Classroom News

February may be a short month, but it sure has been busy!  Between Global School Play Day, the snow, the 100th day of school, and Valentine's Day, K-1 has been full of fun!

Global School Play Day

Schools all over the world came together to celebrate the benefits of unstructured play in children's lives.  As you can see from the pictures, it was a huge success!

100th Day of School

Can you believe we have been in kindergarten for over 100 days now?  We had such a great time doing many activities centering around the number 100.  Making gumball machines, writing about what we would do with $100, playing Race to 100, and sharing our collections made our day extra fun!

Valentine's Day

A very special thank you goes to all of our parent volunteers for helping us have a great Valentine's Day party:  Mrs. Sluder, Mrs. Kubow, Mrs. Pellum, Mrs. Stuckey, Mrs. Limbers, Mrs. Leiper, and Mrs. Brancato.  Take a look at the video below for pictures of all of our fun!

Valentine's Day from Heather Coyle on Vimeo.

Reading
We are wrapping up our nonfiction unit.  I have been so impressed with the observations, discussions, and sharing that I have been seeing.  These readers have become quite the experts at finding nonfiction text features such as bold words, table of contents, labels, a glossary, and an index.  During independent reading time, I see the students constantly stop and think as they share new information or facts that they already knew that were confirmed by their reading.  After spring break, we will start a poetry unit.

Please remember keep guided reading books in the blue book bag, as this will help the students be ready when I call their group on any given day.  When they meet with me for a new lesson, I will collect the old book and they will bring home a new book.  Thank you so much for your support with this at home!

Writing
The kindergarten authors continue to do a great job during Writing Workshop.  They are becoming quite the experts at our 4 steps:  Think, Draw, Label, and Write.  Recently, we began adding another part to our writing.  Students are now working to write extend their idea by writing more than one sentence.  I was so proud of the hard work and effort I was seeing with this challenging task.  We will continue to work on writing sentences with a capital letter at the beginning, a period at the end, and spaces between each word. 

Math
The students are loving learning about shapes!  They did a great job identifying and describing the following solid (3-D) shapes:  sphere, cylinder, cone, pyramid, and cube.  It was exciting to hear them using the new math vocabulary words including faces, edges, and corners.  This week, we began learning more about the flat (2-D) shapes:  circle, square, rectangle, triangle, and hexagon.  Students were able to find and trace these flat shapes within the solid shapes.  We also went on shape hunts to find these flat shapes within our classroom.  It was so fun to use iPads and QR codes to find real-life examples of these shapes and graph the ones that were found.  

Social Studies
This week, we focused on President's Day and George Washington, which tied nicely into our nonfiction unit.  We read a biography about George Washington and made an art project, which will be displayed in the hallway.  In the LMC this week, the students were able to extend their learning about this important president by watching a Brainpop Jr. video and playing with interactive website on the computers.  

LMC
During our LMC time, the students were able to learn more about the Winter Olympics by going on a QR code hunt with the iPads.  Each time they scanned a code, they were able to learn fun facts and see highlights about the different winter olympic events.

Me Bags
We continue to love learning about our friends!  We learned that Gracen loves dinosaurs, painting, and reading I Spy books!

We learned that Sonny loves sharks, Legos, and learning about weather, especially tornados!

We learned that Charlie loves soccer, Nerf guns, and reading Magic Tree House books!  Special thanks to Mrs. Pellum for being our Guest Reader and reading the sweet story, A Puppy for Annie.