K Blue- Duckworth

Instructor: Kara Duckworth

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Silly Mug Shots & Animal Reports

Hello! It's May!

Here's how our school days went this week:

Our students arrived recharged for their school week. They started out the day by catching up their April Calendars, then worked on a Bunny Craft that will go in their Calendar Folders.

After Morning Meeting, I asked everyone to bring their Readers to the carpet. We read "The Wind on the Hill" together.

I did a mini-lesson on Pop Art and introduced them to artist Andy Warhol. I showed some pictures of him, then some pictures of his paintings. Ms. Masters had made a sample of the Art Project we would be completing, so I showed this to the kids to explain the procedure for what we would do. I told them I would be taking pictures of them later in the morning.

In Reading Groups, two groups listened to Rooster's Off to See the World by Eric Carle. Two groups played a word game with Mrs. Wolfe. Two groups did Write the Room. Two groups did a compound words game with me.

The read-aloud for the day included all the months of the year as it told the story of a hermit crab who was looking for a new home. This was Eric Carle's A House for Hermit Crab.

For our Math/Writing Block, I introduced the Writing lesson by doing a mini-lesson about Pets. I read through the sentence stem on the page, then talked through several different sentences I could write using the word bank on the left side of the page. I read Dr. Seuss's What Pet Should I Get?

Then I showed the class the Math Workbook page about things we do on each day of the week. I dismissed them to work on both of these assignments, Math first (with a timer set for 15 minutes), followed by Writing.

I took the Mug Shot pictures of the students for the Andy Warhol project. Then I read Shark Lady: The True Story of How Eugenie Clark Became the Ocean's Most Fearless Scientist by Jess Keating. They loved this one!

After Lunch and Recess, we practiced for Graduation. Then we came back to the room to work on yet another Art Project - this one based on the work of Mary Blair. Blair was a talented artist who worked for the Disney company as an animator, author, and designer from the 1940's to the 1960's. She designed the attraction "It's a Small World" at Disneyland. https://www.designingdisney.com/parks/disneyland-paris/disneyland-park/fantasyland/designing-its-small-world-mary-blair/

My classes and Ms. Masters' classes will be making a collaborative project that will be our stage backdrop for Graduation!

We cleaned up and lined up for Dismissal.

On Thursday, Mrs. Wolfe had set up desks with copies of the new May Calendar. Since they only had to write a "1" and "2" in the appropriate boxes and color the banner at the top, I gave them some time to do a little watercolor painting. Then, we had students get out their Writing Workbook and complete the page about things they could draw starting with a circle.

We learned the new Signal Word for the month of May, then came to the carpet for Morning Meeting. We finished a chapter of Little Pilgrim, practiced all our Bible Verses, etc.

Then we got down to the business of the morning - Animal Reports! We did the first 8 before Snack and Recess, then did the remaining 7 before Lunch. It really took us the entire morning to do all the presentations! But they were fantastic! The kids were so excited to hear about all the animals. They clapped after each page as their classmates were presenting!

Interspersed throughout the morning, we did various parts of the Math Workbook lesson. At one stretch break, we got out the Math books, traced the numerals across the top of the page, and made an estimate of the number of jumping jacks we could do in one minute. I timed them and had them count to themselves as they performed the exercises. We went back to write down the actual number of jumping jacks we did. At another stretch break, I timed them for one minute as we said the alphabet. We did it 12 times! Finally, they estimated how many times they could write their name in a minute. I gave them all a piece of white paper and set the timer for one minute. When time was up, I collected the papers, then counted the number of times they had written their complete name. They recorded the actual number.

Here's what animals we heard about:

Calvin: Gorilla

Lois: Snowshoe Hare

Lachion: Lion

Elsie: Elephant

Noah: Bunny: Eastern Cottontail

Graham: Teddy (his family Dog)

Chloe: Tiger

Nolan: Howler Monkey

Hollis: Rabbit

Adalyn: Rabbit

Jack: Lion

Mila: Squirrel

Caleb: Tiger

Wyatt: Seahorse

Grant: Moose

Again, after Lunch and Recess, we had Graduation Practice. Then we came back to the classroom to work on coloring our Andy Warhol Pop Art Projects.

We cleaned up, I read Little Moon by Megan Padalecki then dismissed for the day.

And that's a wrap!

Mrs. Duckworth

Coming Up, etc.

Shout Out! to those that brought in shopping bags and Ziplocs. We've got plenty of the shopping bags now. Still in need of Ziplocs.

Field Day is Monday, May 6. Please watch out for school-wide announcements from organizer Janie Wells. I know you've all got your orange to wear! I'll see you there. No school that day, just Field Day activities up till noon.

Muffins for Moms: Please plan to drop in at drop-off Thursday, May 9 for a little sweet Mother's Day love from me & the kids! We love you!

Lions and Giraffes and Paint!

Oh My!

Hey, all!

We've had a busy and productive week in Kindergarten! This week, we learned a bit about savannas, as in Africa. So we started each day by doing our Morning Work to the classic soundtrack from Disney's The Lion King. That makes for a toe-tapping good time! The kids caught up their Calendars, then colored, cut out, and glued on some adorable simbas. And we learned that simba is actually the Swahili word for "lion." Pretty cool!

At our Morning Meeting, we finished up a chapter of Little Pilgrim's Big Journey, Part 3. I've probably already told y'all this, but this is my first year reading the Part 3, because it is newly published. Such great lessons. The kids eat it up!

To kick off our Reading Block, I had a paper on which I had written the sentences that describe "Biff" from our reader story "Biff and the Bathtub." I put it on the board and had the students read each sentences as I traced the original pencil with sharpie. I told them they would be drawing the creature that went with this description (round face, big eyes, big smile, fur, long tail, sharp teeth, claws) during Reading Groups. It was interesting to hear the kinds of creatures they thought this might describe. I didn't let on that it was the monster from the story. Some thought it was a jaguar or a dinosaur.

Next, I introduced the habitat for the week - savannas - by showing pictures, telling fun facts, and revealing pictures of the animals that live there. At their desks, students completed an animal sort of animals that live in a savanna and animals that do not live in a savanna.

We dismissed to Reading Groups. Two groups read from Book Bins. Two groups drew and colored the picture of Biff. Two groups did a Ziggy Game with Mrs. Wolfe. Two groups read from the reader with me and read fluency practice sentences.

The read-aloud was We All Went On Safari: A Counting Journey Through Tanzania by Laurie Krebs. I LOVE this book! It's a beautifully-illustrated, rhyming counting book. The pictures are pretty realistic. It shows different numbers of savanna animals and Maasai people on each two-page spread. It gives the Swahili word for each number. At the end of the book, we also read the Swahili names for all the animals. The kids loved trying to say all these!

After Snack and Recess, we began our Math Block by skipping across the carpet while skip-counting by 2's. Then we stretched while counting to 100 by 5's, and jumped while counting to 100 by 10's. We sang our 3's song, too. Since it was a review day for Math concepts, we did a Splat and an Estimation Jar filled with dominos.

We sang the "12 Months of the Year" song, then I placed magnetic strips on the board with the names of the months. I grouped them according to seasons and wrote the season names. Then we brainstormed holidays and activities we could do in each month, in preparation for this week's workbook lessons.

At desks, our helpers had set out felt mats and Pattern Blocks. We reviewed making various patterns. I gave out rulers and asked them to measure the length of each of their patterns. Then I let them make a freestyle symmetrical design.

We went over how to do the Writing Lesson about helpers, then everyone completed that page in their workbooks.

After Lunch and Recess, we had an extra-long Graduation Practice. Then we came back to the classroom to paint! Several students got to work on their Jackson Pollock painting while others sponge painted some props we're using for Graduation. Wow! We had paint all over the place. It took three adults to clean it all afterward. We had to be very creative in finding drying space for all these creations!!! There were paintings all down the hall on the floor, on every horizontal surface in the classroom, in every cubbie, nook, and cranny!

Mrs. Wolfe read a bit, then we sang our Goodbyes.

Thursday started similarly, with the music, the calendars, and the coloring. This time, we were coloring a giraffe. Students who needed to do their Jackson Pollock got to do those. And then we finally got to regain that real estate on our horseshoe table. Mrs. Wolfe was quite glad to be done with the paint. She's trying to coax me into foregoing any more paint this year, but there's still a few more weeks! LOL!

After Morning Meeting, we read "Biff and the Bathtub." They really liked this story and wanted to read it again. I told them we would do that in Reading Groups.

I showed them a poem called, "Yellow." We read it a couple of times, then went to desks to mark it. They marked some sight words with various colors, then colored the word "yellow" with yellow crayon. We stood up and read it all together two times. Then we sat down and I called on individuals to read a line. We went through the poem four times in this fashion until all students had had a chance to read part of it alone. We collected these to put in their Calendar Folders.

We did our Reading Group rotations, then met at the carpet for two read-alouds. The first one was a photo book I had made and written the text for. First, I told the kids about the Basset Hounds our family had when our girls were growing up. The last two we had were brothers named "Tank" and "Duke." One year for Christmas, a family friend gave the girls little stuffed Basset Hounds. I had the idea to take these little guys on special trips and take pictures with them in all kinds of places. They went with Doug and I to Germany. Then they began to travel with friends who were visiting other countries. One went to Scotland and New Zealand. The other went to Tanzania.

The Tanzania trip was the basis of the photo book I read to the class. I called it Sir Bertram Barksalot's African Adventure. I used the photos our friend Shawna took with Bert. She even took him on a real safari!

The second book I read was Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae. Although many of the students had read or seen this book before, we enjoyed sharing it.

We enjoyed our Snack and Recess, then got to work on our other academics. I got out the Writing Workbook and explained the assignment. I told them we would be doing it after we finished Math.

We started by doing another Domino Estimation Jar. We gathered around a table and counted by 2's to group dominos by tens. There were 154 dominoes in there! It took us a little while to count all those. But we got in some great practice in counting by 2's and 10's, and in grasping the concept of numbers up to and over 100! The hard part for them was writing down their estimates, since we haven't really learned how to write numbers over 100. But sometimes, it's good to struggle with a new concept.

I asked what holidays or activities students had drawn on their home Math page. Many students were eager to share what they'd drawn. We gave out 12-month Calendars to each student at their desks. We pointed to each month, said the name, then spelled the name aloud together. Then I asked them to point to random months as we skipped around. We gave Elbow Partners (two students seated beside each other) a set of cards with the months on them. They were to work together to place these in the correct order on their desk. One of us came by to check their work, then asked them to mix up the cards and try it again. Graham and Lois were excited to work together! (above)

When everyone completed and cleaned up from this task, I asked them to get out their Math Workbooks and complete the page. Once these were checked, I directed them to do their Writing. We shared the work of three students who had written very nice sentences and had colored their pictures carefully.

In the afternoon, we had another long Graduation Practice, then came back to the room to play. I gathered them at the carpet to practice a song, then Mrs. Wolfe read to them.

Guys, I got to tell some of you in person, but I was so excited listening to students read to me this week! It's like there's been a few lightbulbs turned on! It about makes me come out of my skin, let me tell you! {happy dance!}

And that's a wrap!

Proudly,

Mrs. Duckworth

Coming Up, etc.

In Need Of: Large plastic shopping bags, like the Kroger Pick-Up bags. We like to use these to send home all the kids' classroom supplies the last week of school.

Animal Reports: Thursday, May 2. We'll spread these presentations throughout the morning. Students will turn in the written report to me to evaluate.

Field Day: Monday, May 6 at Cokesbury. There will not be school that day. Only Field Day activities for Red and Blue classes. If you want to stay for the morning and are not volunteering for something else, you are welcome to hang around to help us keep our class together and to watch all the fun. I'll be bringing my rolling cooler for toting water bottles.

It Got Kinda Messy Around Here

I told the kids this morning that we have four weeks until Graduation; five more weeks of school! That's just ten more days together in Kindergarten! Wow! We are making the most of all the moments together and having the most fun we can have!

We celebrated Earth Day on Tuesday by reading Genesis 1:1, 28. God made the Earth and made the man and woman to fill the Earth and rule over the birds and animals. I asked everyone to trace the words of these important verses and to draw a picture of themselves taking care of creatures or a picture of the Earth. They made some wonderful drawings! Mila's cracked me up! She drew her Dad getting ready to cut down a tree and her saying, "NOOO!" Love it! The kids also caught up the April Calendars in their folders.

We did our Morning Meeting Routine, then read "Ducks in a Truck" from the reader. I introduced the Desert Habitat, some Fun Facts, some pictures, some animals and plants. Students completed a Desert Animals Sort. We discussed their answers together.

In Reading Groups, two groups listened to Jack and the Beanstalk and the French Fries by Mark Teague. Two groups played a word game with Mrs. Wolfe. Two groups made torn-paper art Earths in their Fine Motor Journals. Two groups met with me to play a Find and Build the Word activity with C-V-C-e ("Ninja E") words.

I read I'm a Hare, So There by Julie Rowan-Zoch. It was a comic book-style story about the similarities and differences between various desert animals such as jackrabbits and hares, crows and ravens, chipmunks and ground squirrels, jackals and coyotes, and many more. It quickly became a class favorite! Several students went on to write about it in their Writing assignment later in the day.

After Snack and Recess, we began our Math Block by Counting to 100 with Jack Hartmann. I had asked Mrs. Wolfe to cover some of the numbers on the Hundred Chart with index cards. I called on students to point to one of the index cards, then tell us what number was hidden underneath. I asked them to share their thinking in coming up with their answer.

