December 8th Newsletter

Mrs. Burgin’s Kindergarten News

We have a lot of fun and exciting things coming up!! It’s hard to believe we only have one more week of school until Christmas break!

Literacy Focus for Next Week:
· 4 W’s ( Who, what, where, when)
· Elements in a story-characters, setting, and events
· Concepts about print
Writing:
· Starting sentences with a capital letter
· Writing complete sentences
· Stretching words to hear sounds
Phonics:
· Letter Ii
Sight Words:
· up
Math Focus for Next Week:
· Place value
· Using ten frames to count
Upcoming Events and Dates:
Don’t forget we are making gingerbread houses tomorrow at 8:20! We would love to have your help so please join us if you would like!
Grandparent’s luncheon is Tuesday December 13th at 10:30.
Christmas Party is Wednesday December 14th at 1:00. If you would like to bring snacks, drinks, plates, napkins, cups, etc please let me know! We are planning on playing fun games and opening stockings during our party!
Polar Express day is Friday December 16th. Students can wear their pajamas to school!

Thanks for all you do!

The Elves and the Shoemaker

We have been learning how to measure things this week for Math. I found several fun Smart Board activities to help teach my students how to measure things!

Here they had to count how many cubes tall the giraffe was

Here they had to line up the objects from tallest to shortest

We are definitely enjoying our new Smart Board!

For Literacy today, we read The Elves and the Shoemaker.

And then we discussed the characters, setting, and events

After retelling the story we finished our Community Helpers anchor chart.

For writing today the students had to come up with an elf name and job and write two sentences about it. They did such a good job!! This has been their best writing all year! Here are some examples:

"My elf's name is Santa. And his job is give toys to boys girls."

"My elf's name is Pointen. My elf makes shoes."

"My elf's name is bubble. My elf's job is wrap new shoes."

"My elf's name is Sarah Murphy. My elf helps santa. I have a Christmas tree with decorations. I like to play in the snow. I love you."

I so excited to see them writing on their own!

Update!

We finished up last week by reading Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree! This was my first time to read this book and I loved it!

We created a 5 W's anchor chart to practice retelling the story.

So far this week, we have read Jobs Around My Neighborhood

and Officer Buckle and Gloria

After reading Jobs Around My Neighborhood, we discussed what community helpers are and identified some community helpers in our neighborhood. Later, we will discuss community helpers in our school and in the North Pole!

We created another 4 W's chart to retell Officer Buckle and Gloria. The students learned all about safety and who in our school and community help keep us safe.

We have practiced a lot of writing this week!

Here are some writing examples from Parent Night:

Parents, thank you so much for helping your children write! They did a great job!

My favorite activity this week would have to be the job applications my students filled out for Rudolph's position. Rudolph decided to retire this year so my students pretended to be a reindeer and filled out a job application for his position. They had to write why they thought they would be a good reindeer.

So cute!

Here are some new centers for this week:

Counting syllables and sorting pictures according to the number of syllables each picture has.

I have several of these cards posted around the room for our Write the Room center.

The students have to find these cards and fill out the page below:

Here they have to read the number on the page and decorate the gingerbread house using that many pieces of candy

Here they must find the correct number, ten frame and picture that match.

This is our shared reading for the week. Such a cute poem!

And our updated Christmas tree with poinsettias!

These are the blogs I got my centers and reindeer application from:

Little Miss Kindergarten

Lil Country Kindergarten

Pre Kinders

And the Stockings Were Hung...

Our stockings are hung and ready to be filled!! Parents, you should have gotten a letter today about stuffing our stockings. Each child needs to bring 19 items of something small to put in our stockings! Your letter should say what day your child is to bring their items.

I have some examples of our Christmas writing so far this week:

{I am going to make a gingerbread house.}

{I like to open presents in front of my family.}

I love to see how well they are writing and sounding out their words!!

Today we read The Legend of the Poinsetta and discussed Christmas in Mexico! We had a great time learning Christmas traditions in Mexico, learning Spanish words and singing Feliz Navidad!

Before reading the book, I had the students draw a picture of what they thought the book would be about and then they shared with the class their predictions. They always do such a great job!!

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas!

So far this week.....

We read A boy, a dog, and a frog by Mercer Mayer

This is a picture book. We had a great time doing a picture walk and making up our own story! The story the kids came up with is below!

We also read Mooseltoe by Margie Palatini

After reading this book, we discussed the 5 W's: Who, What, Where, When, and Why

We had a great time talking about the different things Moose did to get ready for Christmas and then the kids had the opportunity to discuss what they do to get ready for Christmas!

Today we read There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell by Lucille Colandro

After reading this adorable book, we completed our story map! The kids did a great job retelling the story!

We have read several books like this one. For example, we have read There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat, and There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves. We used our Text to Text Connections chart to compare two of the books.

We completed a brainstorming chart about Christmas! For the next few weeks, my students will be writing sentences about these specific topics!

We now have a Smart Board!!! I am sooooo excited about this new piece of technology! Below is an example of how I am going to do attendance for the month of December using the Smart Board!

Here are some of our centers this week:

{Students will sort light bulbs by size}

{I have several Christmas puzzles for the kids to do}

{Christmas Pattern Block Mats that I got from here}

{Students will practice re-reading our Shared Reading for the week....Christmas Lights and they will practice reading their color words}

{Pinch the correct number...Students will count the objects and pinch the correct number}

All of my other center ideas came from 2 Teaching Mommies blog!

Here is a peak at our Christmas tree!! We had so much fun today listening to Christmas music and making our Fruit Loop garland!

So sorry for the very long post, but I had a lot of catching up to do!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Love,

The Burgins

Parent Night Correction

Parents, I noticed on my last newsletter that I had the date for Parent Night as November 25. It is November 29th! I hope to see you all there and I hope you have a great Thanksgiving!!

November 18th Newsletter

Mrs. Burgin’s Kindergarten News

Literacy Focus for Next Week:
· Illustrations match words in a book
· Elements in a story-characters, setting, and events
· Pictures vs. text
Writing:
· Starting sentences with a capital letter
· Writing complete sentences
· Stretching words to hear sounds
Phonics:
· Letter Tt
Sight Words:
· to, the
Math Focus for Next Week:
· Counting to 50
· Comparing numbers 11-17
· Comparing objects in a line
Upcoming Events and Dates:
· Thanksgiving Feast- We will have our annual Kindergarten Thanksgiving Feast on Friday November 18th at 2:15.
· Thanksgiving Break – We will be dismissed from school for Thanksgiving break November 21-25.
· Kindergarten Parent Night is Tuesday, November 25th from 6:00-7:00 p.m. in the Cafeteria.
· I am sending home book orders today! These will make great Christmas gifts!!

Thanks for all you do and I hope you have a great Thanksgiving!

A Plump and Perky Turkey

Yesterday we read A Plump and Perky Turkey. My kids loved it!

{We discussed some other words to use besides plump}

{We discussed the 5 W questions: Who, What, Where, When, and Why to retell the story}

{Today the students practiced sorting picture cards by their beginning sounds...so proud of how well they can do this!}

And here is a little glimpse of what you will see Friday for our Thanksgiving Feast!

I hope to see you at our Feast!