Hola Amigos!

Today was your child's first day of Spanish! They have been itching to learn new words ever since they met their Spanish teacher last week. Ask your child to see if they can remember their Spanish name, how to say "My name is ____," or say hello. The Spanish teacher will come to our classroom every Friday. They will also have a French teacher as well who will come to the classroom on Thursdays! Here are a few pictures from their Spanish class:

We have also been starting to recognize that letters are what make up words, building our stamina when we "picture read," and exploring our wonder table. On our wonder table were the flowers that were alive on the first day of school, but now they have lost color and are all dried up. The children observed the dead flowers with magnifying glasses and made observations to illustrate how the flowers looked before and what they looked like now.

The magnetic letters have been very popular with the children. They enjoy using the letters to make their friends names or words they can copy that are written around the room.

Look what Alexis did! She sounded out "Phonics" and then spelled it exactly how it sounds. Way to go Alexis! As far as Patrick goes--Watch out mom and dad, looks like he already has made up his mind on what college he will be attending! :)

As far as math goes, we have been learning about our birthdays, volume, and patterns. Linking volume and patterning at home would be a great way to show the children that math extends beyond the classroom!

Our week started with a visit from the Akron Zoo. The children loved to learn about animals in our neighborhoods, and to see ducks, turtles, and an owl up close and personal. The week ended with the class witnessing a butterfly hatching from its cacoon! Our friend Andrew brought in the cacoon to share with the class. Today it hatched right before our eyes! It was a beautiful monarch butterfly. It is observations like this that make me appreciate the little things in life! How amazing for the children, as well as myself, to experience something this beautiful. More amazement to come, I suppose! Have a great weekend!

** Please remember to put your child's snack in their book bags rather than their lunches so you make it easier for them in the morning!

The Second Week... A Success!

So the second week... a success! I cannot believe how much we have done this past week. Amazing! We have been working hard on our rhyming. The children love to make up silly rhymes ... the book "Sheep in a Jeep" helped us a lot. Did you see the rhyming book that your child made? They were all so proud of it... they couldn't wait to show you! We also have been looking at rhyming words within familiar poems, such as "Jack be Nimble" and "One, Two, Buckle my Shoe." The children were able to act out each poem, creating movements that made them enjoy the poems even more!

We have been exploring counting and numbers in math. Did your child tell you that "Zero the Hero" came to visit the classroom to teach them about the number zero? I don't have pictures, for Zero the Hero was me (shhhh... don't tell!) They absolutely loved it!

Families and exploring oneself has been a big topic this week. We talked about how each family is different, but all our families are "glued" together by the same thing: love. The children ended their week by making self-portraits of themselves. They were given a picture of themselves and their task was to draw exactly how they looked in the picture...everything from eyecolor to eyelashes! Take a look!

Hi, from Mr. Tom

Hey Gang!
This is Mr. Tom, your friendly neighborhood Music & Technology Teacher dropping in to say "hi!" We have lots of exciting things planned for music class as well as for technology class. In Technology, we have started learning how to interact with our SMART Board, and will spend the next few weeks going more in depth with it. See you all soon!

Hello to the families of our dear Kindergarteners! Thank you for stopping in and taking a look at our class blog. For the first week of Kindergarten, the students really worked hard getting to know their fellow classmates. We did many activities and games throughout the week to help the student's remember their friends names. They even have trouble remembering my name. They call me "teacher" if they ever cannot remember my name. It is quite funny!
The students started off their year by listening to the book "The Kissing Hand" by Audrey Penn. If you are not familiar with this book, it is about a raccoon who is going to school for the first time. His mother comforts him giving him a kiss on the palm of his hand and tells him to put his hand to his cheek if he ever feels lonely so he can feel the comfort of his mother. The students loved using paint to make their own kissing hand for their mothers while they are at school.
We have zoomed with full speed into our math lessons. The students were introduced to what a trapezoid, hexagon, and rhombus were and had fun making designs with the shape blocks. Check out the pictures!

I really have enjoyed getting to know your children during this first week. Their unique personalities and their eagerness to learn is what makes me get out of bed each morning. I love teaching! Please stop in and check out the blog on a regular basis, for it will be updated as much as possible.