I introduced the class to our Bean Counting Mats by placing one on the front board. The mat has five two-inch circles on the left and an open space on the right with a blank at the bottom. After explaining that each circle could hold exactly 10 beans, I wrote the number "35" on the blank, then used my dry erase marker to make ten marks (beans) in each of three circles. Then I made 5 marks on the right side for the "leftovers." I counted the dots in the circles by 10's, then counted five more by 1's to get 35.

At their desks, students practiced using the mats with beans to count out. Following this, we completed the Math Workbook page.

I explained the Writing assignment ("My favorite book is ...") and assisted children in forming their sentences and sounding out words. I chose a couple of students' work to show to the whole class when we were finished.

We practiced for Graduation in the Castle for the first time, then returned to class to learn about our Artist of the Month (last month), Jackson Pollock. His style fits our Kindergarten audience to a "T." He used dripping and slinging methods to create very large works of art that were messy and abstract. I set up a "Splatter Box" so students could get their Jackson Pollock on and sling some paint on their own canvas. {Wyatt is demonstrating the correct technique above.} You'll get to see these colorful works at our Graduation Art Show. I was only able to get to a few students to do their painting, so I told them we would continue it next time.

We read from the April Mystery, then sang Goodbye.

On Thursday, after Calendar Folders, students got to wander around the room with clipboards to do a special Earth Day Write the Room.

After Morning Meeting, we started our Reading Block with a long Phonics Routine. I taught them to "chop" words into sounds, then put them together. Then I taught them to "roller coaster" words to blend the sounds and to isolate the vowel sound and tell if it was short or long. Next, we used sentence strips in the Pocket Chart to do a Fluency Routine. I had taken some sentences from "Ducks in a Truck" and broken them into one-word chunks. "The," "The truck," "The truck on," "The truck on the," "The truck on the path," etc. We changed the last word of the sentence several times to match the sentences in the story. After reading through all of it with the whole class, I called on individual students to read it for us. We got out our Readers and read "Ducks in a Truck" again.

We did our Reading Group rotations, then I read Cactus Hotel by Brenda Z. Guiberson. They enjoyed hearing about all the birds and animals that sheltered inside a saguaro cactus over its 150-year lifespan!

For Math, we started out with our Estimation Jar. I had asked Mrs. Wolfe to add dominos to it. Everyone wrote their estimate on a sticky note and stuck them on the board. We went to the back table and counted the dominos by 2's into piles of ten and some leftovers. There were 83!

We repeated the activity with their identifying numbers that were behind index cards on the Hundred Chart. Next, we practiced counting to 100 by 5's several different ways. Then I asked students to circle all the numbers you would say when counting to 100 by 5's on a Hundred Chart, then say them to a partner. When they finished, I asked them to do their Math Lesson, followed by the Writing Lesson. Again, I chose some Writing to share with the class.

While students played Math Partner Games, I called them up two at a time to purchase items from the Class Store. We got all the shopping done in time for Lunch. Several kids had been saving their Gold Tags for a while, i.e. they hadn't bought anything at the first couple of Class Stores. So, they had 30+ Gold Tags to spend, and today was the day they decided to go on a shopping spree!

After Lunch and Recess, we had Graduation Practice. Then they had some free time to play with toys while I called students one at a time to do their Jackson Pollock painting. We got a few more done, but will still need another day to finish these up.

We read a bit from our April Mystery, then sang Goodbye.

I'm so blessed by all of you.

Love y'all!

Mrs. Duckworth

Coming Up, etc.

Shout out! Thanks for your great response to sending in Dollars for Art! We got the cost of the canvases covered!

Reminder: You don't need to send in a Calendar for Math next week.

Reminder 2: Don't forget water bottles and a change of clothes each school day. It's getting HOT outside and we are all out of cups.

By the way... If I've forgotten to tell you, we do Graduation the week before the final week of school. Yes, we still come to school after Graduation. It gives us a chance to relax and have some fun after the pressure of our Graduation Program is done!

Eclipse and Ocean Week

Hey, y'all!

I'm writing and posting your update early this week. I was supposed to be gone today. I was gone from school and was supposed to be on my way to Virginia.

I got news late yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon that my father-in-law had been transferred from the rehab center back to the hospital and was "very sick." My sister-in-law called me later from the hospital and said he had coded on the way, but the transport team had revived him. My husband was hopping a redeye from Nevada (where he's been on a work project) back to Raleigh/Durham, so I thought I'd better prepare to go.

As I bustled about this (Wednesday) morning, my husband called to say that his Dad had made it through the night and was stable. Doug preferred that I wait and come tomorrow. So I took the day to organize, write lesson plans, do chores, and rest so I'll be ready to leave in the morning. Many of you have reached out to let me know you're praying for our family. Thank you!

So first, here's what we did on Tuesday:

We commiserated about our bummer Solar Eclipse viewing! Booo! Oh, well! I did show them some video of areas in the country that were in the path of totality. Maybe your kids will become Eclipse Chasers and get to travel somewhere to see some Eclipses! We certainly learned a lot about them.

For Morning Work, we caught up Calendars and filled out an All About Me Solar Eclipse sheet.

We held our Morning Meeting, then jumped in to our Reading Block. We warmed up with some phonics - learning those new sounds of /e/, /u/, /y/, and /ch/.

We turned a corner and talked about our Theme for the day. {Ms. Masters and I are sharing our Habitats materials, so we are doing these out of order from what's on the syllabus. We'll hit all of the habitats over the next several weeks, though.} Today, the Ocean Habitat theme was on the docket. Students came up to the Pocket Chart and took turns flipping over some pictures of Ocean Animals. I shared some facts about Ocean Habitats and How to Build an Ocean Habitat. Then students went to their desks to complete an Ocean Animals Sort.

Reading Groups were up next. Two groups of students read books from Book Bins. Two groups played a word game. Two groups read from the reader and built words with word tiles with Mrs. Wolfe. Two groups made an underwater scene with fish cut out of ovals and curvy lines to make scales and waves.

The read-aloud was Manfish: A Story of Jacques Cousteau by Jennifer Berne. I grew up watching Jacques Cousteau on TV, so I was delighted to find this wonderful book about his life. He invented and improved upon lots of the sea diver equipment that's used today. He also developed methods of filming underwater and bringing that footage to movie theaters and television screens for the first time.

Snack and Recess.

For our Math Block, we warmed up by counting by 2's to 50. We stood up and counted by 1's to 50 while moving, then we counted to 50 by 10's and back to 10. I gave out Partner Cards and some Rocket Cards with numerals so they could lay these out in order from 2 to 50. Hollis and Nolan were working nicely together on this, above.

Students completed their Math Workbook page, then played with Busy Bags and Math Partner Games.

Lunch and Recess.

I wrote the title, "The Eclipse" and some sentence stems on the board. "I saw...", "I heard ...", "I felt..." We thought of some ideas for each of these. Since we didn't get to see much of the Eclipse, we thought of other things we could say. I saw my neighbors. I saw clouds in the sky. I heard people outside talking. I heard quiet. I felt excited. I felt sad.

I asked everyone to get out their Writing Books, draw pictures and write sentences.

We had some play time, then I finished reading Mercy Watson: Princess in Disguise before Car Line Pickup.

On Thursday, kids checked in and did their Calendar for Morning Work. As they finished, Mrs. Wolfe gave them an an Ocean Zones paper to color. I had placed a copy of this on the board so students could see the color gradient that went from light blue near the surface down to black at the ocean floor. They placed these under their pencil boxes for later.

They had Morning Meeting, then started into the Reading Block. They talked about the names of the various zones of the ocean and about what lived in each zone. Mrs. Wolfe gave out a sheet with small pictures of lots of sea animals. Students colored and cut them out, then tried to decode which zone they would live in. Once everyone had made their guesses, Mrs. Wolfe placed her copies of the sea animals in the correct zones on the board. Students could then correct and glue on their creatures on their copy.

Reading Group rotations.

The read-aloud for the day was Follow the Moon Home: A Tale of One Idea, Twenty Kids, and a Hundred Sea Turtles by Philippe Cousteau and Deborah Hopkinson.

Snack and Recess.

To warm up for Math, the class practiced counting by 2's and 10's. They stood in a circle and played a Counting by 10's Game, where each person around the circle says the next number as they count by 10 to 100. Each time they get to 100, the person who said "100" sits down. Play continues until all but one are seated.

Mrs. Wolfe paired the students to do 5's and 10's cards (like the 2's cards from Tuesday). Next, she gave out a set of tally mark cards (1-10) to each student and had them place them on their desks in order. She then gave them a set of numeral cards 1-10 and asked them to place the correct numeral under each tally mark card. Everyone cleaned these up and put them aside.

She gave each student a strip of adding machine paper and asked them to write 30 tally marks (in groups of 5). Then, she asked them to write the numerals underneath as they counted by 5's to 30.

The students went to their desks and did their Math Workbook page.

Lunch and Recess.

Mrs. Wolfe explained the Writing Assignment, then students got out their Writing Books and did the two-page introduction to Opinion Writing. There were several students who had not finished the Faith Ringgold Art Project a couple of weeks ago, so they had some time to finish up this fun project. You'll get to see these at the Graduation Art Show!

Clean up and Mystery Book, then time for Pickup!

That's a wrap!

Blessings,

Mrs. Duckworth

Coming Up, etc.

Art Project: We will be doing an art project next week (I hope) that involves an 8 x 10 canvas. I went ahead and bought these in bulk. If you would like to contribute and can bring $1 for these, that would be great!

Class Store: Next Thursday

April Showers

Hey, All!

An amazing double rainbow appeared on Easter afternoon as my husband and I returned to the hospital where my husband had spent the last four nights by his Dad's bedside. I had convinced him to take a break for a couple of hours so we could drive over to his Dad's house to get a shower. Emotionally drained and physically exhausted, we looked to the sky where God's covenant promise shone vividly throughout the 25-minute drive. Not only did the rainbows not fade as we neared the hospital, but we noticed that they were centered just above it.

Wow!

Our lives are filled with difficult conversations, decisions, and situations right now. I know we aren't the only ones. I hope these rainbows will also remind you of God's promises. The God who promised never to flood the whole world again also promised He will never leave or forsake us, that He will be our refuge and strength, that He will sustain us, that He hears us and sees us, that He will give us peace, that He's preparing a place for us, that He has saved, is saving, and will save us.

Now, about our week in school:

Our students arrived to a brand-new April Calendar. They filled in the days, then copied pictures of ducks into their Fine Motor Journals. We sorted everyone's cardboard tubes and duct tape into the awaiting bins. I told them of newly-assigned jobs for the week, taught them our new Signal Word, then called them to the carpet for Morning Meeting.

Again, our morning Devotional opened up some deep theological discussions. These books (Little Pilgrim's Big Journey) elicit such wonderful questions! I took as much time as I could to answer them. I taught the kids our new Bible Verse. We spent some time telling each other about our Easter weekend. We also discussed the different schedule for the day and how the Build It Day was going to work.

We started our Reading Block with some new Vocabulary - all about Eclipses. We discussed the upcoming Eclipse and what that was going to look like.

In Reading Groups, two groups listened to the story, Life on Mars by Jon Agee. Two groups did Write the Room with an Easter Theme. Two groups played a Word Game with Mrs. Wolfe. Two groups opened Easter Eggs to find lower-case magnetic letters, then color the corresponding letter on their recording sheet (with me).

Our read-aloud for the morning was a booklet called "Solar Eclipse" by Hilary Statum.

We celebrated Lois's birthday with a special Snack she passed out to her classmates - grapes and Oreos. We sang "Happy Birthday" to her.

Our Math Block was non-stop action for about 70 minutes! We warmed up by "following the bouncing pointer" up and down the number line as we skip-counted by 2's to 30. We stood in a circle and counted how many shoes were in the circle (by 2's again), then how many hands (again by 2's). Everyone sat down and we used our Hundred Chart to count by 2's to 30. I flipped around each number we said such that all the even numbers were white and the odds were red. I asked students to identify patterns. Several students shared their observations.

At desks, we had laminated Hundred Charts for them. I asked everyone to take out their dry-erase markers and circle the numbers we say when we count by 2's to 30. That was a total of 5 ways we practiced our 2's! Once we had checked everybody's charts, I asked the class to come back to the carpet to do our Splat and our Estimation Jar.

We worked with students to complete the Math Workbook page. When they had finished, I asked them to complete their Writing page.

As students finished, they were allowed to start building something. We had bins of yarn, fabric and string; of beads, pipe cleaners, pom-poms, and rubber bands; of aluminum foil, wax paper, and scrap paper; of foam shapes and plastic straws; of lids and caps; of cardboard and boxes; of tape of all kinds; of rice and beans; and a big basket of tubes. They didn't need any prompting to dig in! Before I could blink twice, we had robots, maracas, "smoothies," vehicles, spyglasses, and other whats-its all over the place! If you're a neat and orderly person, you would've had a coronary.

Just before Lunch, I called everyone to the carpet so we could count the actual number of squishy balls in the Estimation Jar. Since we had so many projects-in-progress all over the desks, floor, counters... I made the quick decision to take them out to the Courtyard to eat Lunch. We hadn't done this before, so we had to go over a few rules. Fortunately, all the older kids who were already out there were well-behaved and modeling the rules nicely.

After Lunch and Recess, Ms. Masters' class joined us for a Graduation Practice.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent building more stuff. We cleaned up and looked around at everyone's creations at the end. We attempted to consolidate the projects into a portable state so you could enjoy them at home. (You're welcome.)

I talked through the Animal Report template that Mrs. Wolfe had placed into their take-home folders. We looked at each page and the information they will be learning about their animals. Again, you know your child's abilities as far as Writing. Please challenge them to do as much as they can, but adapt if you need to! These are due May 2.

