February 1st - 5th:

This week we are starting a new theme called "Let's Play". Your child is reading Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo by Kevin Lewis and Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner. We will stretch our imagination as we read and talk about these stories.

Our new sight words are: one and see

Us the word one in a sentence with your child----An example is:

Our family has one __________. (fill in the blank)

Or if you are in the car say:

I see one ___________. (fill in the blank)

In Math we will continue working on numbers 10 - 30. Have you child show you how high they can count. Then practice counting backwards from 30.

This week Ena's mom will come into our classroom and present the first two pieces of art in the Adventures in Art Program. This program is provided by our PTA. The class will have the opportunity to learn about great works of art that are displayed at the Art Institute. After the art pieces are discussed, the student will create their own artwork!

Today we worked in centers and.....WOW! What a great job K - 5 did!

You have to take a look!

On Wednesdays, Mrs. Stahlke volunteers in our classroom. We are so lucky to have her come in! She helped some of the students build short o words.

Bryce is reading!

Jake and Kalkidan are in the Game Center.

Grace and Eathon are working in the Math Center. They are working on numbers 10 - 30.

Here is Jesse in the Writing Center. He is working on writing sight word sentences!

Lance reading

This week, we will be rereading stories from the theme “Whatever the Weather”. Each day we talk about the weather and we will discuss seasonal changes.

Our sight words this week are: you and look

Look at you!

To help your child learn these sight words, you can do these activities at home:

* Read each word together as your child point to it.

(You can use the sight word flash card I gave each student at Christmas.)

* Give your child a clue about each work.

For example, say “This word rhymes with book.”

Then have your child point to and read the word.

* Ask your child to read you or look. Then together, think of rhyming words.

In Math we will be working with “Zero the Hero” on numbers from 10 – 30. We will be putting the number in order from 1 to 30 and then counting and arranging them backwards. At the end of the week your child will bring “Zero” home. Practice putting the numbers in order at home, too! Have your child practice writing each number. First, have them write the numbers in order and then randomly say any number between 1 and 30. Have your child write that number.

On Thursday, we go on our Field Trip to Stages Theater to see "The Snowy Day"!

We will be reading Winter Lullaby by Barbara Seuling and Bear Snores on by Karma Wilson. The students will be learning about how the land, plants, and animals change for colder winter weather.

Our Sight Words are: where and do. We will be using and writing these words in sentences all week long. Where are we going today? Where will you line up? Where will we go? What will we do? Do you like cats? Where do you line up for the bus?

Our new vocabulary words are: arrives, creep, nestle, slumbering, delight, and blustery.

We will be working in our Literacy Centers, too. The students will be listening and then talking about a story. They will be reading, then writing and rereading sight word sentences. The students will be focusing on writing their letters from the sky down to the ground. Also they will be trying to space their words in a sentence and end it with the right punctuation mark. They will be working on memorizing the words "where" and "do". In the Letters and Sounds Center they will be building and writing words with the short i sound. I will be working with small groups using our decodable books.

In math we will be starting on Chapter 6: Numbers 10 - 30. The students will be learning how to group numbers using ten-frames.

The play that the kindergarteners will be seeing on Jan. 28th, at Stages Theater, is called, "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats. Below is a review I found online. We will be reading the book in class.

The Snowy Day


Story & Illustrations by Ezra Jack Keats

Review by: Christina Mark

This is a story about a small boy named Peter who has one magical day playing in the snow. The reader follows Peter as he walks through the snow, leaving footprints behind as he walks with his toes pointed in and then again with them pointed out. He witnesses a snowball fight, which he becomes a victim of, and then proceeds to make snow angels and a snowman. He then slides down a hill of snow and pockets some of the snow as a souvenir before heading into his warm house.
 This book really captures the innocence of children and their wonderment of the world around them. It's hard to read this book without conjuring up images from your own childhood. The illustrations are truly captivating with each page displaying beautiful artwork.
 This book, although based on such a simple concept, really epitomizes just what it is to be a child exploring the beauty of nature. I think children really enjoy this book because they ARE Peter. They would do everything that we see Peter do, from whacking a tree with a stick to release the snow from its branches, to building a happy, smiling snowman.

This week flew by! Today the class wrote sentences, talked about spacing their words in the sentences, discussed different punctuation marks to use, worked more on symmetry and fractions and learned the difference between a non-fiction and a fiction book.

We looked at the following website to work on fractions:

http://kids.aol.com/KOL/2/HomeworkHelp/archive/homework-help-jr-math-fractions

(You can copy and paste this website to your google bar to go there)

Then go down to "Pizza Fractions" and click on that.

