Ms. J's Kindergarten Class: Holy moly, it's already October!

This week, the class and I really dove deep into our school and class expectations. We discussed what it looks like to be safe, responsible, and respectful in the different areas of school and in our room. In order to accomplish our Hopes and Dreams (which we developed the first few weeks of school), we need to follow rules so that way our classroom and school building is a productive and enjoyable place to be. Being safe means that everyone is careful with their WHOLE bodies and that we are able to move, learn, and play without getting hurt. Being responsible means getting a job done (i.e. bringing your take-home folder to school everyday, cleaning up your table spot, completing a task at your table, washing your hands after using the bathroom). And being respectful means being kind to others. We created behavior expectation matrices as a class where I wrote down student answers (so they can understand the wording) and took videos and pictures of everyone showing our school expectations.

We are responsible by emptying out our mailboxes and putting papers in our folders.

We are responsible for hanging up our backpacks.

We are responsible for working at our tables.

We are safe when carrying and stacking our chairs at the end of the day.

We are respectful to nature by only looking at it, not touching/hurting it.

Everyone signed their name on our poster of the four main school expectations. It is hanging up in our classroom.

In our ABC notebooks, we completed a few more letters.

In social studies, we role played what to do if one encounters a small problem (versus an emergency). Small problems are problems students can fix on their own whereas emergencies are when you need an adult to help. We use the dialogue, "Stop! I feel ____ when you ________. I want you to ______." An example would be if two students are playing at the blocks station and one of them isn't sharing. The other student could say, "Stop! I feel bad when you aren't sharing the blocks. I want you to share so I can play too." This teaches assertion and cooperation among students. We will continue to role play and act out different scenarios that students face at school throughout the year.

We learned about the Pledge of Allegiance and its significance in our country. A few of the things the class learned is that the 50 stars stand for the 50 states in America. We say the Pledge to show that we honor and respect the country that we live in. When the flag was first made, it only had 13 stars because back then, there were only 13 colonies.

In science, we explored Chickadee Landing. We are working on our sight and hearing senses.

In math, we are practicing our calendar routine (this is where we review the months, days of the week, days that we've been in school, practice tens and ones place, write an addition sentence, count and show numbers with our fingers, and graph the weather). We started doing a shape sort which will eventually turn into word sorts.

In writing, we are working on writing our names CORRECTLY! One uppercase letter and the rest lowercase. Please practice with your child at home on writing their names like this if they are not already doing so.

Each student has monthly assessment books to help show the growth and stages of their writing development. One book is called "Celebrating Kindergarten: Self Portraits." I decided to have the class draw a picture of themselves and left out the handwriting piece. In October, we will try to write the full sentence.