On Thursday, students did the quick (2-day) catch-up on their Calendars, then cut out a little moon and glued it to a craft stick. They set these aside to dry and use later.

We had our Morning Meeting followed by our Reading Block. I asked students to bring their readers to the carpet. We read "Pip the Milkman" and discussed the clues in the pictures that this story took place in the past.

We reviewed the Eclipse Vocabulary from Tuesday, then I gave out emergent readers called "Solar Eclipse." We read through the sentences on each page and I explained that they would be doing the illustrations and tracing some of the words. I sent them to their desks to complete these. I called on different students to read the pages then we repeated after them. I gave everyone a black sheet of construction paper and a little card that read, "Solar Eclipse 2024." I asked them to glue the card on the bottom left edge of the paper, then to write their name with white crayon.

We did our two Reading Group Rotations, then I read a newly-published book called, A Few Beautiful Minutes: Experiencing a Solar Eclipse by Kate Allen Fox. The language was poetic and rich with new Vocabulary. The illustrations were beautiful. I love that it was realistic fiction. It's hard to find books with good scientific information that are also fiction.

Next, we were so excited to enjoy our Solar Eclipse Snacks! We passed out Cosmic Rings, Capri SUNS, Star- and Moon-Shaped Fruit Kebabs and MOON Pies! There were cute SUNSHINE paper plates! It was a real treat!

After Recess (indoors, cause it felt FRIGID outside!), we got into Math. We started out with the Splat, then made our estimates of the amount of Squishy Balls in the Estimation Jar. Everyone wrote their estimates on a sticky note and placed these on the front board. I went ahead and counted the balls right away. Several students' estimates were correct!

I had 4 ten-frames displayed on the front board. I showed them an example of how to build a number on them. We did several of these - from teen numbers to thirties. After each, I explained how to look at the number in the tens' place then correspond that to the number of full ten-frames they had. Then to look at the number in the ones' place and correspond that to the number of "extras" they had. So that 35 was three full ten-frames plus five more.

I asked them to get out their Math books and do the page. We checked their work. This was a confusing week with the syllabus, so some students had already done the day's page at home. If so, I asked them to do the following page and we checked it.

NOTE: We did not do Writing today. I wanted to fit in all the Eclipse activities. The lesson is important and took a full 30- 45 minutes with the Red Class. I'll teach it next time and give them plenty of instruction and time to write.

I gave each student a "Totality" picture to color and cut in half. I gave them two vertical strips. One read: "I know about the eclipse!!!" It had squares in which to glue pictures and sequencing words (First, Then, After that, etc.). The other was a series of small pictures showing the progression of the solar eclipse. Students colored all the pieces, cut and glued everything in the proper order. I helped them accordion-fold their strips.

I asked everyone to bring their "Little Moon" they had affixed to the craft stick during Morning Work time. At the carpet, students watched as I pointed out the Sun, Moon, and Earth suspended from the ceiling. I walked around and showed how the Moon orbits the Earth once every month, then how the Earth orbits the Sun every year. We talked about how the Earth, Moon, and Sun will line up on Monday for the Eclipse. I showed everyone how to cover one eye and to hold their "Little Moon" close in front of their faces until they could only see it and could not see the Sun. This showed how, even though the Moon is MUCH smaller than the Sun, it can still block the Sun from our view! So cool!

We ate Lunch, went outside for part of Recess (we were the only ones out there, but we needed to get outside!) then went to the Castle to finish it out. I asked everyone to grab Reading Buddies and come to the carpet. We had a quiet little practice of all our Graduation Songs.

The afternoon was devoted to making two more Eclipse Projects: a craft showing the orbits of the Sun, Moon, and Earth, and a Solar Eclipse Crown Mask. The kids cut out all the pieces. I punched holes and put the brads in the craft. Mrs. Wolfe stapled the Crowns to the Masks. We had prepped the Masks with the Solar Glasses ahead of time. We cleaned up and had a photo opp.

If any of you are keeping score, that's 6 Eclipse Craft Projects in one day! Except, we didn't finish one of them we started. The one with the black construction paper. It was to be a directed drawing. I may try to SQUEEZE it in next week!

I read about half of Mercy Watson: Princess in Disguise. Best read-alouds! Those Mercy Watson books have such a great array of distinctive characters that are a dream to voice! The kids love them!

That's a wrap!

Gratefully,

Mrs. Duckworth

Coming Up, etc.

Eclipse Day! I call it a very successful day! We had so much fun and we learned stuff, too! Thank you to Deitra, Samantha, and Lacey for sending the fun Snacks and Plates! Thank you to all of you that sent Solar Glasses. We had enough for everybody! I'm praying for clear weather Monday so we can experience the Eclipse fully! I can't wait to hear your stories on Tuesday!

Build It Day! Thank you all for sending cardboard tubes and duct tape. Also a very successful and fun day!

Looking Ahead on the Syllabus: Week 6 of the 4th 9 weeks, we will be using Calendars in class. On the syllabus for the previous week, it says that you will need to send one to school. You don't need to do this. I've already got Calendars.

Holy Week in K

Hello Friends!

I know the syllabus said "Birds" for this week, but I don't think we realized it was going to be an early Easter. We needed to set aside the creatures of the avian persuasion for the Greatest Story of All.

Our scholars arrived on Tuesday bursting with energy for the new week, as always. Oh, to have the enthusiasm of a Kindergarten Kid! I pray that I can match it. They caught up Calendars and worked on Shamrock Projects.

At Morning Meeting, we did our Pledge to the Flag, I read from the Little Pilgrims devo, I prayed, we practiced our Bible Verse, we added a straw to our Days in School chart, we looked at the Calendar and Weather, and we edited our Daily Edit sentence ("Which team will win the game?").

From our Readers, we read and discussed "The Lost List." I read the story about The Triumphal Entry from 10 Days of the Easter Story: A Family Experience Through the Feelings of Holy Week, by Dr. Josh Straub and Christi Straub. I opened the Resurrection Egg with the Donkey in it and told a bit about it.

At desks, students had a story sheet about Palm Sunday. As I read the sentences and got to a blank box, the students had to paste the correct picture to complete the sentence. Each time we added a new picture, I started over from the beginning and reread the story.

We went to Reading Groups. Two groups made and colored a booklet with the four major events of Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. Two groups read from their Book Bins. Two Groups worked on Sight Words by playing a game with Mrs. Wolfe. Two groups met with me and worked on sequencing events from Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

I read The Little Donkey: The Story of Palm Sunday. This is a little board book that belonged to my daughters. I searched but couldn't find it online. It's short and sweet and the class loved it. I taught them a little song I wrote for our Preschool Choir many years ago called, appropriately, "The Donkey." We went ahead and opened the second Resurrection Egg, the Silver Coins, discussed the story of Judas, and learned another little song called, "The Tattler."

We began our Math block with a rousing round of "Some Bunny Loves Money." We are having far fewer missed turns on account of not being able to identify the coin on the bunnies' bellies!

I showed them a new activity called "Splat!" I had some counters on the board, some of which were hidden by a big Splat (looks like a splash of water. It actually came from an activity in the AAR Activity Book!) I asked the class how many counters were visible (there were 2). I wrote 2 on the board. Then I told them that there are a total of 7 counters on the board. How many are hidden under the Splat? They use the information to find the difference. It's actually a sneaky way of doing a subtraction problem. Now here's the best part: I asked several students what their answer was and what their thinking was. Some students start at 2 and add on until they get to 7. They add on 5, so their answer is that 5 counters are under the Splat. Some students think 7, then count back 2 to get 5. I write down the equations they use for each of their answers, so their mental and verbal reasoning can be translated into "Math Language." The cool thing I love to point out to the kids is that people can arrive at the same correct answer by thinking in different ways. This is so valuable for kids to learn. We will do a Splat activity each day from now on.

The third Math Activity we did (another new one) was called "The Estimation Jar." I had a container on my desk filled with plastic Easter Eggs. I showed it to the kids and rotated it around. I gave each student a sticky note with their name on it and asked them to make an estimate of how many eggs were in the jar. They then brought these up and stuck them on the board to wait until the end of the Math Block.

At desks, each student wrote their numerals 0 - 9 on a strip. We corrected these, then asked students to do the Math Workbook lesson followed by the Writing lesson. When all were finished and checked, we gathered at the front to count the Eggs in the Estimation Jar. There were 18. Four students got the exact number! I explained that we use estimation in everyday life all the time and that it's a very useful skill. We are working to develop it.

After Lunch and Recess, Ms. Masters' class joined us for a Graduation Practice. We are still working on learning songs at this point.

For Theme Study, we measured a Leprechaun's beard hairs! Doesn't that sound interesting?

Again, this was about estimation! I helped them out by showing them Beard Hair #1 and demonstrating that it was 5 blocks long. They could then use this information to estimate the lengths of each of the other 5 Beard Hairs. They filled out a chart with their estimates and the actual lengths. Then I gave them a leprechaun head to color and cut out and paste on a background sheet. I showed them how to curl the Beard Hairs then paste them onto the Leprechaun's chin! Some kids named their Leprechauns, too! These were so cute!

Mrs. Wolfe read to them then we sang GoodBye!

To the natural 5/6-year-old energy, we added the excitement of Easter Party Day on Thursday!

Again, students caught up their Calendars and worked on their Shamrocks. I had saved the plastic bunny-shaped container my Easter chocolates came in and washed it very thoroughly. I set these two pieces out on the counter along with some white paper. Students enjoyed tracing the large bunny and coloring it how they pleased. We had some polka-dotted, some colorful and some striped Bunnies!

We held our Morning Meeting. Then for Reading Block, we learned about Holy Thursday. We had some interesting and deep theological discussions all morning. Why does Satan hate us? What is Passover? Why did God send an angel to kill people? (Yowza! Hard questions to answer!) Why is it called Good Friday; it seems like Bad or Sad Friday?

We completed the story of Holy Thursday (The Last Supper) at desks. Then we did the remaining two rotations of Reading Groups.

I read The Legend of The Three Trees by Catherine McCafferty. Several students knew this story. Grant said it was his favorite book!

For our Math Block, we warmed up by doing the same three activities as on Tuesday: "Some Bunny Loves Money," "Splat," and "The Estimation Jar." This time with the estimation, students noticed that it looked like there were fewer eggs than there were last time. This gave them an advantage in making their estimate, therefore built off of their prior knowledge. No one guessed the number exactly this time (14), but all of the students made an estimate that was LESS THAN 18. So that's a big win. They were able to produce logical answers, whether right or wrong.

We completed our Math and Writing and got it checked. I gave out Partner Cards so I could pair students up for the walk to my house. I explained that we would keep each other safe by holding hands and staying together on the walk there and back again. (A Hobbit's Tale by Bilbo Baggins. Wink. Those of you that know Lord of the Rings will catch that.)

We ate our Lunch, so excited we could hardly stand it! Almost time!

We paired up and walked over to my house. We were joined by Ms. Masters' class and the two party Moms from her class: Britt Cudzillo and Lisa Wolf. Mila's Mom (Laura) and Hollis's Mom (Kelli) put the party together. Everyone had a great time! Praise God, the weather was beautiful! We hunted for eggs, opened and traded eggs, listened to a couple of great Easter stories, had the coolest empty tomb snack (made with a donut, an Oreo, a graham cracker, lots of frosting and green sprinkles; we had lots of green lips on the walk back!), played "Easter Bunny Says" game, made a craft, and explored the yard. So, so fun! Then we lined up and walked back to school.

We did a debrief of the event, then Mrs. Wolfe started the April Mystery.

Enjoy a very blessed and blessedly long Easter Weekend! I will see you Tuesday!

And that's a Wrap!

Humbly,

Mrs. Duckworth

Shout Out! To Laura Hamm and Kelli Huddleston for working together and with the Moms from Ms. Masters' class to plan a wonderful Easter Party! Thank You!

Shout Out! To all of you for remembering to send your permission forms! How'd you like that little lanyard trick? And to everyone for sending eggs, extra eggs, baskets, and extra baskets!

No School Good Friday and Easter Monday!

Dream It, Build It Day! Blue Class has earned their first Class Reward for getting 10 Compliments! On Tuesday (April 2), we will have a Fun Reward of getting to build things out of recyclable materials. I've got loads of cardboard, lids, caps, etc. I'd like for you to send toilet paper tubes or paper towel tubes plus one roll of duct tape for your child. That's it! We will do our syllabus work, then have lots of time to dream up and build whatever we want!

Eclipse Day: This is a once-in-a-lifetime event that we get to enjoy on Monday, April 8.

I am going to be teaching about the Eclipse next Thursday (April 4) at school. I attended a webinar Tuesday night with two nationally-known teachers/authors to learn a bit about how to teach this. I got some great tips!

I thought it would be fun to do a big, Eclipse-themed snack. If you would be willing to bring a sun, moon, or space-themed snack, let me know. Here are some ideas: Capri SUN, SUNflower seeds, Oreo is putting out a special-edition space-themed cookie (available at Walmart and Sam's, Kroger), Moon Pies, etc. If you can come up with a more nutritious snack that looks like an eclipse, that would be great. Don't want to go heavy on sweets.

Also, if anyone can get their hands on some of the eclipse (NASA-approved) glasses, there's a cute mask we can make. Then you would be able to use these at home when you view the eclipse on Monday.

Email me if you have an idea or can help with this.

Animal Report: I'll be sending home a template next week. There are lots of pages, so you will want to spread out the fun and do one or two pages per day. You can adjust this to your child's ability. If you need to write the sentences and have them trace, that's ok. I just want them to be involved in researching their animal, attempting to write facts, and drawing pictures.

We are going to spend the next month learning about various habitats and the animals that live in them. I am going to be emphasizing how we can write down a fact we learn from a book or video. This will build some skills needed for their report.

