Letters J - M!

This week in reading and writing, the letters we focused on were letters J - M in small groups. Our sight words for this week are still is and the which we do the songs for after our alphabet and letter songs for that day. I have been handing the different colored markers we use to color-code our sentences to the kids and let them circle or underline what they are supposed to for each color then explain why they are circling or underlining the letter, word, sentence or punctuation in that color. They are doing AMAZING! I haven't had to correct anyone since last Thursday!

Monday, the kids' stations were making a letter J jellyfish, doing their letter J book, writing station where they drew pictures that start with the /j/ sound and trying to write the word the best they could (which is something new that we are starting daily this week) and practicing handwriting at my table.

They wrote about one of the kids in the class whose name starts with "J" and used our word wall to write their name.

Tuesday's stations were about the letter Kk. The kids colored a picture of a kangaroo with a kite by looking at letters that told them which color to color, did their letter Kk book and finished up work, painted kites and read a new decodable at my table.

Wednesday the kids worked on the letter Ll. They made letter L lamps, ladybugs (where they had to count the number of spots they put on their wings and write the number), their letter Ll books, draw a picture of something that starts with the letter l and try to write the word, and at my table, we played our letter Ll card matching game and practiced writing Ll's.

She found the second set of ladybugs ...

and he couldn't believe it!

Thursday I had to go to a meeting and was only in the room for 1 station so I didn't get a chance to take pictures. The kids did stations with the letter Mm and made paper plate monkeys, read a new decodable, did a letter Mm letter search, and their letter Mm book.

Friday was a review day for letters H - M and our homecoming! Some of the kids wore mums and garters to school and we painted faces like football players before our mini pep rally in the gym that morning! In the afternoon, the kids wrote about whatever they wanted and tried to spell the words the best they could, painted Muleshoes and finished up any work they had not finished from throughout the week. If they finished all of their work, they got to either read books in our library or play with anything on the writing center shelf.

Happy Homecoming!

 

Using our word wall to help spell words in writing binders

 

Happy Homecoming from 16 awesome kindergartners! 

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Littering

This week in science, we are talking about how we can reduce different things we use every day, how we can reuse different items we use every day and how we can recycle items we use every day. Since we are going to talk about reducing, reusing, recycling and the problem of litter for the next 2 weeks, I will keep adding to this post.

Monday we watched half of our Reduce, Reuse, Recycle BrainPOP and the rest of it on Tuesday. The kids were saying so many good things each time we paused that we could only get through half ... but that was fine by me! I even brought to their attention something that I was wasting when I left a light on in our library center (hey, teachers make mistakes too and they LOVE to see that we aren't perfect:))


After our BrainPOP Tuesday, we went outside to see if there was any litter on our playground that we could pick up and sort into our recycle cans. We have one for paper, one for plastic and one for cans.

She found styrofoam so we took it inside and threw it in the trash since we can't recycle it.

Our second week of recycling and littering, we talked about the different recycling groups and sorted some recycling I have been collecting for the kids. Then, the best part of the lesson ... RECYCLING RACES!!!

Monday, we went outside (it was so nice we just did the whole lesson outside) and talked about all of the different recycling I had in my big trash bag and passed a few different things to each group. We put a dot on each of their items (green for green group, purple for purple group, etc.) so we knew which ones they belonged to. After we went over everything, we went around to the concrete part of the playground and lined up in our table groups. The first person in each group had to get a piece of recycling, run down to my end, put it in the right trash can and get back to tag the next person in line. When all of the groups were finished, we looked at all of the recycling to see if it was in the right bin. If a group had no mistakes, they won!

 The first time through, every group had at least 1 thing in the wrong bin (the applesauce lids were tricky!). So naturally ... we played again! :)

The second time we played, there were 2 groups that had no mistakes! If we get all of our math and social studies finished before lunch the rest of the week, we're playing again Friday! :)

Tuesday the kids worked in their science journals and wrote and drew about why littering is a problem and what we can do to solve the problem of littering. The big thing we came up with is that littering is bad for our planet and we can help solve littering by picking up trash that we see on the ground and telling people not to litter.

Wednesday the kids had a special guest come and race with them while they sorted their recycling ... it was Dr. Sheets, our Superintendent! They were so excited!