Week of November 15

 Hi Kindergarten Families!

Wow! We have been busy in Kindergarten! Todays marks the 50th day in Kindergarten! Can you believe it? Days are getting shorter and temperatures are starting to drop. Please make sure that you send your child to school with layers! A warm jacket or a sweatshirt in addition to their school outfit is always a good plan, we go outside everyday! Please reach out to your child's teacher if you need warm clothing for your child and we will see what we can do! We look forward to seeing you this week for parent teacher conferences. We have A LOT to share with you.

We started a new math unit on geometry. We are learning all about shapes! Exploring pattern blocks, making shape designs and reading a lot of books with shapes in them. We even went for a shape hunt to see what shapes we spied in our classrooms. In reading we have been retelling familiar stories and acting them out. The Three Billy Goats Gruff is a class favorite!

 

  

During our phonics time we have been listening to beginning sounds and learning lots of new "snap words". We've been practicing snap words so much that we've starting using them even more in our writing!

          

 

In science we just finished our Pumpkin Unit and learned all about the life cycle and different types of pumpkins. Did you know that some pumpkins grow so big that you can use it as a boat? Pretty cool. An ongoing project that we're doing in kindergarten involves decomposition. We read the book Pumpkin Jack and decided to do our own experiment. Check out Jack on day 1 and on day 16. Yikes! He's fuzzy.

 

 

Stay tuned for more Pumpkin Jack updates! It's going to get gross before it gets cool. Here is the story of Pumpkin Jack and you'd like to watch it with your child. 

Week of October 18

Happy Friday Kindergarten Families!

It has been an exciting couple of weeks in Kindergarten! We kicked off our Reading Workshop with the unit We Are Readers. During this unit we are on the lookout for things to read! That can be signs in the hallway, words on our classroom charts, and in our small books that we are practicing. Kindergarteners are also on the hunt for words that we know in a *snap*. Ask us about some snap words that we have been practicing.

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We wrapped up our unit about apples by trying different apples. We sampled red, yellow and green apples. In every classroom yellow was the favorite. A lot of us thought the green were too sour! We also talked about seasons and how apple trees change throughout the year. 

During our Writing Workshop we are putting our snap words to use by writing pattern books.  We're using sentence starters like "A ___" "The___" "I like"  or "I see". We've also started adding labels to our writing. We labeled a friend to practice! In math we have been comparing numbers and using words like fewer, more and less. We also made a pretty cool number book where each Kindergartener was able to help represent a number with a drawing. 

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Last Wednesday we had a virtual author visit by Brendan Wenzel, a Caldecott-winning author/illustrator. He read us his new book, Inside Cat and showed us how to draw the cat from the story.  We learned that he loves animals and they are his favorite thing to draw. 

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On Friday October 15, Mrs Kalloch's class had a film crew visit during their garden special from the Foundation Portland Public Schools (with permission of course) to see what we've been doing during our outdoor learning.  Talbot Kindergarten is so lucky to have such an amazing Garden teacher, Ms. Anna makes learning about the garden so engaging and fun.

This Friday was Unity Day! We wore orange, made crowns and went for a whole school walk around the building to kick off our day of kindness. This is the day we also wrapped up our Apple Unit with some delicious applesauce that we made ourselves! (some classes are making applesauce next week)

 

 

 

  

Have a great weekend! 

Week of October 4

 Hello Kindergarten Families! This was a short week but it was a busy one 😊 We wrapped up or Kindergarten Jumpstart on Thursday with letters Y and Z and finished our Community unit. For our final week in the community unit will talked about how we can help our community, what we want to be when we grow up and the difference between wants and needs. In math we started to compare numbers and quantities using the language; more, less and same. Here are some snapshots from our week

               

              

                     

Have a great long weekend! 

Week of September 27

 Hello Families,

We've been so busy in Kindergarten that it's been a bit since we posted! We focused on the letter Uu today, only a few more letters of the alphabet to go! This week in math we began Unit 2. Lots of counting, comparing amounts and playing some new math games.

                                    

                                   

                                    

We also started a new social studies unit that focuses on Our Community. We talked about neighborhoods, different types of homes, our neighbors and our families. Kindergarteners are using this content to write more about their community during our writing workshop. On Friday we made a model of our community with a Fun Friday craft! We constructed our homes, a school, fire station, restaurants, stores, even a Dinosaur Museum! We will continue to learn more about our community next week.

                                    

                                    

Our Art, Music, Gym, Garden and Library specials have been great and are a highlight in our busy days. The weather has been so nice and we LOVE learning outside. During Garden special this week we started to learn about the 6 parts of plants. 

                           

Have a wonderful weekend and don't forget about Pumpkin Fest tomorrow, October 2!