They may choose any animal they want!

I Call This One "Duck Week"

Happy Spring, friends!

We had a fun time with our theme this week: Spring Animals. More specifically: Ducks! As the kids arrived refreshed from Spring Break on Tuesday morning, they were delighted to be greeted by little Rubber Duckies on their desks. Lots of squeaking ensued. Everyone caught up their March Calendars, did a Duck Maze (where they wound through numbers to get from 1 to 20), then thought of a word that began with the consonant blend written on the bottom of their Rubber Duckie.

When I called everyone to the front carpet, I asked them to bring the Rubber Duckies along. After the Pledge to the Flag, I called students forward one at a time to show their Duckie and to tell us the word that started with their blend. This was our method of reviewing consonant blends.

We had some chat time about our Spring Break activities and finished Morning Meeting.

We changed things up a bit and started our Reading Block time with our Read-Aloud: Make Way For Ducklings, a classic (published in 1941!) Caldecott Medal winner. After reading, I showed a postcard I bought in Boston after visiting the Public Garden, where there are statues of Mrs. Mallard and her eight ducklings, in honor of the story. I also showed a print of a photo my daughter Abby took of a Mama mallard and her ducklings we saw crossing a busy road in front of us one day! Just as happened in the book, all the traffic going both directions stopped and allowed the ducks to cross the road to get to the canal on the other side!

In Reading Groups, students listened to How to Trap a Leprechaun by Sue Fliess, played Go Fish with Sight Words, finished the sentence, "Make way for ..." and colored a picture to match (kids wrote "dinosaurs," "meteors," "ducklings," etc.) and labeled the parts of a duckling and spelled some duck-related words ("pond," "swim," "duck").

Before reading the rhyming poem, "Maxwell the Duck," I asked the class to raise their hands each time they heard a rhyme. There were lots of them in this cute little story/poem about a duck who was afraid to try flying. We asked our Blessing for Snack, then I dismissed students to wash hands after they told me a rhyming word for the word I gave them.

Our Math Block started with some cute little Bunny Peeps finger puppets I had found at Smart Toys and Books. I put these on my fingers and did some subtraction stories with them. I wrote each subtraction equation on the board and we practiced saying them. Next, I reviewed the coins we've studied so far: pennies, nickels, and dimes. We said a little rhyme to go with each. Then I introduced the quarter and its little rhyme.

Students went to their desks and wrote their numerals 0-9 on their paper strip. We checked and collected these. Then I asked everyone to open the coin containers Mrs. Wolfe had placed on their desks. Everyone sorted the coins into piles of pennies, nickels, and dimes. They investigated the heads and tails sides of each. I gave them a quarter and let them make observations about it.

They completed the Math and the Writing lessons. We assisted and checked. When everyone was finished, we met again on the carpet so I could show them how to play "Some Bunny Loves Money." There were 24 numbered Bunny Peep cards with a picture of the heads or tails of a coin. When I called on a student, they had to tell me the number of the Bunny and the kind of coin on its belly. If they got it right, I removed the card from the Pocket Chart to see if the Easter Basket was hidden behind it.

To dismiss for Lunch, students had to tell me the number that was "one more" than the number card I showed them. These were numerals up to 50.

After Lunch and Recess, Ms. Masters and her class joined us for our first Graduation Practice. Yes, it's time for that! I taught them a whole song with motions! They did great! Such wonderful singing.

For Theme Study, we solved "The Case of the Lucky Charms." Someone had stolen the leprechaun's Lucky Charms cereal. The suspects were the rainbow, the golden horseshoe, the shamrock, the hat, and the pot of gold. We made predictions based on inferences (and on sneaky feelings), listened carefully to clues, eliminated suspects, and finally solved the crime! Students recorded their thoughts on a sheet, colored a picture of the culprit, and wrote a sentence.

I read a few chapters of Mercy Watson: Something Wonky This Way Comes, then we sang our Goodbye Song.

On Thursday, students caught up their March Calendars and used markers to color a beautiful "stained glass-style" shamrock that will go in their Calendar Folders for their March craft.

We had our Morning Meeting, followed by our Reading Block.

First, we read "Fast Fun" from our AAR Reader in "Snail Speed." Then we switched to "Cheetah Speed" and read it again. We really got our tongues twisted with all those alliterations! I explained what makes tongue twisters. We read some predictable sentences about seeing colors in the sky. The final sentence revealed it was a rainbow. At their desks, the children traced the color word in each sentence and colored the little blob at the end to match. At the end was a rainbow for them to color. I called on students to read each sentence for the whole class. I began teaching them a poem about a rainbow. We'll work on that more next time.

We completed the other two rotations for our Reading Groups.

The read-aloud for the day came with a warning - I was going to sound like a pirate when reading it! That's how I do my fake Irish accent in reading Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato by Tomie dePaola. This book lends itself to making predictions and we made quite a few. One of my favorites!

We enjoyed celebrating Elsie's birthday with her. She handed out bags of popcorn and slices of banana bread and we sang Happy Birthday to her.

For Math, we started with a mini-lesson about subtraction. I wrote a subtraction expression on the board and drew 9 objects under it. I called on one student to come to the board and "x" out the appropriate number of objects, then another student to count how many were left and to write the difference in our equation. Then the whole class read the equation together. We did several of these.

Students went to their desks and wrote their numerals 0-9 on their paper strip, then completed their Math and their Writing lessons. When all were finished, we played another round of "Some Bunny Loves Money."

This is where Mrs. Lacey (Angel) and Mrs. Samantha (Turnbull) came in to relieve Mrs. Wolfe and I so we could attend the Teacher Appreciation Luncheon.

We enjoyed the quiet time of chatting with our fellow teachers and assistants and savoring a delicious meal! Kim Johnson, Kristen Hardy, Britt Cudzillo, and Laura Hamm hosted us with beautifully set tables with floral centerpieces. They brought us drinks and cleared our plates and showed us lots of love! I tried to taste a little of everything, but there was a lot! We had soups, breads, salads, and desserts. I can't tell you what a treat it is to not have to pack a Lunch! It's the simplest thing, but it feels like such a holiday!

While we were gone, Lacey and Samantha had the kids make the card you see above and sign their names on a clay pot that held a beautiful kalanchoe. They did Lunch, Cleanup, and Recess with them.

When I brought the kids back into the classroom after Recess, they were so excited for me to see what they had made for me! They held my hands and pulled me over to the counter to show me what they had written on the card and where they had signed the pot. Then we sang a couple of our Graduation songs.

For Theme Study, we colored/dot markered rainbows. Most of the kids decided to cut their rainbow out and mount it on colored cardstock.

I finished the Mercy Watson book, then we sang Goodbye.

And that's a wrap!

Feeling loved,

Mrs. Duckworth

Coming Up, etc.

Shoutout! To Lacey and Samantha for taking over in my classroom and for helping the kids make us such a wonderful gift! We gave all the kids a big group hug! To all of you that brought food or any of the accessories for the Lunch, Snack Bags, and Big Tub of Snacks for the Staff Kitchen! To all of you for the hugs and the words of encouragement. Thank you! I love you all!

Easter Party is next Thursday from 12:30 to 2:00! I'll have permission forms for you to sign on Tuesday so your kids can walk over to my house for the Easter Party/Easter Egg Hunt. They are so excited! Laura Hamm and Kelli Huddleston are hosting the party.

We get an Easter Holiday! Good Friday and Easter Monday!

Dr. Seuss Week

Welcome to Dr. Seuss, Book Report, Countdown to Spring Break Week! In other words, per usual, there’s a lot going on in Kindergarten.

I’ve broken out my favorite Irish tunes for Morning Arrival music! When I was growing up, my Mom had an LP record of a group called The Irish Rovers. I loved listening to those great storytelling Irish jigs. The music was infectious! I'm enjoying sharing that with the class.

With a new month came a new Calendar for our scholars to work on. They added the first five days and then colored the “March” banner. We discussed new jobs for the week and learned our new Signal Word. I explained our new whole-class incentive: Leprechaun Gold. When the whole class receives a compliment from an adult (besides me), they earn a Gold Coin. When we have collected 10, we will do a special activity. {They earned three Gold Coins on the first day!}

We had our Morning Meeting followed by our Reading Block. I read There’s a Wocket in My Pocket by Dr. Seuss. We listened for rhyming words, particularly the crazy nonsense rhymes Dr. Seuss was so masterful with.

I gave each student a laminated "Cat in the Hat" hat. We made a list of words on the board that rhyme with “hat.” After exhausting the list of C-V-C rhymes, we began to get creative and use beginning consonant blends to make some nonsense words. I asked everyone to choose five of the words from the list to write on their hats. They took these laminated hats back to their desks, where they copied their words onto a paper version of the hat. They colored these, then placed them into folders to take home.

Next up, we did our Reading Groups. Two groups read books from their Book Bins. Two groups did an activity in their Fine Motor Journals with sticker letters and colored pencils. Two groups played a March Sight Word game with Mrs. Wolfe. Two groups read “Cobweb the Cat” to me and did a pot ‘o gold word matching activity with me.

For our Math Block, we kicked off by writing our numerals 0-9 on a strip of paper. Mrs. Wolfe and I corrected these. Then I called everyone up to the carpet where I read, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss. I showed the class my sample of a fish bowl craft, then got them started with making their own. They cut out their fish bowls and colored the water. Then they could get some sand and some kelp to cut out and glue on. They chose five fish in any combination of colors – blue, red, green, yellow, or orange – to glue into their bowls. As they finished this part, we gave them a little paper where they wrote the number of each color fish they had used, then added the numbers together to arrive at the total number of fish in their bowls.

Students took out their Math Workbooks and completed the page about subtraction. Everyone played Math Partner Games or played with Busy Bags.

After Lunch and Recess, I explained the Building Writers lesson. There were two pages to do, which was a lot for many of our students. We did as much as time allowed.

I read Tar Beach by our Artist of the Month (for February), Faith Ringgold. The book is a story she wrote based on a story quilt she made. In the story, the little girl (which is supposed to be her when she was 8 years old) imagines she can fly in the sky above the Brooklyn apartment where her family lives. She dreams that everything she flies over, she can own. So she flies over the George Washington Bridge, the Union Building, and an Ice Cream Factory.

When we finished reading, I showed the kids my sample Art Project and told them we would do the first part. We had a discussion about what they would like to fly over so they could own it. I asked them to use pencil to draw their idea on their project paper. Once everybody had their drawing done, I collected these and said we would finish them on Thursday.

I began reading the March Mystery, then we sang our Goodbye.

On Thursday, the adorable factor was through the roof as our class arrived for Book Report Day! They were so excited to share their presentations!

But first, there was Morning Work and Morning Meeting. In Morning Meeting, we finished the second Little Pilgrim's Big Journey book. We read the entire last chapter. The main character, Christiana, is called by the King to come to the Celestial City, but her brothers and her friend are not summoned yet. Christiana is excited to finally get to meet the King and to see her brother, Christian, again. This chapter led to lots of questions about crossing the "River of Death" and getting to heaven. We had a wonderful discussion. If your child has more questions about going to heaven, this is why.

I did a brief mini-lesson about plural words using my "S- wand." I have a little wand with a glittery "S" on the end. When I hold it at the end of a word, it magically changes the word form singular to plural.

We did some Book Report presentations. Some of you expressed interest in knowing what books were shared, so you can add to your home reading lists:

Elsie = The Wolf The Duck and The Mouse by Mac Barnett

Adalyn = Busy Betty and the Circus Surprises by Reese Witherspoon

Calvin = The Mixed-Up Chameleon by Eric Carle

Caleb = Who Would Win: The Ultimate Bug Rumble by Jerry Pallotta

Grant = Ferdinand by Munro Leaf

Wyatt = Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

Noah = The Lost Puppy by Holly Webb

We took a bit of a break then completed our Writing lesson. When all were finished and checked, we had Snack and Recess.

When we came back inside, I taught the Math lesson and asked the kids to complete their Math page. I checked these and then called everyone to gather for our second round of Book Reports.

Lachion = The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas

Mila = The Old Rock is Not Boring by Deb Pilutti

Graham = If I Built A Car by Chris van Dusen

Lois = Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges

Nolan = Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault

Chloe = Find Fergus by Mike Boldt

Jack = Family Huddle by Peyton, Eli, and Archie Manning

Hollis = Your Brave Song by Ann Voskamp

I was so proud of all the students! They all did a great job presenting for the class. And everybody seemed to have fun being the audience, too.

We had Lunch and Recess. I explained the next steps on the Art Project. They were to use sharpies to outline the pencil drawings they had created on Tuesday, then use markers to color their picture. Finally, they were to add 1" fabric squares as a border.

While the artists were at work, I called them to bring their Gold Tags to purchase items from the Class Store.

Mrs. Wolfe and I finished reading the March Mystery, then we sang our Goodbyes!

We did it, my friends! We have made it through 3/4 of Kindergarten!

Requesting prayer for the last quarter,

Mrs. Duckworth

Coming Up, etc.

Progress Reports: If I didn't catch you and give this to you this morning at drop-off, it was placed in your child's folder. Please check for it and let me know if you have questions.

Kindergarten Graduation: You'll be starting to hear about this after Break. Save the date: Thursday, May 16, 1 p.m. in the Castle.

Spring Break!

All About Those Teeth

Of the many milestones your children reach, losing their first tooth is one of the most exciting of their young lives. And this typically coincides with their Kindergarten year. I enjoy hearing "tooth stories:" I swallowed it! I lost it while I was eating an apple! My Dad pulled it! I was wiggling it and it just fell out! My brother punched it!

