Last Day Before Break!

We celebrated the last day bofore Thanksgiving break with our own Stone Soup! The kids helped me make the soup this morning. Ask your child what we added!

We were excited when our soup was ready to eat! Everyone ate at least one bite! 

Thea loved her soup and roll!

Luke was very polite and cut his roll with his spoon :)

Kaden and Michael eating their soup.

Then they wanted a fun picture.

Rylan and Noah's mouths are full of yummy food! 

Look at these cute girls enjoying their soup!

David wanted a fun picture too!

Waa! Good soup!

Yum! Yum!

After soup, we had some time to draw a picture with sharpie and paint with water colors.

We Are Thankful

Today, we made our placemats to eat our stone soup on. We added what we are thankful for and we learned about a proper place setting.

Audrey, Hannah, and Brynne focus on drawing what they are thankful for.

Lydia, Chloe, and Kampbell are seriously working!

Look at Luke, Thea, and Asher go!

Look at what we are thankful for!

We also read 3 versions of Stone Soup to prepare us for our soup tomorrow! We learned that we feel good if we help out and we can all work together to make something great! 

We also watched the Stone Soup by Jon H Muth on the SMART board!

Reading Resources: Day 5

Reading Strategy: Oral Reading

It is vital that your child read and be read to often! To help your child become a better, it starts with reading to them. When they hear you read, they hear what a good reader sounds like.

We are so lucky to have access to RAZ Kids. They can listen to the book being read fluently and they can model that as they read the book themselves (and successfully, because they heard it first!). This program is also great because it allows your child to read at their own level.

Oral Reading Resource

Please click here for a wonderful handout that explains oral reading and how you can help your child!

Fun Ways to Practice Reading at Home

As you have seen in your child's homework folder, we focus a lot of attention on sight words. These words make up 70% of the words we read, so if we know those, reading is much easier! If drilling the words on your child's is not working, try one of these:

• Have your child write sight words with glitter glue
• Have your child write sight words with wikki stix
• Have your child write sight words with playdoh
• Have your child write sight words with puffy paint

Click here for more fun ways to help your child learn their sight words!

Reading Resources: Day 4

Reading Strategy: Summarizing

Being able to remember what we read is so important. We cannot just read the words on a page and not have a clue what we read. What fun is that? Summarizing is a skill we work on to help us remember the stories we read.

The 5 finger retell is a great summarizing technique.

You retell who the characters are, where the story took place (setting), and what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story. Try this with your child the next time you read a story together!

Comprehension Resource

Click here for another fabulous resource about comprehension. Summarizing is one skill that aids in comprehension. Take a look to find out more strategies to help your child become a reader that understands what they read!

Strategies for Language Support and Early Readers

• Play a game of I Spy. Find an object around you and tell your child "I spy something that starts with the letter ___." This is a great way to help your child practice their early reading skills in a fun way! 

• Do not shy away from big words! Use a variety of language around your child. They will pick up on the meaning from the context of your conversation. You can also talk about the meaning. The only way to know new words is to hear them! I always tell our class that they sound very fancy when they use the new words we learn- they love it!

Phonemic Awareness Resource

Click here for a great resource about phonemic awareness. We spend much of our year learning to hear the individual sounds in a word and work on being able to manipulate these sounds. Take a look!

Reading Resources: Day 3

Reading Strategy: Predicting 

Predicting is a great strategy to help your child read. If you are anything like me, you skim through a book you are about to read to see what is coming. This is what we want our kids to practice! We call this a picture walk in our reading group. We look at all of the pictures in the story and then make predictions about what the story will be about.

                      

Big 5 Reading Components Resource

Click here for a wonderful resource about the big five areas of reading that we will focus on this year. This gives a quick definition of each area and explains why they are so important. 

Websites for Reading

We have access to some wonderful reading websites. Here are 2:

• RAZ Kids is one I have talked to you about before. We use it every week at school, and you have access at home! Click here and then type our username: corvalliskb. Find your child's name and begin reading!

• ABC Mouse is a program that our class has access to for free. Check your email and child's backpack because I will be sending your username and password. Check it our here.

       

Reading Resources: Day 2

Reading Strategy: Questioning

One of the best things you can do with your child as you read together is to ask questions about the story. It will be extremely hard, but it is very important that you give your child wait time after you ask a question. We may feel awkward, but giving 30 seconds to 2 minutes of wait time is recommended. This gives your child time to figure out the answer. Give it a try and see what your child is capable of!

Another questioning strategy is asking a variety of questions. Here are some example questions for, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We want kids to be able to answer more than just the remembering questions!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Remembering:

1. What did the caterpillar eat?
2. What does a caterpillar turn into?
3. What happened to the caterpillar at the end of the story?

Understand:

1. Identify the steps that take place between the egg of a caterpillar hatching and the end result of a butterfly.
2. What was the problem in the book?
3. Tell in your own words the beginning of the book.
4. What did the title have to do with the book?

Apply:

1. Why did the caterpillar have a stomachache?
2. Name something else the caterpillar could have eaten?
3. Which does not belong caterpillar, butterfly, monkey?

Analyze:

1. Contrast a caterpillar with a butterfly.
2. Why do you think the caterpillar ate so much?
3. Do you think the caterpillar was beautiful at the end?

Evaluation:

1. What if the caterpillar did not wrap himself in a cocoon for protection while he transformed into a butterfly, what is a different way the caterpillar could be protected?
2. Which would you prefer to be a caterpillar or a butterfly?
3. Do you like to eat the foods the caterpillar ate?

Create:

1. Do you agree with the caterpillar eating so much food?

2. Is the title a good one or a poor one and why?

3. Did you like the way the story ended? Why or why not?

4. Tell about the most exciting part of the book.

Kindergarten Artists

We had a day filled with art today! I had to share some of the great work we did.

We started our morning with our PTA sponsored Artist in Residence with Mrs. King. We learned about Frida Kahlo and did art in her style. We got to draw a still life of a watermelon, orange, and bird. We then used oil pastels to add color.

This afternoon, we painted turkeys on paper plates with water colors. We got to experiment with lots of art mediums today!