You can work on fractions at home when you are cooking, baking or eating a pizza with you child! Have fun with math!

In Math, the students had fun designing geometric shape using tooth picks and marshmallows! Try it at home!

Kalkidan is creating his geometric shape!

Pastries With Parents: Sam, Owen and Connor enjoyed pastries with their parents!
Here's Owen and his mom.

Here's Sam and his mom.

Here's Connor and his family.

Today, K-5 played a new game: Snowman Meltdown! It is a fun way for the students to learn their sight words. K-5 had a great time!

Today K-5 learned a little more about symmetry! We used a program on my computer to show symmetry. Look at Dakota, Anida, Hannah and Laniah! If you put a line right down the middle of each picture, each side is the same!

This week we are starting a new theme: Theme 5: Whatever the Weather. We will be reading "What Will the Weather Be like Today?" and "When a Storm Comes Up". The students will be learning about different kinds of weather in these books.

We will be learning and writing the letters Bb and Kk.

High Frequency Words: me, for. Work at home with your child by using the words in sentences. Also, you can use the sight words I gave the students at Christmas! Put the sight words, me and for, on your refrigerator. Have them read them and try to think of words that rhyme with them each day.

The students will learn the vocabulary words: prefer, fading, warn, whirl, perhaps, property.

I will be asking the students:

*Show me which you prefer - to whirl or to stand still

*Tell how a meteorologist might warn us about the weather

*Tell about something that perhaps might fade in the sun.

*Tell about your property. (Your backpack, your toys, the things in your room)

In math we will be finishing up Chapter 5-Geometry and Fractions. We will be starting on Chapter 6 at the end of the week - Numbers 10 - 30. The students will be learning how to group numbers using ten-frames.

Pennies for Patients Activities:

K-5 is bringing so many pennies in! We watched a power point presentation that was made by Abby Thoma's parents that explained why Shirley Hills is raising money for Leukemia. Abby is a fourth grader her at Shirley Hills. She has been cancer free since Kindergarten.

A lot of us wore Jerseys last Friday!

Jan. 11-15 is Bring a coin in every day!

On Monday - bring in a penny

On Tuesday - bring in a nickel

On Wednesday - bring in a dime

On Thursday - bring in a quarter

On Friday bring in a dollar to wear a hat for "Hats off for Leukemia!"

Jan. 19-22 - Cookies for a Cause! On Friday students can bring money in to buy frosted

cookies. There will be other great things to buy too!

Jan. 25-28 - Cozy Up for a Good Cause! On Thursday students can bring in a dollar and wear their pajamas or cozy clothes.

We also retook a math challenge worksheet. The students used “offices” for privacy and listened to me say each question. We tried this on Thursday and we did a “redo” on Friday. I had some help from Lance at the overhead. Thank you, Lance!

On Friday, everyone in K-5 shared something that was special to each boy and girl. They either brought in something or shared a story about someone special. Each student listened and showed respect as everyone took a turn. Here is Hannah. Maxx and Lance are listening to Jake tell a story. Ena is showing two special things!

Welcome back! I hope you had a wonderful holiday and a great New Year! I want to thank you all for the wonderful gifts you gave me. Thank you all very, very much!

K - 5 has been waiting for the first day of winter. We start each day with our morning meeting and go through the calendar. We say the day, month, year and season. The first day of the winter season is the day of the year when the Sun is farthest south (on December 21st). On Monday, Jan. 4th the students are gong to be so excited to say it is Winter! They have all been saying, "It feels like Winter, but not yet!" Well, it definitely feels and is winter!

This week will be a good week to review some things we learned before the holiday break.
We will review our sight words: like, come, to, here, this, he, a, I, my, the and go.

We will work on word building using the phonograms: -it and -ip and we will listen and try to isolate the middle sound in words.

We will reread our Big Book Stories and work on comprehension using graphic organizers to remember what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the stories.

We will also review our vocabulary words: squabble, anxious, mischief, huddle, uproar, moans, tend, productive, soggy, idle, wobble and scrumptious.

On Tuesday and Thursday we will be working in our Literacy Centers.

Merry Christmas from Jolly Old England! The students are having fun going to the different classrooms and learning about how other countries celebrate the Christmas Holiday. K - 5 learned all about England today. Ask them what the children in England do after they write Father Christmas a letter!

