6/18/2018 June 19th...THANK YOU!!!Hard to believe it is the last day of school. What a wonderful year it has been with this amazing group of kindergartners! We want to thank each of you for encouraging your children this year, reading with them, talking with them about school and friends, and supporting their growth in so many ways! Thank you for your partnership. It has been a privilege to work with your children each day this year, and the growth they've made is incredible. We are so proud of each of them!
A special thank you to everyone for the beautiful class gift! During Art Literacy, the kids made fingerprint trees for each of us. What a treasure and special memory! Thank you so much for these special gifts- we love them and they will be perfect to decorate our classrooms. 6/8/2018 June 8thPillows and Oceans!!You have to add 2 exclamation marks after these 2 fun things! Our week has been filled with special projects and exploring the ocean and the animals that live in it. To make our pillows this week, we started with ironing our paper coloring on to a piece of fabric to transfer their amazing pond animal drawings. Then with the help of some special volunteers (thank you Mrs. Rissmiller, Mrs. Williams, and Mrs. Ryan!!!), we were able to each sew and stuff our pillows one-on-one. It was a huge gift for these ladies to come and help each kindergartener watch what they drew on paper be put into a pillow to hug and love! We have been doing some fun ocean art projects and working on some ocean repetition fact books. We will keep working on these books and learning more about oceans and ocean animals next week! Beaver Dams
We wrapped up our unit on Pond Habitats prior to starting oceans. Here are some pictures of the kids building their dams using sticks and "mud" (Elmer's glue). We tested them out by pouring water on one side of the dam to see if it would stop the water. The kids loved this project and it was a fun way to wrap up our study of ponds and do some engineering! 5/31/2018 June 1st It is so hard to write June - my how time flies!!! We have been celebrating and learning so many things in kindergarten this year. The past few weeks we have been admiring how far this group has come and how much they have learned socially, emotionally, and academically. There is so much to celebrate!!! We just want to continue to say, "thank you" for sharing your kids with us each day. We feel so blessed to be part of their lives.
This week we got to release our butterflies! It was such a fun time watching and listening to the excitement, gasps, "I see the proboscis!", "There it goes. It can fly so fast!", "I see their antennas." and so many other amazing scientific observations. Many kids got to hold them or look at them up close. We hope you got to hear all about this exciting event. They did some amazing writing just after this event! So hard to believe just a few months ago they were working on forming letters and learning how to put sounds together to make words and they are now stringing sentences together to tell stories. And those pictures - how their illustrations have become more colorful and detailed! 5/23/2018 May 25th...The last couple weeks have been busy and fun, full of learning and excitement! We had our Croc Walk and everyone did an awesome job running and having lots of school spirit. Here are some things we're busy learning about... Science: We are continuing with our spring life science unit! We're learning about pond habitats and the plants and animals that live there, including frogs, dragonflies, and beavers. We also have caterpillars that have formed their chrysalides and we are anxiously awaiting the butterflies that will emerge within the next couple of weeks! We planted beans in baggies and they are hanging in our classroom window- it is so exciting to see the roots beginning to grow and we'll enjoy observing and continuing to watch the changes take place as these plants grow. Writing: We have finished our unit on persuasive and opinion writing, and are now going to be writing informative pieces. This week, we've enjoyed writing about what we are learning! The class is excited to work hard in their journals each day, writing and describing the things we are learning! We sure have a lot to write about...caterpillars, bean plants in our windows, ponds, life cycles, reading poetry, and more.
Reading: This week in reading, we began learning about reading poetry. We've practiced reading familiar poems and songs, and we practice new poems by 1. reading the words, 2. think about the poem, and 3. making our voice match the tone and rhythm of the poem. Upcoming Dates: Monday May 28: Memorial Day, No School Wednesday June 19: Last day of School 5/8/2018 May 11th...Toys At School: Please help your children remember that toys need to stay at home. This includes things like Pokemon cards and keychains that are not attached to backpacks. Some of the larger "stuffy" keychains that are not attached to backpacks are being brought out and played with. We do not want these to get lost or broken! If your child has a special keychain, please remind them to keep them attached to their backpack, or leave them at home. Thanks for your help! Reading: This week we began learning about what it means to be an avid reader of nonfiction books. We spied on ourselves as readers and discovered that we react to information we learn in nonfiction books, often by saying "Wow!" or asking questions. We learned that when reading and talking about nonfiction books, we often use "fancy topic words"- specific vocabulary about the topic we're reading about. Our study of nonfiction books continued this week into comparing books and identifying what is the same and what is different about two books. Math: In math, we've been working on building our addition fact fluency by doing "sprints". These are pages for students to practice finding all the combinations of a number quickly, find a missing addend, or complete addition facts. We will continue practicing with basic facts within ten to build automaticity. We are working on subtraction; how to cross off items to show they are taken away, and how to write subtraction equations. We have also been continuing our study of place value and counting large groups of objects by making groups of 10. Students are learning to recognize the number of ten's and one's in a two-digit number. Upcoming Dates:
May 18th: Croc Walk! Our class is wearing GREEN that day for school spirit! 5/4/2018 May 4thField Trip! We had a wonderful time at the Portland Children's Museum!!! It was a day filled with play of all kinds! We hope your child had a lot to say about their favorite areas at the museum along with the laughter and smiles they had! We also want to say a huge thank you to all of the parents who offered to volunteer and to those who volunteered. The kids had fun with you! Writing! We started writing about problems in our classroom this week. The kids identified a problem and then made a poster or a sign that helped others learn or identify the problem. Later, they learned how to add a reason for why it was a problem. By sharing more information to their posters or signs they were teaching others more about the problem. We were impressed by how observant and creative they were!! Life Science!