This week, we talked about taking care of our teeth.

Our diminutive scholars arrived on Tuesday all perky and ready for a grueling day of Kindergarten. They quickly caught up their February Calendars, then cut out and colored their pictures of "a baby screaming." {This is what they were calling it! It's actually just a person with their mouth wide open to show all their teeth.} I asked them to tuck these away for Mathematical use.

We met for our Morning Meeting. I told the students we would be attending the Wax Museum in a little while. We read our story from the third reader (!!!) "Cobweb the Cat" and learned a poem called "Tooth Fairy." We went over some Wax Museum etiquette, then ventured forth to see who we could meet. I was so pleased with how well they interacted with and paid kind attention to the presentations!

After debriefing a bit about what we had seen, I read George Washington's Teeth by Deborah Chandra. I bought this book years ago for my daughters. It was a family favorite. My girls always ask if I've read it to my class each year! They know their History Geek Mama well enough to know the answer is always, "yes!"

We used various crayon colors to mark sight words in our copies of the poem from earlier, "Tooth Fairy."

I asked two students to come up in front and hold signs. One read: Bad for my teeth. The other read: Good for my teeth. As I held up various foods, the rest of the class determined which category they belonged in.

We had our Snack and Recess, then came back in for the Math Block. The class warmed up by writing their name on a strip of lined paper, then writing numerals 0 - 9. We made corrections with students as necessary, then collected the strips.

I asked students to take out their "screaming babies" and write an X on each tooth they have lost (if any). I wrote the numbers 0-5 on the board. I asked for any students who had lost zero teeth to bring their screaming babies to me and I tacked them up horizontally beside the 0. We did the same with the other numbers until we had a giant Pictograph. We talked about our data and made comparisons.

Next, I called everyone to gather at the carpet so we could talk about the Math topic, which was "Pounds." I had brought a bag of dumbbells and other weights from home. I called on various students to come up and hold the different weights in one hand and compare it to some hardback books in the other hand. Which weighed more or less? Everyone got a turn to try one of the weights (1-lb., 3-lb., 5-lb., or 10-lb.) and some books.

They took out their Math workbooks and completed their page. We assisted with and corrected these.

I told everyone that they were going to get the chance to be Dental Hygienists. We divided into pairs and got supplies, then went to work. {Calvin and Grant, above, made a great team!} Each team had an empty ice tray, a bag of pom-poms, a toothbrush, and a flosser. The first team member stuffed the pom-poms (germs and food particles) between the humps of the upside-down ice tray (the teeth). The second team member was the Hygienist. Their job was to use the toothbrush and floss to clean out all the little germies! Then, they switched jobs with their partner. I got this activity idea from a Tooth Fairy who has visited our school the last couple of years for Dental Hygiene Week. I'm not sure why the Tooth Fairy didn't return this year, but I borrowed her activity idea! The kids loved it!

Just before Lunch, I read The Selfish Crocodile by Faustin Charles. We had a great discussion about what "selfish" means and how the little mouse in the story was very brave.

Following Lunch and Recess, we came in to have a Writing mini-lesson. I introduced Information Writing, as well as the terms, "Realism" and "Fantasy." I threw out some ideas for stories and asked if they would be Realism or Fantasy. The class got out their Writing books and copied the two facts about bats. I made corrections and checked their work.

I asked for everyone to help clean up our tables to prepare for our Theme Study activity. I sat in my chair behind the horseshoe table and showed everyone a picture of how the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra is laid out. It's a semi-circle, just like our table. I had copied and laminated pictures of all the instruments included in the KSO. I introduced the four families of instruments then all of the instruments in those families. I laid the pictures all out on the table facing a little picture of the conductor. We talked about how the 1st chair Violinist would stand and get the orchestra all tuned up before the Conductor walked out. We discussed some theater etiquette.

I read from the February Mystery book, then we sang our Goodbye.

Wednesday was our Symphony Field Trip Day! It was a pleasure meeting up with you there and seeing all the kids with their families attending. Isn't this concert a wonderful gift to our community from our Symphony? I always love seeing what fun programs the KSO comes up with that are geared to our littles. The Space Theme was a great choice for this one.

The kids were still very excited about the Symphony when they arrived on Thursday morning. They caught up their Calendars, then colored an activity booklet about Leap Year.

At Morning Meeting, we discussed some things they saw/liked at the concert. We tried our best to describe it to those who were not able to be there.

Everyone was excited that we got to read a whole chapter of Little Pilgrim, so we got way ahead of Red Class!

We read "Yuck!" from our reader, then I introduced the little dittie, "When two vowels go a-walkin', the first one does the talkin'." I showed them the vowel team "ea" and explained that the "e" says its name and the "a" is silent. This dittie is true for many vowel teams, but it isn't a universal rule. Think "thief" or "said." We read the words "leap" and "year," for obvious reasons!

I taught them "The Leap Year Poem" ("Thirty days hath September, ..."), then asked them to go to their desks to mark vowel team words and read the poem again.

While students worked on a Leap Year frog craft, of which I had placed a sample on the board, Mrs. Wolfe and I called students to come read compound words or phrases/sentences from the Lesson 40 fluency sheets.

I read Doctor DeSoto by William Steig, a fun story about a mouse dentist and his assistant (his wife) who treat a toothache in the mouth of a hungry fox.

We had our Snack and an indoor recess, since it was pretty cold outside!

For our Math block, we started out by learning the concept of "capacity." I showed several vases of flowers from my desk. We compared the shape and size of the vases and determined which ones would hold the most water. I asked Wyatt and Caleb to come up. I asked the class which boy had the most capacity in his stomach to hold chicken nuggets. There followed an interesting discussion! I got out my Math Workbook and explained the lesson. Then I got out my Writing Workbook and taught them how to use the labels on the page and the words from other sentences to formulate their own sentences. I told the kids that they would do the Math, then immediately get out the Writing to complete it.

While everyone was finishing up and Mrs. Wolfe was correcting Writing, I called students up to count the number of days in a year from a calendar. I used this as an assessment to see how high they could count, so I didn't give any prompts. I allowed them to count until they messed up, then I wrote down the last number they had counted correctly.

When everyone was finished with Writing, we did a whole-class activity with the Calendar pages. I had printed all the monthly calendars in a smaller format and filled in the number of days each has. I asked them to look at the first page, which had January - April. I asked which of the months have 31 days. They replied that January and March do. I asked them to color the number 31 green on both of those months. We went through the rest of the months and did the same. Then, we went through and colored the months that have 30 days with red. They noticed that February was different from all the rest. I asked them to get out their markers and write a 29 on the February Calendar. Then we wrote the words "Leap Year" underneath. We flipped the paper over to the back and wrote the number "366."

We discussed that Leap Year comes every four years, figured out when the next one will be and what grade the students will be in. We talked about other things that happen every four years, like the Olympics and Presidential Elections. I told them that Mrs. Wolfe's son, Aaron, was born on Leap Day! Although this in only his 9th birthday, he is actually 36 years old!

Since I still have my planets hanging from the ceiling, I pointed at the Earth and the Sun and showed how the Earth takes one year to orbit the Sun. Actually, it takes 365 days, 6 hours, some minutes and seconds. So every four years, we add another day to our Calendar so the orbit matches up with our Calendar.

We read a few poems from the Animal Poetry book then had Lunch and Recess. Since we had gotten all our work done in the morning and since it was Leap Day, I gave the kids an extra 15 minutes of outdoor recess!

Angela had made arrangements for the organist from her church to come and demonstrate some of the instruments she plays. However, at the last minute, the girl's work schedule changed so that she couldn't join us. Instead, Angela asked her husband Eamonn to come do a musical demo for us. He brought a keyboard and an acoustic guitar. Ms. Simmons' class joined us for a fun, interactive music lesson. Eamonn was a natural with the kids and did a fantastic job of connecting with them through music they loved and recognized. He allowed each student a turn playing his keyboard using whatever sound they wanted.

Mrs. Wolfe read from the March Mystery then we sang our Goodbyes.

A bit windblown and chilly,

Mrs. Duckworth

Coming Up, etc.

Shout out! to Kim Johnson for coordinating the KSO Field Trip! It's a tricky one to plan, but we are so grateful for her work in doing it! Thank you!

Shout out! to Angela Cottrell for setting up a fun, up-close music experience and to Eamonn Cottrell for his willingness to come and "wing it" with our kids! It was wonderful!

Book Reports next Thursday! We will spread the presentations throughout the morning, so we can have some breaks to do some more active things. If your student has a costume, you can just send it and I'll have them change into it when it's time for their presentation. Please also send a copy of the book, so we're all able to look at it.

Our Second Class Store: I've got to squeeze this in sometime next week, too! I'm trying for Thursday.

Progress Reports go home on Thursday. I will hand these directly to you at pickup.

Can it be? Spring Break is already here? March 11-15 is Spring Break!

Presidential Week

Hey! I had a great time teaching more about a couple of our Presidents this week in Blue Class. Since Kindergarten is usually students' first exposure to these important historical figures, I like to emphasize three well-known ones: Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.

On Tuesday, students came in and caught up on their February Calendars, then did a fun "around the room" activity called "Lincoln's Letters." The kids were excited to receive a clipboard (wow!) with their paper. They grabbed pencils then Mrs. Wolfe and I showed them how to find the little pictures of Lincoln on the walls around the room, numbered 1 - 16. At the bottom of each picture were two letters of the alphabet and an empty box. They had to figure out the missing letter and write it in the numbered box on their paper. When they had successfully completed this, they colored the picture of Abraham Lincoln at the bottom of the page, then placed the paper into their Take-Home Folder.

We enjoyed our Morning Meeting, then re-convened at the carpet for Reading. I introduced compound words by talking about "doing surgery" on these long words to cut them apart into two smaller words. Cobweb = cob + web. We went through all the AAR cards for the lesson.

I placed cards into our Pocket Chart to make some predictable sentences about Abraham Lincoln. We learned some facts about him as we read these sentences. At desks, students filled in the Sight Word "He" in each sentence on their sheet. I called on various students to read the sentences aloud, then we repeated each one.

In Reading Groups, two groups listened to Everywhere, Wonder by Matthew Swanson. Two groups did Write the Room: Dental Health theme. Two groups played a word game with Mrs. Wolfe. And two groups did a dot marker Digraph activity and played a spinner game about consonant blends with me.

I read Abe Lincoln: The Boy Who Loved Books by Kay Winters.

For our Math Block, we started with something big! Really big! Of course, the kids had noticed it right when they entered the classroom. I had hung a life-sized outline of Abraham Lincoln on the back of the kitchen door. With his iconic tall, black hat, he was 7' tall! So, we all got a turn standing next to him to measure our height next to his! Then I asked everyone to go to their desks to draw and label a picture of themselves standing next to him. Several of the kids remembered coming to my classroom to do this last year when they were in Ms. Simmons' Pre-K class.

I asked everyone to retrieve their Reading Buddies, then we used links and square tiles to measure their length.

Mrs. Wolfe had placed a real penny and a recording sheet on each desk. I explained that the penny has a picture of Abraham Lincoln on the "heads" side and a picture of the Lincoln Memorial (we had just learned about this in Reading) on the "tails" side. I asked them to predict whether they thought their penny would land more times on heads or tails. They recorded their prediction. They flipped the penny ten times and recorded which way it landed for each. Then they made tally marks and a bar graph to match their data.

We got out Math Workbooks and did the page, using Square Tiles as our measurement tool. Early finishers played with Busy Bags.

When everyone was finished, we did a Directed Drawing of Abraham Lincoln.

In the afternoon, we had a Writing mini-lesson, then wrote stories.

Finally, I read Ezra Jack Keats' The Snowy Day and we began a craft project that showed Cause and Effect in the story. Mrs. Wolfe read from February Friend, then we sang our Goodbye.

Thursday morning started out with February Calendars and coloring a poem page. I asked them to save the poem on their desks to use later.

We had our Morning Meeting, then got into the Reading Block. We learned the poem "Abraham" then sang it to the tune of "Jingle Bells" several times. At their desks, students took out their copy of the poem and we marked several Sight Words with various crayon colors. They've gotten so good at this activity, that they kept suggesting other Sight Words we could mark in the poem! That's a huge HURRAY!

I gave out Partner Cards and the kids found their partners for the board game "Washington's Words." All the teams did such a great job of playing together and helping each other with reading the word cards! There were Sight Words, Color Words, and Number Words. They were so into it! I went around to each team and gave them all Gold Tags for doing such good partner work.

We went to Reading Groups and did our other two rotations.

I read Lewis and Clark: A Prairie Dog for the President by Shirley-Raye Redmond. I told the kids it featured my favorite President. They tried to guess, but no one came up with the answer: Thomas Jefferson. This little book is a Level 3 reader and is so well-written and funny! The kids really enjoyed it.

For Math, we warmed up by singing our 3's Song and then counting by 2's to 30. I introduced measuring with a ruler, showing the inches and the centimeters that are on the typical ruler. Then, I had everyone take turns measuring their feet against the size of George Washington's boots! I had outlined a size 13 shoe on the floor! I used my ruler to measure how many inches their feet were.

At their desks, Mrs. Wolfe had placed everyone's rulers. I asked them to measure the length of their name plate, then the width. We helped them to make sure they were measuring correctly. They measured the length of their pencil boxes, then the height. I asked them to measure the height of their chair or stool legs. I demonstrated what to do if the object being measured was longer than their ruler. I asked them to measure across the desk top, then down the length. The kids started helping each other out by lining up several students' rulers to go the length of the table. Then I told them to find two things anywhere in the room and measure them. They measured books, charts, art projects, George Washington's boots, the President Lincoln outline, my shoes (I had three girls around my feet measuring me), etc., etc. They didn't want to stop!