We all sat around the fireplace in our classroom and learned about England's traditions. Then the students made stocking! Glitter was everywhere! Fun, fun, fun! Ms. Rasicot hung the stocking by the fireplace with care, in hope that Father Christmas soon will be here!

K -5 Parents,
Next week (Dec. 14-18th) the students will be taking their "passports" and traveling around the world (actually just next door to the other kindergarten classrooms) and learning from the other kindergarten teachers about holidays around the world. The students will rotate through the different countries. They will learn how England, Germany, Holland, Israel, Japan, Mexico and Sweden celebrate the holiday season. The students love learning about other cultures and they will get to see a different classroom each day.

Here are the students hard at work in their stations!

I hope everyone stayed warm this weekend. Winter is here!
Our theme is "On the Farm"
This week K - 5 will be learning the letters Gg and Ff.
Our sight words are: here and this
We will be using the vocabulary words anxious, huddle, moans, productive, idle and scrumptious as much as we can. The students hear their vocabulary words in each week's big books and library books. We go over each word and I am amazed at how the class remembers the words meanings. K - 5 does a great job on their vocabulary words!

We will be working in our stations/centers this week. The students are learning how to work independently. Once the students can work independently, I can work with small groups of students who are working on the same skills and meet their needs that way.

We will also be listening for the final sound in a word, making more lists and talk about the beginning, middle and end of a story.

We just started Chapter 5 in Math, so we will continue talking about geometric shapes.

Hi everyone!
This week has flown by! We have been working in our stations and the students are getting better and better. Ena, Eathon, Dakota and Karina are in the Word Work Station. In this station the students practice their sight words. They are playing the Pancake Flip Game.

Maxx, Hannah, and Sam are in the Reading Station. They are creating their own book covers for the book, "Down on the Farm".

Darren and Jesse worked in the Letter and Sound Center. They had to put the letter puzzle pieces together.

Connor, Laniah, Lance and Anida worked in the Listening Center. They followed along as the book was being read to them for the CD Player.

Ingrid and Bryce are working in the Letter Center too!

Kalkidan, Grace, Owen and Jake worked in the Writing Center. Here they had to write a farm animals name and draw it. We will make these into our Animal Mobiles!

Welcome back to school! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday!

This week we start a new theme in Language Arts: On the Farm
We will be making animal mobiles, singing songs, learning about the vowel "Ii", listening for the sound at the beginning of a word, learning the new sight word - "come" and much more.

Our new vocabulary words are: squabble, mischief, uproar, tend, soggy and wobble

Before Thanksgiving K-5 was practicing rotating through our reading stations. We need a little more practice but we had a good start. We will be working in stations on Tuesday and Thursday. There is a Listening Station, Reading Station, Word Work Station, Writing Station and a Letter and Sounds Station.

We will still be reviewing and writing numbers 1 - 10, but we will also be starting Chapter 5: Geometric Shapes

This week will be a short one! We have school on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. K-5 will be learning about their stations. We will be learning what we do in each station and how to rotate. We also will be reviewing our letters, sight words and vocabulary words.

Please remind your child to bring back their library books so they can check out a new one for the long holiday weekend!

Thank you all for coming to your child's conference. I enjoyed each one!

The students had some fun making a turkey on Friday. They traced their foot for the turkey's body and their hands for the turkey's feathers.

Today, our class grew! Laniah Jenkins joined our class. Now the class has 13 boys and 7 girls! I was so proud of everyone. They made Laniah feel right at home. What a great class!

****Important Message*******

Parents, tomorrow I will be putting your child's report card in their backpacks. Please look for it. I am sending it home so you have a change to look at it before conferences. See you on Thursday!

This week we are reviewing all the letters and sounds we have learned: a, m, n, p, r, s, and t. We will be working on word blending and making word family books.
Our new sight word is "he".
We will also continue to learn about a story's characters, writing captions and summarizing a story.
We will review our vocabulary words this week too:
proceed, announced, gasped, sly, imaginary, active, apparel, voyage, whimper, precisely, gigantic, glum, complained
In Math we will be finishing Chapter 4: We will be practicing writing our numbers in order and making are own number lines
In Social Studies we will be talking about what makes families special.

Conference are this Thursday, November 19th. Please call if you don't remember what time your conference is. Each conference is 20 minutes. While you are waitIng you can watch a power point show of all the pictures I have taken this fall. I will do my best to keep on schedule.

November 11, 2009

Please look in your child's Friday Folder on Thursday for a reminder of when your conference is on Thursday, November 19th.

