We can be HEROES!

Yesterday was such a BLAST celebrating with the class how much they've accomplished so far in kindergarten. In our reading lessons, we've been learning all about different "superpowers" we can use to help us read and understand our books. We made capes and masks on Thursday then got to wear them proudly on Friday. We received a lot of positive attention from the school. It made the students feel very accomplished and more eager to learn. Plus, what kindergartner wouldn't want to dress up as their own superhero?!

We time our reading stamina each day during independent reading time and yesterday, we were able to reach our HIGHEST time yet--13 minutes of reading in ONE sitting! You should have seen the class' reaction, they were SO proud of themselves. We will continue to work towards 15 minutes of reading, which is an ideal and realistic time frame for kindergarten. 

To me, my students are true heroes. They may be little, but they are oh so mighty and pack a lot of punch. They are capable of anything and everything as long as they have the right support and drive. That is incredible. It is so amazing to see the academic and social growth that occurs in kindergarten. 

A lot of thought and prep went into drawing our cape designs on Thursday. We used special fabric markers so if you ever want to wash your child's cape, you are good to go!

At our morning meeting on Friday, each student got to introduce their superhero name and unique superpower to the class. Some of the superheroes included Wonder Woman, Flash, Spiderman, Batman, and Green Lantern. A lot of their hero names were also customized like "Super ______" (student's name).

We wrote about our superpowers. 

Hibernation
The class has been learning about all about hibernation. We talked about what it is, reasons why animals hibernate, and different places where they sleep during the winter. We kicked off our hibernation theme by reading the book The Mitten by Jan Brett. It's about how all of these animals go into a child's mitten to hibernate for the winter. The mitten slowly gets stretched out as each animal goes in and by the end, the animals end up exploding out of the mitten. We reenacted the story's sequence by cutting out paper animal characters from the book and acting it out. 

Here we are, putting the animals into the "mitten" (which was a white paper bag) one by one. 

At the end of the story, the mouse made the bear sneeze and all of the animals went everywhere!

Our reading stations were themed around The Mitten.

Listening for the vowel sound in a picture

Writing words of the week and animal words

Rhyming words

Cracking the mystery code (the numbers on the mitten represent letters)

Writing CVC words

Some of our hibernation reads...

Other Happenings
I have extra stations that students can do IF they finish their reading or math stations. They're still academic-oriented, but are more free play and discovery.

Rhyming puzzle--they were so proud to have worked together as a team!

Making words with letter tiles

Word families 

Handwriting 
I have been focusing on handwriting with the class after the New Year. We have finished learning how to properly write all of the lowercase letters. I've already noticed very positive changes in the students' handwriting! The strokes in which they make and form their letters are equally as important as the legibility and neatness of their writing. Next week, we will focus on uppercase letters.

Math
We've been learning about making groups of 10 to help us organize our counting. It helps us to see patterns in our addition, such as 10 + 1 = 11, 10 + 2 = 12, 10 + 3 = 13, etc.

There are 2 five groups to make the number 10. This helps us to see the number easily. 

We've also been working on 5 groups. 5 + 1 = 6, 5 + 2 = 7. 5 + 3 = 8, 5 + 4 = 9, 5 + 5 = 10.

Another concept of addition is making partner of a number. For example, there are many ways to get to number four. 1 + 3, 0 + 4, 2 + 2, 4 + 0, and 3 + 1.

The students use a "break-apart stick" to put in between the different circles. This helps them in the writing of their equations.

Toadally Terrific Tickets

Each Wednesday, one student's ticket gets drawn from the kindergarten bucket. The chance that each child is going to get picked within the school year is slim. So what I've started this week (and will continue to do until everyone has been drawn) is picking 4 tickets from our own class jar and letting those students eat lunch with me in the CLASSROOM. I know, such a big deal!!! 

I had the pleasure of eating lunch with Makenna and Savannah...

And Erik and Gavin S.

Next week, I will choose 4 new students. I feel that each and every student needs to be celebrated so this is my own personal touch on helping my students feel recognized and special.

Playtime
I've added two new play stations: math station and i-Pads.

They are so fascinated with seeing how long they can make the cubes go.