ABC...

Wow!  I have a lot of catching up to do!  I am so sorry that I have not been blogging lately!  I am usually better about doing it on a weekly basis.  :)

I will begin by explaining how we have been learning the alphabet and letter sounds.  We follow the pacing guide of the "Words Their Way" curriculum.  We do not teach the letters in order from A-Z, we jump around a bit.  :)  For each letter we learn an action to go along with it to help us remember it's sound.  For example we say, "B-bounce-/b/" and we act like we are bouncing a basketball.  We have a nursery rhyme or poem that we read to go along with each letter and we find and highlight the letter of the day.  We make a circle map of pictures that begin with that sound and we learn a new song and dance too!  During writing we have been working on forming the letter of the day.  We also have a mystery animal that we work on too (I am sure you have all heard about that!)  It all makes for quite a busy morning!  

We are finishing up the consonants this week and will be moving on to short and long vowels next week!  

Getting to Know You...

I am excited to be doing the very first post of the 2013-2014 school year!  We have just completed our first full week of Kindergarten!  We have had a blast getting to know one another.  

On the very first day of school, we read "The Kissing Hand" by Audrey Penn.  It is a story about a raccoon named Chester who is nervous about his first day of school.  We could all relate to Chester when reading this book!  After we read the story Ms. Brennan told us that when she was up in the office, she heard that there was a raccoon loose in  the school!  We decided to go on a hunt for him and along the way we met several of our school's staff.  We met our principal and assistant principal.  We met the office staff, cafeteria ladies, custodians, librarian, music teacher, P.E. coach, art teacher, computer teacher, and many more.  We followed Chester's clues around the school but never did find him.  When we got back to our room, we made a first day of school kissing hand craft.  

On our first day all together, we reread "The Kissing Hand" and discussed our first day feelings.  We graphed our feelings and found out that most of us felt happy about our first day.  :)  

This past week, we began our study of the alphabet.  We focused on the letters Bb, Mm, Rr, Ss and their sounds.  Here are some pictures of us doing our first Words Their Way sort.  

We also read the book "Chrysanthemum" by Kevin Henkes.  It is a great book to read at the beginning of the school year.  It is about a little mouse who loves her name.  Later that afternoon, we began making our name collages that will hang outside our classroom door.  I will post the finished projects next time.  :)  

We had a great first full week and I am looking forward to many many more!  Here are a few more silly pictures from our first indoor rainy day recess.  Ms. Brennan was leading them in "The Tooty Ta" and they were making such silly faces, that I just had to snap a few pictures!