Happy Monday to everyone! Monday always seem to go by so fast. We started off the day by learning about the letter "Dd". The class helped write a long list of words that start with the letter "Dd". Ask you child to tell you what sound the letter makes. The class took turns writing the letter and forming the letter "Dd" with play dough. Then we went to computer and worked on the alphabet.

We also talked about numbers on a number line. During transitions, I have been asking the students math questions. Try some at home too. Say, "If you start on the number 7 and take two away, how many do you have left?" We will be working more on the number line this week. We will be practicing writing numbers 0 -10 too.

At the end of the day we went to the library. Please remind you child to bring their library book back so they can check out a new one each week.

This weeks sight word is "like". We will be writing and drawing the things we like. We will be trying to use as many sight words as we can in our sentences. I like to ........ I like my ........ I like to go to the .........

Grandfriend's Day was wonderful!  The class was very excited to see all of their grandfriends.  We made turkeys with our grandfriends and then walked down to perform in the music room.  Three Kindergarten classes performed.  Here's a picture of K-5 singing.

This week we start a new theme in Language Arts: Friends at School. We will be making a classroom book about our friends at school.

Also, instead of focusing on a new letter, the students will be learning phonograms: “at”, "am" and “an”. The class has been working on rhyming and has been doing great! They will use rhyming and letter sounds to help them blend sounds together to create words.

In computer we will be working on the Alphabet. Go to http://www.abcya.com/kindergarten_computers.htm and click on "Put the alphabet in order" to practice at home with your child. Then have fun building a snowman or a face. There are a lot of other fun things to do.

Our sight word for the week is “to”.

Our new vocabulary words are: sly, proceed, apparel, announced, imaginary and precisely

In math we will finish Chapter 3: Numbers 0-9. Have your children show you how they have learned to write their numbers.

The Halloween Party was SO MUCH FUN! A big thank you to Kim Lada (Owen's mom), Rhonda Nelson (Connor's mom) and Becky Steele (Darren and Dakota's mom)! Their plans included four stations: face painting, mask making, pumpkin bowling and Halloween Bingo. Thank you for all the treats you all brought in, too. The students enjoyed the cupcakes Anida's mom brought in. Tirisha Dirks (Ena's mom) is our classroom photographer. She took some great pictures for the yearbook. Scroll down the blog to see some pictures from the party.

Headline Reads: Breaking News from K - 5!

We learned about how a newspaper reports the news to us. K - 5 HAS BREAKING NEWS! We are reviewing our sight words and letters because report cards will be sent out in a few weeks. Lance pretended to be a reporter and the rest of the class showed all the sight words and letters!

The video is great, but for some reason it won't upload. The students will be watching themselves and practicing along in their stations next week. I will keep on trying to upload the video so you can see it.

Today we worked on blending sounds to read words with /a/"a" and /t/"t". The students then worked independently. They copied a sentence and completed it by writing a word and drawing a picture.

We also are reviewing our sight words. The class was put in pairs and worked together to review the words by rolling a die with the words the, a, I, go and my.

In Social Studies today we learned all about what firefighter do. They have to be physically fit to do their job. Sometimes they live at the fire station. They cook, clean and take care of their equipment. Jake told the class that his dad is a firefighter!

At the end of our day we learned how to write numbers 6 - 10. Ask your child to show you how!

Remember: Our Halloween Party is on Friday!!!!!!!! The class is very excited!!!!!! Your child should wear their costume to school. Ms. Rasicot is wearing hers!!!!!!!!!!

This week, October 26 - 30, we will be learning:

We will be learning about the letter "Aa".

We will review the sight words we have been studying: I, a, my, the and go.

In math we will continue practicing writing our numbers correctly.  We will also be talking about graphs.  Our vocabulary will include: graph, row, more, fewer, one, two, three, four, five, one less, less than, one more.

FRIDAY is our HALLOWEEN PARTY: Wear your costumes to school on Friday. The class will get to enjoy a band concert, learn about Halloween safety from Officer Niccum and then have our party from 10:00-11:00.

The class was so excited to start roller skating with Mr. Halverson! Watch and see how they did!

Today in class we practice writing the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5:
0:  Round and round just like an "O".  Now you've made the number
     zero.
1:  Start at the top and down you run.  That's the way you make a one.
2:  Make a candy can and give it a shoe.  That's the way you make a two.
3:  Around and around just like a "B".  That's the way you make a three.
4:  Down and over and down some more.  That's the way you make a
     four.
5:  Short neck, belly fat.  Mr. Five wears a hat.

