A Peek At Our Week!

 I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Please enjoy a few updates from our classroom below!

mportant Dates:

February 14th:

Valentines Day

(See below for details)

February 20th:

February Vacation Begins

Announcements:

Valentine's Day 💓

A friendly reminder that we will be celebrating Valentine's Day in our classroom this Tuesday, February 14th. Please do not send valentines containing food or candy to school, and have your child remember to include all of their classmates (20 students). We don't want any broken hearts! Thank You!

Kindness Week

In the week ahead Boyden School will be observing kindness week. Each day we will participate in a different kindness themed activity, and discuss why kindness is so important in our school and community. Below is a complete list of each day's events. Please note that on Friday, February 17th we will be recognizing Pink Shirt Day. All students are asked to wear something pink on this day. Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions!

Monday - Kindness to Ourselves: Kindness is like a sunny day: Wear bright colors!

Tuesday - Kindness to Peers/Friends: Compliment circle at Morning Meeting

Wednesday - Kindness in our School: Each class adopts a classroom and play games, read, or do a craft together

Thursday - Kindness to our Community: Kindness Card Day (write cards for people in the community: teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, etc)

*We will complete our cards at school. No need to do anything at home!

Friday - Kindness to our World: Door decorating walk-through, kindness pledge
Pink Shirt Day: Wear pink to stomp out bullying and to promote kindness and empathy

Curriculum Update:

Fundations

Last week in Fundations we practiced reading the sight word so. We also continued to practice tapping and/or sliding CVC words such as hat, mug, and pot, and also built CVC words using magnetic letters.

The students above work hard to highlight sight/"trick" words in a 100th day of school reading passage. This passage also contains a large number of CVC words which provided the class with the opportunity to practice their tapping/sliding skills!

Math

Last week in math our lessons focused on money! While identfying and counting coins is not typically part of the Kindergarten curriculum, the Bridges Program aknowledges that money is often an engaging topic for students and helps provide young children with practice counting by ones and fives. The class enjoyed playing many money themed games including Beat You to 20 cents which is pictured below. We also did many counting actvities in honor of the 100th day of school.

Reader's Workshop

The children were busy reading from their book bags again last week as we completed our unit on reading superpowers! To end the unit, the students enjoyed some partner reading where they were able to show their peer their favorite reading super powers in action. In the week ahead we will have a super power celebration and embrace all we have learned throughout this very important unit!

Literacy Centers

Literacy centers were in full swing last week, and the students really enjoyed working independently as they practiced the sight word so, listened to a 100th day themed story, and practiced reading and writing words in the "ap" word family. Literacy centers have quickly become one of our favorite parts of the day!

Thanks so much for taking a peek at our week! Please check back soon to watch us learn, grow, and play in the wonderful world that is K!

A Peek At Our Week!

 I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and stayed safe and warm during Saturday's record cold temperatures! The week ahead is sure to be a busy and exciting one. Please review the upcoming dates and announcements, as well as enjoy a few updates from Room 115!

Important Dates:

February 6th:

The 100th Day of School!

February 14th:

Valentines Day

(See below for details)

February 10th:

Early Release

Report Cards Available on Aspen/X2

February 20th:

February Vacation Begins

Announcements:

The 100th Day of School!

A friendly reminder that the 100th day of school is on Monday, February 6th (tomorrow!). Please be sure to have your child bring their t-shirt of 100 things to school if they have not done so already. I am looking forward to a fun and exciting fashion show!

Valentine's Day

Our class will be celebrating Valentines Day on Tuesday, February 14th! As part of our celebration we will be exchanging valentines. Please click here for some helpful hints and tips for making our celebration an enjoyable one for your child. Please note food and candy is not allowed. A hard copy of this notice will be sent home this week (I promise!). 

Become Your Dreams: History of Hip Hop Dance

A big Boyden thank you to the Hip Hop dance company, Ilstyle and Peace, who presented a wonderful performance on Friday! Their presentation celebrated the art and movement of hip hop and included a blend of locking, breaking, popping, tap, and house dancing, vocal percussions, DJing, and modern and traditional dance forms. We really enjoyed not only their dancing, but also learning about the origins of these different forms of dance.

Many volunteers from our class also enjoyed displaying their own unique dance moves!

Extra kudos to Mrs. Dacko who was a brave teacher volunteer!

Curriculum Update:

Fundations

Last week in Fundations we practiced reading the sight word go. We also continued to practice tapping or sliding CVC words such as hat, mug, and pot. 