When we finished all our measuring, we got out our Math Workbooks and completed the page.

Students played with Busy Bags and Math Games until time for Lunch. Just before Lunch, I read a book Mila had brought in for us to read. (or so I thought! She showed it to me and I asked if she wanted me to read it to the class. She asked several times throughout the morning and I told her I would read it at Lunch time. Turns out, when I mentioned this to Laura at pickup, she said Mila was just supposed to be showing it to me for her Book Report! Oops!) The book was Old Rock is Not Boring by Deb Pilutti. I hadn't read it before. It's really cute!

After Lunch and Recess, we made an Idea Tree. I asked Lois to come up and draw a tree trunk with branches on a sheet of posterboard. I explained what "brainstorming" is and how it helps us come up with ideas for stories, because sometimes, we just don't know what we want to write about. As each student shared an idea, I wrote it on a green heart-shaped stickie, and asked that student to attach it to our Idea Tree. They were surprised to see how each Idea sparked other Ideas, until our brains were creating a whole storm of Ideas! By the time we wrapped up, they were mad that I had to cut them off so we could have time to write! I put on some calm piano music and asked them to work quietly for 20 minutes. I put on a timer. I worked with students to sound out words as they wrote their story ideas on one of the two pages. I allowed them to choose which format page they wanted to use. I chose two students' work to share with the class (Jack and Hollis). If your student ran out of time to finish their story, please have them work on it at home tomorrow. If they did finish, have them read it to you.

By the way, when Kindergarten students are writing stories, I don't bog them down too much with perfection. I mainly want them to see that they can take an Idea and get it down on paper so others can read it. I do ask them to correct reversals in letters that alter the meaning of a word, such as "bab" when they are writing about "Dad." I use Writing as a means to see what phonics they've learned. If they can hear the sound /u/ and write a "u" or the sound /th/ and write the letters "th," then I know what they've internalized about phonics we've learned so far. They don't have the tools yet to do a lot of sounds like /oo/, /ow/, etc. They may put some random "y's" and other letters, but that is the sound they are hearing when they say the word. That's okay! This is a stepping stone. Resist the temptation to spell words for them or to correct their spelling, unless it's a sound you know they should know. In that case, I would say, "I notice you used "e" in that word, but the sound is /i/. Do you hear that? Can you fix it?"

Bottom line = we want them to be excited to write! Let them see that they can convey something by writing.

We finished the Snowy Day Cause and Effect Project by adding Peter's snowsuit, face, and hair, then matching up the "effects" to the "causes" we had glued in on Tuesday. They were excited to bring these home today.

I read a bit of the mystery book, then we sang Goodbye.

And that's a wrap!

Adjusting to the Freezing mornings and Balmy afternoons (it's okay, I'll take it!)

Mrs. Duckworth

Coming Up, etc.

Send new Reader: Cobweb the Cat starts on Tuesday

Symphony Field Trip! Wednesday, February 28th. If you're attending the Symphony, please meet at the Clayton Center. Details are being communicated by Kim Johnson. Mrs. Wolfe, Ms. Masters, and I will be meeting our classes at the venue. Our Red Day classes are coming, too, so we'll split our time hanging out with each class.

When the syllabus was laid out last Spring and Summer, we had a tentative date for the Symphony (Feb. 29). That's why the syllabus has that date all over it. Since our Moms chose the Clayton Center venue rather than the Tennessee Theater venue, the date is February 28.

Thank You! for your quick response to my call for paper towels. Many of you sent them today.

Leap Day! Hey! Blue Class gets an extra day at school next week that Red won't get because of the Symphony Field Trip. AND it's a special extra day in the calendar. (Mrs. Wolfe has a son who was a Leap Day Baby!) We'll do some fun Leap Day activities and we'll have a visit from a musician friend of Angela's in the afternoon.

A note about personal belongings: My class rule is that no toys or other items should be brought to school unless we are having a special day and I have notified you that you should send something. Please make every effort to make sure your child isn't smuggling toys to school in their backpack. There's a host of reasons for this, which I will happily share with you, if you'd like to discuss.

Valentine's Week

It was a beautiful Valentine's Day all week long in Kindergarten! We did lots of things to celebrate.

On Tuesday, the kids came in and worked on catching up their February Calendars, then did their February Craft - a smiley-faced heart. They had lots of pieces to cut out. These turned out very well and will go into their Calendar Folders.

We discussed new jobs for the week, then held our Morning Meeting. We paused for lots of conversation about the Super Bowl, Daddy/Daughter Dance, and the Oak Grove Valentine Dance. We did our Daily Sentence Building (Who, What, Where), our Daily Sentence Edit, and Joke of the Day.

To start out our Reading Block, I taught them about Ninja E. He sneaks up and scares the other vowel in the word and makes the vowel scream its name, but he is silent and you don't say his sound. We looked at the words "like" and "here" as examples. This really captured Grant's imagination! He spent the rest of the day x-ing out Ninja E's on words.

We read some predictable sentences about candy hearts: "Here is the red candy heart. Here is the orange candy heart." We tried to imagine what flavor each of these candies would be according to their colors.

At their desks, the students filled in the word "Here" at the beginning of each sentence. They had to color the heart at the end of the sentence the color that matched the color word in the sentence. When everyone was finished, we checked the work, then read the sentences again from the paper.

In Reading Groups, we had Book Bins, a sorting activity with Sports You Do in the Snow and Sports You Do Not Do in the Snow, a Word Game with Mrs. Wolfe, and a Valentine delivery game with me.

Our read-aloud for the day was a class favorite! I had ordered a couple of books by this author from the Library to use in class last week when we were supposed to do picture books with no words. The books weren't available then, so I decided to use them this week. This Caldecott Award Winner by David Wiesner was called, Tuesday. Obviously, with no words, the story was told very skillfully with imaginative illustrations. I held up the book and the kids told what was happening on each page. They hooted and hollered and got so excited about this book!

Mrs. Wolfe set out our tools for Math. We warmed up by counting to 20 forward and backward. I sent everyone to their desks and asked them to open up their two containers of counters (each having ten shaped erasers or two-color counters) and their packet of number cards (two sets of #11-20), then set these on their double-ten-frame.

As I called out teen numbers, everyone built the number with counters on the ten-frames, then found the matching number card and placed it down on their ten-frame mat. We did several of these. We cleaned this up, then got out our Math Workbooks and did the Connect-the-Dots picture and colored it.

When all were finished and checked, we worked on a Groundhog Craft. I had planned to do this last week, but our materials didn't arrive from Amazon in time. Oh, well! Students cut out and colored a groundhog. I taped it onto a sheet of black construction paper, then gave them a piece of white chalk to color around the groundhog. When he "wakes up," he sees his shadow on the ground! Of course, the kids were quick to point out that P. Phil didn't see his shadow this year. But they still loved making their craft! Lachion is showing off his project in the picture above.

After Lunch and Recess, we discussed our Building Writers assignment. Students volunteered ideas of what they would do at a Water Park. I helped them think through the sentence they would write and how many words they would write. We looked at the word bank that was on the page then discussed how to go about Smarty Spelling words that were not on the page. Everyone went to their desks to do their writing and coloring.

I called everyone to the front with their pencils and erasers to do a Directed Drawing of sorts. I gave them a sheet with the verse John 3:16 printed on it. On each line, a letter was missing.

First, we turned the paper over and practiced making some hearts. We made sure we could fit a letter inside our hearts. I asked students to make hearts with each letter of their name. Then we flipped the paper over and drew 9 hearts down the middle of the page, vertically. I called out the letters and they wrote a letter in each heart, until they had spelled the word, "Valentine." I asked them to color the hearts, go over their letters with a thin sharpie, then glue the paper to a colorful, Valentiney paper.

We read some of February Friend and then sang our Goodbye.

Thursday was full of excitement as the kids entered bearing their Valentine treats for their classmates. They settled down to fill in the two days on their February Calendars, then do a Heart-shaped Wordle with some of the January Sight Words.

We had our Morning Meeting and did all the regular routine. I talked them through our different schedule for the day, including Store! and a Valentine Party!

I asked students to bring their Readers to the carpet so we could read, "Frank Shrank." Then we learned a short poem called, "With You." They went to their desks and marked some Sight Words in the poem with various colors. I asked them to use those same colors on the picture at the bottom. We collected these to include in our Calendar Folders.

I had set up all the Class Store items in containers and grouped them according to how much they cost - 5, 10, or 15 Gold Tags. I took some time to show the kids all the different things, so they could be familiar with what was available.

Rather than doing full-on Reading Groups, I asked the class to get their Reading Buddies and Book Bins. I placed the Class Store on the front table and pulled Number Sticks to invite students to come shop. Everyone was able to buy at least one item with their Gold Tags. All the items are toys that y'all have donated as our Incentive Suppliers (thank you!!!). Students had to have at least 5 Gold Tags to purchase items. They were all very happy with their purchases and shopped much more quickly than I had anticipated.

I read The House of Love by Adriana Trigiani. It's a little bit wordy, so I summarized some of the pages. It's a sweet book about a little girl and her Mom who make Valentine's Day special for their large family.

For Math, we used the #11-20 Number Card sets with dry-erase boards. First, I asked the students to sort out their Number Cards and put them in number order from 11 to 20. I asked them to place the duplicate of each card on top of its match. Then I called out a number, asked students to show me that card, then write the number on their board. We did all the teen numbers and 20. For a special challenge, we ended by writing all the numbers 11-20 on the boards! We corrected reversals. I was very pleased that all of the students were catching on. This is really good practice for them.

We didn't have a Math Workbook page to do, so we went to the carpet to discuss our Building Writers assignment for the day. This time, we were to write about a visit to the Park. We looked at the word bank and illustration provided and talked about what sentences we could make. Students successfully composed sentences beginning with "I can," "I like," or "We can." I chose Wyatt's and Nolan's workbooks to share in front of the class. I pointed out at least 3 "Likes" about their work and a "Wish," if there is something they could do better. We ended by giving each of these students a "Firework Cheer."

We ate Lunch and cleaned the room to prepare for our Valentine Party. Megan Fletcher and Deitra McComas threw the party for us.

Megan said they wanted to concentrate on Friendship as a theme. She read a cute friendship story called, Pine and Boof by Ross Burach. Megan is a very animated story-teller and the kids loved hearing her read! When she finished the story, she divided the students into two groups.

One group of kids got to decorate gift bags with stickers, doilies, googly eyes, and markers with Deitra. The other group went into the hallway with Megan, where she had set up a table with craft paper and stick paints. She asked them to make a mural about Friendship. The kids painted scenes of playing on the playground, siblings, etc. After a little while, the two groups switched places. All the students got to deliver their special Valentines to each other and drop them into the decorated Valentine bags. They loved seeing all the cards and treats from everyone!

Everyone got to enjoy a snack of Oreos and Popcorn as they did a Valentine color-by-number. Megan read another friendship-themed book by Mo Willems about Elephant and Piggie. We thanked the Moms for the wonderful party.

I read (or I should say, "showed") another David Wiesner picture book. This was another of his Caldecott Medal winners called, Flotsam. This book is day-dream-like in its imaginative illustrations of scenes happening under the sea. A boy finds an old box camera on the shore, takes the film to the One-Hour Photo Shop (I had to explain that!) to be processed, then studies the beautiful pictures. It's really cool! Even though this wasn't funny like Tuesday, the kids appreciated it for the unique and fun story it was. Then I read a couple of chapters from February Friend.

We collected all our wonderful treats and sang our Goodbye.

That's a shiny-foil, box-of-chocolates wrap!

Lovingly Yours,

Mrs. Duckworth

Coming Up, etc.

Shout Out! to all of you that signed up to be Incentive Suppliers! You've brought in wonderful things for the kids to buy in the store. They are so motivated to do the right thing so they can earn Gold Tags. Thank you!

Shout Out! to Deitra McComas and Megan Fletcher for the Valentine party. Y'all are such pros with the kids! Thank you!

Happy Valentine's Day, Sweet Moms and Dads! You fill my heart with joy! I'm so glad to get to teach your kids and to get to know your families! I love you all!

Full Swinging Our February

Hello again, my Blue Class Fans!

We filled in the days up to the 6th on our February Calendars to start off the week. Afterward, students could get out their Fine Motor Journals and decorate a page or two with Washi tape and brightly-colored masking tape. They were so engaged, I started to cancel lessons for the day and just let them create.

Just kidding!

We met for Morning Meeting and did our usual routine. We changed up a couple of elements for the new month. Our Joke of the Day has become a Knock, Knock Joke of the Day. As you can imagine, this opens up a boatload of reciprocation, i.e., I get to enjoy their made-up Knock, Knock Jokes the rest of the day! Also, I've added a little something I call "The Daily Edit." I put a sentence strip on the board sporting a sentence that needs some help from our Kindergarten Editorial Staff! They have to tell me how to fix it! It takes a few days of doing it for them to really catch on (as I experienced last year, when I first tried this), but then they start to look forward to it each day. The edits will have to do with Handwriting Rules, letter formation, spelling of Sight Words, etc.

After a Stretch and Water Break, we returned to the carpet with our AAR Readers so we could read "The Bat and King Sam" together. We worked on reading fluently, comprehension, and inferencing from the illustrations.

We read some predictable sentences in our Pocket Chart that utilized quotation marks and many of our Sight Words. The pattern was, "My mom said, "Get on your ______." She was directing the child to dress warmly to play in the snow. Once the child donned all the gear, Mom said that he could go out and play!

At desks, students cut out six words to make a sentence about ice skating, glued them in the correct order, then wrote the resulting sentence.

