Fun times in February!

Wow! What a quick week. Four days fly by. Nonetheless, there was a lot of learning going on in Room 201. The students enjoyed reading Rooster's Off to See the World, by Eric Carle. Judging by the students' reactions, I would not be surprised if they were begging to go to the library to get more of his books! I love his Grouchy Ladybug and the Very Hungry Caterpillar. Many of the students have been talking about going to the beautiful new library, so you may want to pick up a few Eric Carle titles on your next visit.

In math, we are in the early stages of addition. Currently, we are adding numbers together with picures and counting. Soon, we will be adding the addition and equals signs. The students are so excited about this new challenge. Their enthusiasm keeps growing!

Kindergarten Writers

The kindergarten students collaborated to write poems as a class. I am so impressed with their first poems! The students wanted to share them with everyone, so here they are...

Kindergarten

by "A" day kindergarten

Sometimes we color
Go to lunch
Go outside for recess
Hugging Miss Stepaniak
Fun
Teaching
Cool
Awesome

Learning

by "B" day kindergarten

We learn about animals
We learn about patterns
We learn about panda bears
We learn about books
We learn about shapes
We learn about poems
We learn about giraffes
We know about zebras
We learn about elephants
We read books
We learn together

The students really enjoyed listening to fun poems by a number of wonderful poets, including Jack Prelutsky. I love seeing their excitement about poetry!

Just a quick reminder: please fill out only the "from" portion of your child's Valentine's day cards. Thanks so much!

Welcome to the third quarter!

I've said it before and I will say it again: this year is passing at warp speed. I can't get over the fact that we are at the halfway point of the year. The curriculum will continue to get more challenging, to prepare the students for first grade.

In reading, we are focusing more on fluency--reading words and sentences correctly, quickly, and with understanding. The students have learned about setting, characters, and the plot of a story. We will continue to review these concepts, as they are essential for quality comprehension.

This week, we focused on the book "Farfallina and Marcel." With the book, we studied how animals change. Farfallina changed from a caterpillar to a butterfly and Marcel, the gosling, grew into a goose. The two became unlikely friends and looked out for one another.

In math, the students have enjoyed playing "Top It." We divide a deck of cards into 2 stacks--diamonds/hearts and spades/clubs. The students select a card from each stack and the child with the hightest numbered card "wins" the pair. It is a fun way to compare numbers--the students ask to play each day! We are also practicing counting back. This skill is essential for basic subtraction, which we will be starting soon!