valenswine made its way home safely.  

Well, that's all of the photos from this teacher.  This week we will be learning about the letter Rr.  Our share topic will be things that begin with Rr.  In your homework packets this week, be on the lookout for part two of our Social Studies assignment- last week your child wrote their address on an envelope and attached a stamp.  If you forgot to attach a stamp, please send one in as soon as possible. This week, your child will receive a blank note card, along with the name of their secret pen pal!  Please read the directions carefully for this project. Thank you!

A few reminders:
* Uniform check-
     * A few boys look like they may need a hair cut soon- please make sure their   
        hair is away from their eyes, not past their ears. 
     *Girls- tights with feet are allowed to be worn under your skirts- not     
       leggings. Leggings are a Jr High privilege only.
     *Shoes- please make sure your child's shoes do not have bright colors- stick 
        with grey, black, or white- no neon colors please- School rules
~As with all of these reminders, you may look in the parent handbook for clarification, or check with Mrs. Schulte.  Thank you for your help!

*Parent Conferences- please go to the Shutterfly account to set up your mandatory Kindergarten Parent Teacher conference!  Conferences happen the last week of February, and Kindergartners will be dismissed at noon (no daycare available).

As always, thank you for all of your support- it really does take a village! But, at least it is a fun village!

Take care! 

~Ms. Hudson