In honor of Groundhog Day we played a game called "Where's the Groundhog?". To play, the students had to tap and/or slide and read a CVC word. That word was then lifted up to see if the groundhog was hiding underneath. This was a new way to practice reading CVC words and the class really seemed to enjoy it! This fun and versatile activity can also be played to practice a wide variety of skills including sight words and numbers!

Math

In math the class continued to compare lengths and measure with nonstandard units such as cubes and popsicle sticks. We discover that is takes way more unifix cubes than popsicle sticks when measuring the length of our classroom rug! It took less than 20 popsicle sticks but more than 100 unifix cubes to get the job done!😮

The class also enjoyed completing a Write the Room activity where they had to find three objects that were shorter and three objects that were longer than a school tool (marker, glue stick, pair of scissors, etc.) that was assigned to their table group. Math is always much more fun when we are up and moving!

Reader's Workshop

Last week in Reader's Workshop the students continued to apply their reading superpowers to decodable texts. They were introduced to a new superpower known as "word part power". This superpower encourages the children to look for small sight words such as it, in, and at inside of the bigger words that they encounter in texts. They can use their knoweldge of that small word to help them read the larger word. For example, the little word "an" can help a child when reading the word "fan". In our class we have also been calling this superpower "Chunky Monkey" as the children as looking for "chunks" of the word that they know.

The class also enjoyed completing a groundhog themed activity where they read CVC words and wrote them under the corresponding picture. This was one of our brand new reading centers that the children participated in last week!

Writer's Workshop

The personal narrative or true story writing continued in Writer's Workshop. Last week our lesson's focused on editing our work to make it the best it can be. The students enjoyed using highlighters to add missing punctuation and capital letters at the beginning of their sentences. The highlighters also helped us show finger spaces and add even more letters to our words.

Thanks so much for taking a peek at our week! Please check back soon to watch us learn, grow, and play in the wonderful world that is K!

A Peek At Our Week!

 I hope everyone had a great weekend! There are many fun and exciting events coming up in the weeks ahead. Please see the announcements section below for some important details. 😊

Important Dates:

February 5th:

The 100th Day of School!

February 14th:

Valentines Day

(See below for details)

February 9th:

Early Release

Report Cards Available on Aspen/X2

February 19th-22nd

No School

February Vacation

Announcements:

The 100th Day of School! 

The 100th day of school will fall on Monday, February 5th. To celebrate, our class will be having a t-shirt fashion show! Please refer to the notice that was sent home with your child last week for specific details. You can also click here to view the notice. In need of an idea? Try one of these!

*Although the notice asks your child to bring their t-shirt to school by Friday, February 2nd, if it's easier for them to wear it to school on Monday the 5th that's fine with me! Please don't hesitate to let me know if you need help purchasing a plain t-shirt. A shirt you already have around the house is ok too!

Valentine's Day 💘

Our class will be celebrating Valentines Day on Wednesday, February 14th! As part of our celebration we will be exchanging valentines. Please click here for some helpful hints and tips for making our celebration an enjoyable one for your child. Please note food and candy is not allowed. A hard copy of this notice will be sent home this week. 

Star Student ⭐

Congratulations to Drew who was our Star Student last week! We look forward to learning about, and celebrating another friend from our class in the week ahead!

Awesome 80s Day!

Curriculum Update:

Fundations

Last week in Fundations we practiced reading the sight word has. We also continued to practice tapping or sliding CVC words such as hat, mug, and pot. Lastly, we reviewed how to write the uppercase letters O-Z. In the week ahead we will continue to practice CVC words and review the parts, and how to write a sentence.

The students above fist bump last week's sight word (and a review word) on their way out of the classroom. This is a fun and easy way to provide more exposure and practice to our weekly sight words. If you would like some fist bump cards to use at home please don't hesitate to let me know. I am more than happy to provide them!

Last week we added a sight word search to our practice routine. The children had a great time looking for the word "has"and seeing how many times they could find it.

Math

In math we continue to learn about measurement using nonstandard units! A highlight of our week was measuring the length of our foot using pasta, paper clips, unifix cubes, and plastic pennies!

Reader's Workshop

In Reader's Workshop we continue to apply our reading superpowers to decodable texts. Last week we also explored making connections with the main character of the story we are reading, and using our voices to reflect how the character is feeling.

Writer's Workshop

In Writer's Workshop the children are still working on their personal narrative/true stories. We are spending more time on stretching out the sounds we hear in words, and writing as many sounds (including vowels!) as we can. 

Thanks so much for taking a peek at our week! Please check back soon to watch us learn, grow, and play in the wonderful world that is K! 🍎📖🚌