What's happening in Room 132?

FIRE SAFETY
We had a special visit from the Prior Lake Fire Dept last Friday. The kindergarten classes learned about fire safety and that it's a firefighter's job to keep us safe. We got to see what a firefighter wears--it sure is a lot of heavy stuff, especially the oxygen tank and coat. Then we went outside and checked out their firetruck! It was huge and had lots of different equipment. Did you know a broom is one of the tools they use? I learned (along with the kids) that firefighters use brooms to help "sweep" or put out small grass fires. They also have a bowling pin to break open the fire hydrant. How random, but cool!

MATH
The class is learning about 2D shapes, including squares, rectangles, circles, triangles, trapezoids, rhombuses, and hexagons. We cut our own shapes to make jack-o-lanterns and counted how many of each shape we used. In addition to ;earning about shapes, this lesson focused on how well your child can follow directions, trace with stencils, cut with scissors, and glue pieces together to make a complete picture. 

READING
The class has been practicing buddy reading. There are lots of ways your child can read with a buddy. 

• Buddies can take turns reading each page (using the pictures and the words, if they can read them).
• Buddies can re-read the book over again, noticing things they may not have seen the first time (such as how the character is feeling).
• Buddies can look for letters or words they know. 
• Buddies can re-tell the story in their own way. 
• Buddies can read their own books and share with their buddy whenever they want to point out something (shown in the photos below).

WRITING
Your child used colored paper to make their face and finished the sentence "My name is _____ and I like ______." This was our first guided writing lesson that we've done. I wrote the first letter of everyone's name on the Smartboard and we brainstormed together what words begin with their first letter. For example, A = apples, alligators, astronauts. Students chose one word and copied it onto their paper. Next week, your child will be encouraged to draw pictures and label them, either with the first beginning letter or they can try sounding out the whole word. I will be working on building their confidence up as we start writing in kindergarten. It is not about spelling correctly (which I know may not feel right for us adults). Instead, I want my kinders to start using their phonics skills of being able to hear different sounds in words and writing them down on paper. The only words they are expected to spell correctly are our sight words. 

SCIENCE

We went outside and used our sense of sight to write down what colors we saw on the trees.