In Reading Groups, students did a Write the Room with Arctic Animals Theme, listened to The Three Billy Goats Gruff with headphones, played a Word Game with Mrs. Wolfe, or read from the Reader and made C-V-C words with me.

I read The Missing Mitten Mystery by Steven Kellogg.

For our Math Block, we crammed in a lot of activities. First, I introduced the concept of "ten and some more" by using my Magnetic Ten-Frame on the front board. We started with ten counters on the first Ten-Frame, then added one more at a time to the second one. As I added each counter, I wrote the numeral and we sang a little tune with it. After we had sung through to 20, I invited students to come to the board to write the number of Tally Marks to correspond with each numeral.

Students went to their desks where we had placed a container of coins (just pennies and nickels) and one dime. First, I had everyone pick up the dime and we described it and told its value. Then I asked them to place it on their desk and add one penny at a time beside it until we got to 19. We sang the same tune we had sung when filling the Ten-Frame on the board. When we got to 20, I gave them another dime. We collected the coin containers.

Next, students wrote their names on an Ice Cream Cone page. The Ice Cream had numbers 0-20 on it. As I held up cards illustrating the numbers on Ten-Frames, students found the number and colored it on their Ice Cream.

Everyone got out their Math Workbooks and we helped them do the lesson page, then checked it.

After Lunch and Recess, we did a mini-lesson about our Writing assignment. I showed them on the globe where India is, then we talked through how to form the sentences describing travel to India.

We gathered at the carpet again to learn a bit about Pablo Picasso (actually our January Artist of the Month). I showed some of his paintings so students could see his unique style! I ended this by showing the painting we would be emulating: "Three Musicians" (1921). {https://www.pablopicasso.org/three-musicians.jsp} I showed the class my sample of the Art Project we would do. Rather than painting, we made a collage using pieces of scrapbook paper on a sheet music background. I told them they needed to have three people - they could do boys or girls. After they built the bodies, they could choose three musical instruments (we had also photo copied these) to place in their musicians' hands.

We'll save these for the Graduation Art Show.

We started off our Thursday by catching up our Calendars (only two days to fill in, so this was quick), then cutting ovals and circles with decorative scissors and adding Valentine stickers to our Fine Motor Journals. Again, they're loving the creative time!

The kids are enjoying my "Love Playlist" and really perk up when they hear Taylor Swift and Ed Sheerin, among others.

Morning Meeting was followed by our Reading Block.

We started off with a little phonemic awareness routine. I gave the students a word and asked for a rhyming word. Then I said a word and asked them to change the beginning sound, then the ending sound, then the medial sound.

We learned some things about George Washington by building some sentences about him, starting with, "This is George Washington." Each of the other sentences began with the word "He," and told a fact about him. "He was the 1st President." "He is on the dollar bill." etc.

At their desks, students had a sheet with a copy of all the sentences we had made together about George Washington. They filled in the Sight Word "He" in each sentence, then colored the pictures. I called on students to read the sentences aloud, then the whole class repeated them.

I showed a picture of the painting, "Washington Crossing the Delaware" by Emanuel Leutze. We discussed it and made observations.

We did our two Reading Group rotations, then gathered for the Read-Aloud, My Little Golden Book About George Washington by Lori H. Houran. I do love teaching History (and Art History), so it's fun for me to get to introduce important historical figures to our students. For most of them, it's their first exposure to History, so I'm laying a foundation that you and subsequent teachers can build upon!

Following Snack and Recess (we've had the most beautiful days this week and have soaked up the sun during our outdoor playtimes!), we came back in to get to work on our Math.

This was a day of new concepts, which called for some songs! First, to work on our counting backward from 20, I taught a little song called, "Zoom! We're Going to the Moon!" At the end of it, we counted down from 20 to 0 and did a Blast Off!

Next, I taught them how to count by 3's then introduced my 3's Song (to the tune of "Once Upon a December" from Anastasia.

We reviewed our little Ten and Some More Song from Tuesday, while I again added counters on the Magnetic Ten-Frame.

At desks, I asked students to write their numerals 0 - 9 on a little strip of paper. We corrected these, if students had reversals. We will start doing this each day to start out Math Lessons, so students get those numerals ingrained.

Again, we used the coin containers. I asked students to separate the coins into three piles: pennies, nickels, and dimes. First, we counted the pennies by 1's, then the nickels by 5's, and the dimes by 10's. Then I made up some items that we were going to purchase with our coins and asked the students to show me the coins they would use to buy them. We cleaned these up, then got out Math Workbooks and completed the lesson.

I called everyone back to the carpet to do a Directed Drawing of George Washington. They drew each part by copying what I drew on the board, step by step. They went back to desks and colored these. They used the illustrations from our Read-Aloud to get the colors of his uniform right. We hung these in our Classroom Gallery.

After Recess, we did our Writing Lesson about traveling to China. When everyone was finished and checked, we gathered for our Theme Study. We solved our first classroom Mystery: The Case of the Secret Valentine. Bear had received a Valentine from a Secret Friend. We had to use the clues to help us figure out who it was from! After the first two clues eliminated 2 of the 5 suspects, students went to their desks to make a prediction who the Secret Valentine was from. After Clue #3, they went back to desks and eliminated another suspect (and revised their predictions). After Clue #4, we eliminated the next-to-last suspect, so we figured out the Secret Valentine Sender! Kids went back to their predictions again and drew a picture of the Cactus! who was the Sender. Very Fun!

I finished reading the January Mystery Book, then we sang our Goodbye.

That's a wrap!

Basking in the Spring-like Days,

Mrs. Duckworth

Coming Up, etc.

Book Reports: Thanks to those who have let me know the book your child is doing for their report.

Valentine Party: Thursday, February 15 (12:30)

Our First Class Store: I'll squeeze this in on Thursday also. Students will get their first opportunity to spend their Gold Tags!

Symphony Trip: February 28th at 11:00. This is different than what the syllabus says. It had been scheduled tentatively on the syllabus for Thursday the 29th, but Kim Johnson was able to secure reserved seating for us at the Clayton Center (Maryville) venue on the 28th. As this is normally a Home Day for you, please catch up your syllabus work for that day at another time. Mrs. Wolfe, Ms. Masters, and I will all be attending the concert. If you're attending the concert, we will just meet at the venue. Following the concert, you may take your student on home.

100^th Day of School Week

Here’s what’s been happening in Kindergarten this week:

Tuesday morning, our scholars arrived early and ready to learn! They got right to work on their January Calendars. We are working on numeral formation, along with proper Calendar Form. Students also found a little library pocket on their desk, which they will use for storing their Gold Tags. I asked them to write their name on the pocket and to decorate it, if they wanted. I gave everyone two Gold Tags to get them started. I gave out lots of others throughout the day.

At Morning Meeting, we had some time for sharing anecdotes (of which there were many!). I took some prayer requests and prayed. We noticed that we are on Day 96 of school, therefore, they were confused that our 100^th Day Party will not actually be on the 100^th day of school! Many were confused, thinking that the 100^th Day is the last day of school. No, no, my dears! There’s much more to come! {Correction: Ms. Simmons brought it to my attention that I had forgotten to count the 4 Snow Days that we were not at Oak Grove, but y'all still did school at home. So it actually was the 100th Day of School! Oops!}

We built a silly sentence: Who? An old woman. What? Is jumping. Where? In a bag. An old woman is jumping in a bag. We told a joke: What do you call a snowman on roller blades? A snow-mobile! Then we looked at the word of the day: groundhog.

After a water break, we began our Reading Block by reading “The Pet Duck.” I taught them what a tongue twister is and we practiced this one: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck…? Did you know that Native Americans called groundhogs “wochuck?” This was later anglicized to “woodchuck.”

Speaking of groundhogs, of course we know that they are hibernating in Winter, soon to be rudely awakened to predict the weather on February 2! I showed everyone a flip book we were going to make with five animals that hibernate in Winter. I asked the kids to go to their desks to make their Hibernation Flip Books. As they finished these, I stapled the parts together, then we read the whole Flip Book.

In Reading Groups, Mrs. Wolfe worked with her groups on a word game. Two groups read from their Book Bins. Two groups did a Tiny Task, which was watching a video about Macaroni Penguins and writing a fact they learned. My groups read an emergent reader about groundhogs and wrote the word “groundhog” on each page.

Our Read-Aloud was The Legend of the Groundhog by Hilary Statum. Before reading, we had a discussion about what a “legend” is so I could see what students already knew. We also discussed why a groundhog would be afraid of his shadow. We stopped frequently during the reading of the booklet, because there were LOADS of questions and observations.

As I called students to line up for hand washing, we did a “Snowy Day Poem” and students got to choose a number card or snow activity card out of my bowl. They had to read the number correctly or act out the snow activity.

It was a mite chilly out, but we still did an outdoor recess!

We warmed up for Math by playing Find That Snowman! The snowman won today, because the students were not able to discover him (behind #17) on the Hundred Chart!

I placed a random number of magnetic letters on the board and told students that we were going to count them without moving them around. At first, the letters were line up neatly in two rows, so when Jack came up to count them for us, it was pretty easy to determine there were 11. I explained that our brains can’t really subitize that many objects; our brains want to group objects into 2’s,’3’s, 4’s, or 5’s. We can subitize objects well when they’re in straight lines that look like our ten-frame. I added some more letters and moved them around on the board until they were in random places. I asked Adalyn to come up and count them. She used my dry-erase marker to put a check by each one as she counted them. We talked about that as a strategy. I then took the marker and drew circles around groups of three, then counted by 3’s to find the total number. I asked a couple more students to come up and show different ways they would group the letters together and count them. Next, I demonstrated that I could hold one finger on a letter that I started counting on, while a moved the pointer finger on my other hand to count all the letters. We discussed that this strategy would be helpful when you didn’t have a pencil to mark them. Finally, I demonstrated counting the letters by moving back and forth randomly around the group and counting some numbers more that once. We discussed what was wonky about that approach.

Everyone had the opportunity to put this skill into practice by completing their Math Workbook page. We supported those that needed help, then checked work.

Once all were done, I gave everyone a small groundhog and asked them to cut it out and color it. I taped a popsicle stick on the back, so they had a little “shadow puppet.” Next, we used our scissors to make a “fringe” of grass on a sheet of green paper, then glued a little poem to it. They glued the grass in a cylinder shape and /or I taped it for them. Then we all put our groundhog puppets down in their “burrows,” made them snore through January 29 and January 30. They started to turn over and stretch a bit on February 1, then they woke up and popped out of their burrows on February 2!

We brought the shadow puppets to the front carpet, turned off the lights, shined a flashlight on the board, and had a groundhog wake-up call! Each student had a turn taking their puppet in front of the class to make its shadow dance, then run away because it got scared of its shadow!

There were a few more minutes before Lunch, so we talked about whether we might see our own shadows outside today. I asked each student to make a prediction about whether or not they would see their shadow when we go outside for Recess later. They drew a picture of themselves, either with or without a shadow, then filled in a blank that read, “will” or “will not.” When we went outside after Lunch, we immediately went up to the parking lot and looked around for our shadows. It was a very sunny day, so they saw their shadows right away! When we went back inside, I asked them to draw another picture at the bottom of the prediction sheet that showed what actually happened.

Next, we gathered at the front carpet to talk about things that make us sad. I showed them the page in the Building Writers book. We read the examples that were in it, then everyone gave ideas of their own. I taught them about Smarty Spelling by explaining that I was going to do something that was very weird as a teacher! If they asked me to spell something, I was going to say, “No, I want you to sound it out and write the sounds you hear!” We did some examples on the board until they understood what I meant. I sent everyone to get their books and complete the sentence. They were very creative in their responses and didn’t let their limited grasp of spelling inhibit their writing! Win! Win! Win! I was very proud of their efforts. You may notice that I put checks on their work, even if it didn’t look perfect. I want to encourage the process of thinking about what they want to say and communicating it in a way that they’re able. So, if I could see how they sounded it out and wrote the sounds they understood, I encouraged that by giving them a check!

Right after Lunch I had placed a tub of ice on the front table. Of course, this drew some curious stares! I asked Mrs. Wolfe to add water to the tub while we went out for recess…lots of questions about that!

I gathered everyone up front and told them we were going to do an experiment about Penguins! We had talked last week about how Penguins are different from us, so we reviewed our schema. I reminded them that we had read that Penguins’ feathers keep their skin from getting wet and that they are able to swim for long periods of time in arctic waters.

I asked Chloe to come up and let me put some Vaseline on both sides of her hand. As I did this, I told the class that Penguins keep their skin dry because of feathers that are coated with oil, rather like what I was putting on Chloe’s hand. She dunked her hand into the ice water, pulled it out, and observed what happened to the water on her skin. The water beaded up and the oil protected her hand from feeling wet. It did feel very weird, though, she said. EVERYBODY wanted to have a turn doing this, but I said that we were going to do another demo first.

Penguins (and other Arctic animals) stay warm because of a layer of blubber beneath their skin. Now, you’ve heard of a Rubber Glove, right? But have you ever heard of a Blubber Glub? I had prepared a Crisco-filled Ziploc contraption that students could put their hand into and take it for a Cold Plunge in our Arctic water! Everybody came up and tried out the Blubber Glub. They were amazed that they couldn’t feel the icy water through it.

Once they had all tried out the Blubber Glub, I let them line up to try the Vaseline hand vs. the naked hand experiment so they could compare how the two felt. Some of them got it line several times. We all washed with Dawn dishwashing liquid to get all the oil off. This is something fun to try again at home!

We ended the day with some January Joker mystery.

On Thursday, we did our first Calendar Folder Monthly Craft Picture - a Penguin! They had to cut out all the pieces, glue them on blue cardstock, then color the penguin and background. They turned out really well. This was their Morning Work.