Jesse, our Star of the Week, shared more of his treasures he brought
from home.  The students love all his beautiful rocks, stones, rings and jewels!

The class is great at rhyming.  We wrote a huge lists of words that
rhymed with hat and dad.  They have been learning that the ending
sound is what makes the words rhyme.

hat/cat/mat/bat/at/fat/nat/sat

dad/mad/glad/fad/bad/had/sad

     Wow!  What a great day today!  The students learned what Bee-bim Bop meant.  We read the story and they found out that Bee-bim means "Mix-mix and Bop means Rice in Korean.  They were great finding rhyming words too.  Bryce raised his hand up right away and told the class his name rhymes with rice!  Everyone tried to find words that rhymed with the words from our story!
     We also used sign language when we had our bathroom break.  Some signing was the traditional sign language and a lot was Ms. Rasicot's sign language.  The main point was trying to be quiet when we are in the halls.  The class did a great job.  The class is working on their expectations.
     On Monday, we talked about the student's, the teacher's and the parent's expectations.  Look at what we are working on:

     The sight word "go" was introduced today.  A few of the students wore the word "go" on their chests.  We had "go 1" (Owen), "go 2" (Karina), "go 3" (Connor), and I changed my name to Ms. Go.  It was a fun and different strategy to see and learn the word.
     In math the students learned about equal amounts.  Some of the students sat on X's.  The students learned that there was a certain amount of X's on the floor and an equal number of students that sat on them.

Today we talked about the letter Cc.  Ask your child how to write a UPPER CASE "C" and a lower case "c".   I know they will tell you something like this for the "C":  First you have to start a little below the sky and then curve and touch the sky.  Then curve down and pass the fence.  Then curve down and land on the ground and then curve up.  Yay!

For a lower case "c" they might say, "Start a little below the fence, curve up, and touch the fence, then curve down and head for the ground.  Curve down and hit the ground and then curve up.  Yay!  K-5 doesn't like floater!

__________________________Sky
--------------------------------------Fence
________________________ Ground

Jesse is Star of the Week!

Week of October 19 -23:

The class will be learning about the letter "Cc". Work together to see how many words that start with "Cc" you can come up with! Can you come up with any that end in "Cc"?

We will also be working on recognizing rhyming words, talking about who the characters are in the story, "Bee-bim Bop!" (Ask your parents if they know what Bee-bim Bop means!), introducing the robust vocabulary words (appetite, savor, urgency, aroma, surround, tradition), we will be moving on to Chapter 3 in math. The students will be working on the numbers 0 - 5. We will be writing the numbers, using one-to-one correspondence and identifying groups that have more or less.

In Science we will see how this colder weather is changing our tree. Our class tree is just to the north of the main entrance to Shirley Hills.

Week of Oct. 12 - 16

I hope everyone is having a great week off! See you on Monday!

October 8th:

Wow! Our Field Trip to Deardorff Apple Orchard was so much fun. We saw rabbits, goats and horses. We learned great facts about bees and honey. We even got to pick apples. Each student got to pick 5 apples in the orchard. Mr. and Mrs Deardorff told the class all about their orchard. Mr. Nelson (Connor's dad) and Mrs. Stanton (Sam's mom) came with us and Mrs. Lada (Owen's mom) met us there. Thank you for all your help!

K-5 has been very busy in the classroom too. We have been working on syllables, the letters Nn and Pp, patterns, our sight word "the" and we have been talking about our families. We have been discussing the different characters in the story "Bear's Busy Family". This week we have also been working in stations.

The week of October 12th through the 16th there is no school. Grades 1st - 4th have teacher/parent conferences. Kindergarten conferences are on November 19th. If you haven't signed up for a conference, please call me at 952-491-8429.

Here is my conference sign up sheet:
12:20 pm - Owen Lada
12:40 pm - Anida Naovaraj
1:00 pm - Ingrid Aufderheide
1:20 pm - Sam Stanton
1:40 pm -
2:00 pm - Tony Smiley
2:20 pm -
2:40 pm - Dakota Tabaka
3:00 pm - Darren Tabaka
3:20 pm -
3:40 pm
4:00 pm - Grace Goralczyk
4:20 pm - Jesse Hom
4:40 pm - Ena Dirks
5:00 pm - Bryce Berkey
5:20 pm - Lance Nemecek
5:40 pm - Dinner
6:00 pm - Jake Mass
6:20 pm - Connor Nelson
6:40 pm - Hannah Smith
7:00 pm - Kalkidan Hagen
7:20 pm - Eathon Williams
7:40 pm - Karina Kebernik