Spring is finally here! The kindergarteners were excited to finally be able to shed those winter coats and enjoy the warmer temperatures. It is so hard to believe that our year is almost over! I am so proud of the progress each student has made and can't wait to see what our last month of school will bring!
Reading Workshop
Students have been loving our poetry unit! We have been predicting and making connections while reading poems. We have also learned how poems may look different and how poets use different features, such as repeating words, rhyme, alliteration, and onomatopoeia to add different sounds to the poem. Ask your kindergartener to share an example of one of these fun features!
Students also practiced using the visualizing strategy. By using their senses to create a picture in their mind, students are able to better understand a poem. We read the fun poem, "Kids Rule" and students had to draw pictures showing what they visualized. Then, we checked to see how close their pictures were to the author's illustrations.
Writing Workshop
I am so impressed with the progress I am seeing from each of the kindergarten authors! During writing workshop, students are continuing to work hard on writing two sentences that have the proper spacing, words with beginning, middle, and ending sounds, a capital letter to start, and a period at the end.
We also used what we learned from our poetry unit to write an acrostic poem about spring! These poets came up with some great ideas to describe this season.
Math
We recently finished up Chapter 8, which focused on numbers up to 100. During this chapter, we used the 100 chart to help build our number sense by looking at numbers before and after a given number, as well as looking at patterns we see within the chart. Your child recently brought a 100 chart home. This is a great tool to use to help students feel more comfortable reading, writing, and understanding numbers. We also used cubes to help represent groups of tens and ones to help represent these two-digit numbers.
A Trip to Japan
We were excited to welcome Saya back from her Japan trip! She made an amazing poster and brought in a few items to share all about her trip. The students loved learning more about Japan!
Guest Reader
Thank you to Vicki's mom for coming in to read the book, What Do You Do With an Idea? This was such a great book to help us remember to use our imaginations and creativity!
Kindergarten Musical
You should have received several notes in your child's Take Home folder about our Kindergarten Musical coming up this Friday, May 4. Students should arrive at school at their normal time, as they will have a rehearsal before the main performance. The musical will begin in the gym at 10:25. All parents, grandparents, loved ones, and younger siblings are invited to watch. Please remember that older siblings who attend Dryden will not be dismissed from class to watch the program. After the performance, there will be light refreshments and then you are welcome to come back to the classroom. The morning ends at 11:50, however we are usually finished around 11:30. You are welcome to take your child home early after signing out at the front office.
Recess Fun!
The kindergarteners worked so hard to fill out behavior "jar" by receiving compliments in the classroom and their specials classes when they were quiet in the hallway, good listeners, followed directions, and were good friends to their classmates. As a reward, we had an extra recess and enjoyed the beautiful spring weather!