We had Morning Meeting, followed by our Reading Block. The new sound we were working on for AAR was /-ng/, so we used the word "Spring" as the Word of the Day. We learned a big new vocabulary word: oviparous (creatures that lay eggs in order to reproduce are oviparous). I wrote this sentence on the board: Penguins are oviparous. I gave everyone a strip of paper with those three words in mixed-up order. They had to cut the words apart, then glue them on their Penguin Craft (from Morning Work) in the proper order.

When they finished this, they made a flip book of animals that migrate with the seasons. We got these all put together and colored, then we all read the sentences together.

Everyone went to their two Reading Group rotations, then we met on the carpet where I read the Caldecott Medal-winning book, Extra Yarn. The kids said, "Is this gonna be a funny book?" After we started, they decided that it was. It's a cute, imaginative story with fun illustrations by Jon Klassen (This is Not My Hat, I Want My Hat Back). Wyatt commented, "I didn't know a story about yarn would have stealing in it!" (The Archduke, who looked like a pirate, stole Annabelle's magical box of yarn.)

We did an outdoor Recess, then returned to the classroom for our Math and Writing. We searched for the hidden Snowman (the kids found him today!), completed our Math and Writing assignments, then did a Penguin color-by-adding numbers picture.

To line up for Lunch hand washing, I showed a picture of a Snowman (we had colored these a couple of weeks ago) and the students had to guess whose it was. The person it belonged to got to line up to wash hands.

I had the WILD idea to have a Silent Lunch today. I thought it might help us get our Lunch eaten quickly and more thoroughly and get settled down and ready for the Moms to come in and do the 100th Day Party! And much to my surprise, it worked! I should add that I promised each of them a Gold Tag if they could do it. I probably would not be able to get away with this often (I Wish!), but for today, it was exactly what we needed. The kids finished their Lunch and packed their backpacks in about 15 minutes and were all sitting on the carpet silently reading books when Lacey and Samantha arrived.

The Moms had made a huge, colorful sign that read, "Happy 100!" that they hung across the front of the classroom. They had students color and decorate (with 100 stickers) "100 Days Smarter" crowns to wear while they posed in front of the big sign. Next, they took the kids down to the Castle, where they had set up 4 physical activity stations: building a pyramid with 100 cups, building creations with 100 Legos, Keepy Uppy with balloons, and 100 exercises. They divided the kids into 4 groups and allowed everyone to play at each station. When they came back to the classroom, Lacey read the parable of the Lost Sheep from her Bible, then in a picture book form. What a great idea! In this parable, there were 100 sheep! After the story, each student made a thumbprint craft with 99 thumbprints, then one little, lonely thumbprint off to the other side. They used sharpies to add details to make the prints look like sheep. (I kept these hanging in our classroom Gallery so they could dry.) To wrap up, the Moms gave out snacks shaped like 100 - a 1-shaped Rice Krispie Treat and two little round muffins!

We cleaned up the room then read a bit from January Joker before saying our Woodchuck Tongue Twister and singing our Goodbye!

And that's a wrap!

Hoping that Groundhog in Pennsylvania doesn't see his shadow,

Mrs. Duckworth

Coming Up, etc.

Book Reports: You will notice a flier that came home in your child's folder today with details about this upcoming project.

Shout Out! to Samantha Turnbull and Lacey Angel for a wonderful 100th Day Party! Thank you! Y'all are such naturals!

Welcome Back ... All Over Again!

It's like Groundhog Day, but no. That's next week!

Everybody arrived Tuesday morning ready to work on their January Calendars. They had lots of days to catch up on!

We enjoyed telling each other all about our MANY Snow Days during Morning Meeting. I told a "Joke of the Day" about Snowmen, selected two students to come up front and "spin the spinner" on our Snowman "Floss+Z Rule" and read the words, plus all the other usual Morning Meeting things.

We began our Reading Block by reading "The Big Mess" in our Readers. We also learned a poem called, "I'm a Little Snowman." After sounding out the words by looking at the poem in a pocket chart, we added some illustrations to accompany each line, then recited and sang the poem to the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot."

We reviewed the Lifecycle of Snowflakes we had providentially learned the week before last, then went to desks and colored a picture of it. As each student finished, Mrs. Wolfe or I asked them to explain the steps of the Snowflake Cycle to us. I was impressed that they were using those new vocabulary words like, "crystal" and "evaporate."

In Reading Groups, two groups used their headphones to listen to The Three Little Pigs and the Somewhat Bad Wolf by Mark Teague. Two groups played a Sight Word game with Mrs. Wolfe. Two groups watched a video about emperor penguins and wrote a fact they learned (this was very challenging for them, but I'm trying to teach them this new skill!). Two groups read about penguins with me in a Scholastic Let's Find Out! issue called, "Penguins Don't Need Boots." We are learning how to gather information from non-fiction (Informational) texts. I helped them write a fact they learned from the article.

Our read-aloud was Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester. So if you hear your child singing, "How many toes does a fish have? And how many wings on a cow?", you'll know that's the best thing they learned from me at school this week!

To warm up for Math, we did a round of "Find the Snowman," where the tiny Snowman is hidden behind a random number on the Hundred Chart. Kids had been so looking forward to this (since we had played it last time we had been at school), that they began asking early in the morning when we were going to play it!

Next up, I revealed my very large Snowman on the front board. It just had the three balls for his body and head, plus his eyes and mouth. I told them we were going to make him wear cool colors. I added a scarf, a nose, arms, and a hat. They noticed the hat had some words on it. I read it to them: Buttons, buttons in the snow, ____ and ____ make 10, I know!

I took out 10 two-color counters, shook them in my hands, and dropped them on the shelf. 3 landed yellow-side up and 7 landed red-side up. I filled in the numbers 3 and 7 on the hat, then invited students to come up and put 3 green and 7 blue buttons on my Snowman. I told them they would get to make one of these later on Thursday.

I paired up the students to play a couple of rounds of Addition War. They really enjoyed it!

Everyone got out their Math Workbooks, completed the page, and had us check it. Students with free time (throughout the day) were invited to make cards with construction paper and stickers I had prepared. They had a blast with this!

Just before Lunch, we gathered and watched a video of the fun book, Poles Apart by Jeannie Willis.

In the afternoon, I spent some time teaching them how to use the word labels on the page to help in writing sentences. They got out their Building Writers books and completed the page.

Next, we completed an Art Project inspired by Henri Matisse. It was a color wheel that we painted with watercolors. I taught them about Primary and Secondary colors, then we learned how to mix the Primary colors to make our Secondary colors. It was like magic to them! They loved it!

When everyone was finished, I gathered them around a table, where I did a Science demonstration. I'm sure you'll all hear about this, because they all wanted to try it at home! I had six cups of water. I placed them on the table in a circle. I put two drops of food dye (the Primary Colors) in three of the cups. Then, I put one drop of Red and one of Blue into a cup; one drop of Blue and one of Yellow into another cup; one drop of Yellow and one of Red into another. We ended up with a beautiful reproduction of our Color Wheels!

On Thursday, it was a much speedier proposition to catch up their January Calendars - only two days to fill in. Students enjoyed looking at Library Books while they waited for Morning Meeting.

After our regular Morning Meeting routine, we also built a silly sentence: "The baby is driving in a cave." We also did our Joke of the Day and had some free chat time to get some of the words out of our systems.

For our Reading Block, we read "Fish Class" from our readers.

I had a set of Mix and Fix sentences in the Pocket Chart, with a few of the word cards from each sentence missing. I gave each student one of the word cards and asked them to watch for where their word would fit into a sentence. Then, they could come up and put their word into the Pocket Chart. The first sentence was complete so they could see the pattern: Do you see the hat for my snowman? Yes, I do! Each of the following sentences was about one of the parts of the snowman. The students read each word as I flipped the cards over. Once all students had placed their words into the sentences, we read all of it together.

We reviewed "I'm a Little Snowman." Afterward, they went to their desks and marked sight words on their own copies of the poem. Mrs. Wolfe saved the poem sheets to add to their Calendar Folders.

We did our other two rotations of Reading Groups, then came back together for the read-aloud, Bear Snores On. We discussed the book and answered some comprehension questions.

At Snack Time, we enjoyed sharing Calvin's Birthday Treats (Pirate Booty!), then played with toys in the classroom.

We kicked off our Math Block by playing a round of "Find the Snowman." It was an odd number. Almost everybody got one guess before Elsie correctly guessed "49!"

Next, we did a teen numbers counting activity. I had placed a group of magnetic letters on the board, then drew a large box beside them. I called on a student to count out 12 of the letters and place them inside the box. I called another student up to write the numeral "12" underneath. The next student counted out 15 letters; the following student made 15 tally marks underneath; another student wrote the numeral "15."

We discussed how teen numbers start with "1, which stands for 1 ten." I also pointed out that it was easier for the students who were counting the magnetic letters to count in their heads as they moved each letter over to the box. Those that organized the letters into rows had the most success in counting. I got out my Math Workbook to show them the page we would be completing. We talked about strategies to use for adding.

At their desks, they had an opportunity to practice counting objects with a sheet of snowmen and related things, then with the animals from The Mitten. Following this, they got out their Math Workbooks and did their adding page.

I gave back everyone's Emperor Penguin Fact Sheets (from one of the Reading Group Rotations). We took some time to make sure we had colored the proper habitat for this bird (Antarctica), had colored the bird with realistic colors, and had written a fact about them. Students volunteered facts they had learned from watching the video, then I showed how we would sound out what we wanted say and Smarty Spell it. We got out Fine Motor Journals and glued this page in. We'll be learning about more species of penguins in the coming weeks.

Since we missed last Friday, I hadn't had the opportunity to read the Math Picture Book of the Week, Quack and Count by Keith Baker. This book introduces the concept of various combinations to make 7. As I read each page, I called on a student to come to the board and write the equation that went with the text. We ended up with a full list of the combinations to make 7. Very cool!

After Lunch and Recess, we had our Building Writers lesson.

Then we dressed my giant Snowman with "warm colors." Everyone got to come up and put one component of his body or clothing on the board. We left this as an example so the kids could copy it and build their own snowman. This was a pretty difficult project, as it had many components - cutting out, coloring, gluing, filling out a combo of 10 on the hat, matching the number of buttons of each color, then filling out the ten-frame to match the number and color of buttons. Whew! We worked right up to Dismissal!

I always enjoy seeing projects all lined up, so we hung them in our Gallery and snapped a pic for you! This was a fun way to review combos of 10!

We started today with our new Behavior Incentive called "Gold Tags." I explained that they'll be able to save Gold Tags I give them for following directions, doing good partner work, and doing the right thing. Every three - four weeks, we will have a Class Store and they'll be able to buy items to keep using the Gold Tags as currency. They are really pumped for this, as you can imagine!

And that's a wrap!

Yours,

Mrs. Duckworth

Coming Up, etc.

Shout-out! Again to Kristin Howard (Red Class Mom, Curriculum Committee Member, and Syllabus Editor!), who has just brought us ALL the number cards, tally mark cards, counting by 10's cards, mathematical operations cards ... 16 copies of every set of cards we need for all the Math lessons! I am so grateful! Thanks to Kristin, y'all are not having to send in index cards for all those number activities and we are able to play lots of games and do loads of great activities with numbers at school!

A Note Regarding Writing:

We're getting some good practice (with scaffolding, so far) in constructing sentences.

Copying words that students have to gather from other places on a page or on another text is a new skill. In the last semester, students didn't have to think much about what they were writing, they just had to copy a word or sentence directly below the source. Now the student is having to make sense of the sentences they're writing and add missing information to it.

If your student is struggling to write a complete sentence, have them copy just one word that you write. Another option for assisting them is to write a blank for each word you want them to write in their sentence. Say the sentence aloud and have the student just count the number of words you say. Then say the sentence again and point to each blank where you want them to write that word. I tried some of these strategies in class with students who needed extra support. They will get it! It's going to take some time. We are trying to set them up for being successful writers moving forward in their school careers.

Apology

Hey Guys!

An addendum to this week's posts is in order.

While doing my planning for this week, which I do at home with all my Teacher Editions of the texts, I had written down the title/gist of each Math lesson and skimmed through the manual. I did not catch that there were specific equations I was supposed to have the students illustrate with Wednesday's/Thursday's lesson. I had noted in my planner that I was to send home the work we did with this in class.

If you checked your student's folder, you saw that we did illustrate an equation but it was not the one(s) you needed for the following lesson at home.

I'm sorry to have dropped the ball on you like that. I do think they all understood the concept, though.

I'm learning this new curriculum/ syllabus along with you this year. I'll pledge to pay more attention to the details.

Humbly,

Mrs. Duckworth

K Blue- Duckworth

Posts

Silly Mug Shots & Animal Reports

Coming Up, etc.

Muffins for Moms: Please plan to drop in at drop-off Thursday, May 9 for a little sweet Mother's Day love from me & the kids! We love you!

Lions and Giraffes and Paint!

Oh My!

Coming Up, etc.

It Got Kinda Messy Around Here

Coming Up, etc.

Eclipse and Ocean Week

Coming Up, etc.

April Showers

Coming Up, etc.

Holy Week in K

I Call This One "Duck Week"

Coming Up, etc.

Dr. Seuss Week

Coming Up, etc.

All About Those Teeth

Coming Up, etc.

Presidential Week

Coming Up, etc.

Valentine's Week

Coming Up, etc.

Full Swinging Our February

Coming Up, etc.

100th Day of School Week

Coming Up, etc.

Welcome Back ... All Over Again!

Coming Up, etc.

Apology

100^th Day of School Week