We started learning more about the world around us. This week, we observed how different animals eat. After making observations like scientists, the kids remembered animals they had seen eating from books, shows, or real life and made pictures of their own! Super cute work!!! We will keep studying insects and plants and how they interact and change within their environment. 4/26/2018 April 27thCubettos: This week we got to explore another new technology: Cubetto Robots! These robots have a simple coding system and a mat. The kids got to program directions for Cubetto to follow, to see if they could move it from the starting position on the mat, to another space of their choice. Kids worked in pairs to try out the different directions on the coding board (straight, left turn, and right turn) and watched as Cubetto followed their series of directions. Avid Readers: We continued to talk about habits of avid readers. Kids learned to have "reading playdates" with their reading partners; they chose to play school and do read alouds, or play games such as "sight word hunt" or "guess what's next". Here are some pictures from reading time this week! Upcoming Dates:
May 3rd: Field Trip to Portland Children's Museum 4/10/2018 April 13thThis week Nancy Ryles hosted the Kindergarten Orientation for next year's kindergarten class. The four current kindergarten classes performed for the future kindies and their parents at the beginning of the event. Ask your child to tell you about rehearsing and performing! Sink or Float? This week we studied water vehicles. We made rafts with craft sticks, and floated them, testing how many little bear counters we could get on a raft before it sunk. We also tested a variety of other materials to determine which things sink or float. It was a fun, busy week of exploration and learning. 4/4/2018 April 6thOzobots! The Beaverton School District's "Future Ready" team came to Nancy Ryles for IlluminatED day on Wednesday! Our class enjoyed a lesson learning all about Ozobot robots. These photos show a few of the Ozobots in action. These robots have color sensors that can see the dark lines kids draw, and then are able to follow those lines. We all learned so much about this technology! Transportation!We have continued to learn about how things go through books and activities! This week we focused on air transportation. We build and launched rockets and painted hot air balloons. We also continued to work on our transportation mural. Each child will create a mode of transportation for land, air, and water! Math!We have been working hard on writing "number sentences" or "equations" both forward and backwards. For example, 2+4=6 and 6=2+4. They have been paying careful attention to the symbols for + and = and making sure the sentence "makes sense". Keep encouraging your child to add numbers together and write equations to match! Avid Readers!This week we learned that we have grown into avid readers. Ask your child to tell you about what it means to be an avid reader (someone who reads a lot, doesn't want to stop, finds spots to read everywhere, and can identify with the characters' feelings in a story).
3/20/2018 March 23rd...Happy Spring Break!We wish you and your family a wonderful Spring Break! Here's the news from our week... Writing: Pattern Books We have started a new unit on writing patterned books! Ask your child to tell you all about the new books they are writing, and the new tub they are filling with their books. We have learned that some stories follow a pattern; we've read aloud several patterned texts and then come up with our own topics and ideas to write a pattern book about. Your children have worked hard to think of a topic, and then plan out their pages to make sure their ideas connect across the whole story. This unit is an excellent way to strengthen our sentence writing skills as well, and we'll put emphasis on spelling sight words correctly, using correct capitalization and punctuation, and neat handwriting. We will be writing pattern books over the next few weeks, and will continue to build our understanding of this type of story by learning about different types of patterns, and pattern stories that have surprise endings or a twist at the end. Science: Transportation Another favorite science unit is underway in our class! This week we introduced our unit on Transportation. We sorted photographs of various forms of transportation into land, air and water vehicles. We are reviewing the concepts of push and pull that we learned with our Lego Simple Machines unit earlier this year, and will continue to build upon this concept of force and motion, and how different vehicles move. Your kindergartener also learned how to draw land vehicles. We'll spend about a week on each of the three areas: land, air, and water. The culminating event of this unit is "Big Rig Day"! More info on this coming soon. Math: Ask your child to tell you about doing "sprints" in math! We have started a new form of fluency practice, where students work to find the missing number to complete a set, or have to add to a set to reach a certain total. This will support the development of fact fluency with addition and subtraction. We will be focusing on combinations within 10. UPCOMING EVENTS!
April 18th: Big Rig Day. Information coming home on April 2nd! |
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