BROWN BEAR: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, Who Do You See? Is a classic children’s book. As we read the big book this week, we interacted with the text with picture cutouts of each animal. Children took turns with the animal pictures and added them to our interactive board when their page came up. Following the children’s love of this classic, we made a class book titled, “Children, Children, Who Do You See?” Each student got to write and decorate their own page. Making class books is a large part of our kindergarten curriculum. We make the repetitive text easy for all emergent readers to read back independently.

OUR FIVE SENSES: I used the big book, My Five Senses, by Aliki, to introduce how our five senses work. After reading this book, we talked about how we use our five senses to discover things about our environment every single day. Sometimes we use several senses at one time, and other times we only use one or two. After going on a nature hike outside, students completed their own Five Senses books. They did very well completing the sentences and drawing the illustrations.

MATH WORKSHOPS: In math this week, students were introduced to several new games. The first game is called “Grab and Count.” Students grab a handful of a math manipulative, then they show how many they have counted on their recording sheet. I select materials in which they might grab anywhere from 5-15 items in their handful. This is a very simple game that could be played at home.

We also play a game called “Roll and Record.” Students are working with one dice. They roll and then fill in that number on their recording grid. This game is working on their number recognition and numeral writing skills. Some children are at the learning stage where they are counting the dots on each turn, while others are able to identify sets of 6 or less without counting.

Students made their own counting books this week. On each page of their counting book, they had to draw a certain number of objects and color in that same number of cubes. The book started at 0 and went up to 12. We have been doing a lot of math work to identify numbers 11-20.

LEARNING CENTERS THIS WEEK: Children were very busy in learning centers this week. At the book on tape center, students listened to the book: There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Bat. In construction, students worked cooperatively to build houses and caves. At one point, they used every block on the shelf!! Students used the writing center to create their own class books. It was amazing how they had their classmates complete pages to staple together. During meeting time on carpet, many students were selecting books to read to the class. If your child has a favorite book from home, please encourage them to bring it to school if they want to read it to the class.

COMING UP: In the next few weeks, we will be taking a more in depth look at the five senses and how our bodies work. Then we will move into food, cooking, and healthy eating. This will all lead up to our next field trip to the restaurant Brio at Crocker Park.

Halloween Celebration: Students will be dressing up at school on Friday, October 29. We will have a holiday party starting at 10:30. Please look in the hallway for our wish of party items. There will be a school wide Halloween Parade and Pot Luck Dinner Friday evening October 22, 2010 from 5:00 to 7:00 P.M.

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