Writing Work

We have been working on turning stories dictated into Story Kit into pieces of actual writing.  This is the first time that the kids have worked on this and they did a great job!  View the video below to see how hard they are working.  (The talking you hear is coming from kids quietly sounding out their words to try to figure out how to spell them.)  Great job kids!

Our Class Election

To learn about elections, we had a small lesson on elections in class. I read 3 books, Duck for President, Grace for President, & My Teacher for President. The kids then voted who they would like to have for president (the duck, Grace or myself). I'm happy to say that I won, but only with a very small margin. I will have to campaign harder next time. :)

Vocabulary words from today: election, candidate, ballot, & vote

Halloween Party

We had a great time at our Halloween party. After walking over & trick or treating at the big kids' school, we game back for some pin the stem on the pumpkin, pumpkin bowling & hula hoop ring toss.

Pumpkin Patch

It was wet, but we didn't let a little liquid sunshine get in our way. We rode a tractor, picked pumpkins & learned about potatoes. Thank you Baggenstos!

Alphie hats

Alphie the Alligator helps us learn all of our letters. Here are the kids sporting their Alphie hats.

App List

Many people have requested a list of the apps that we use on the ipads.  Here they are!  I am sure that we will be adding to them as we continue to use the ipads throughout the year.

Letter School:  an app that teaches letter formation
Story Kit:  an app that helps kids record their writing verbally
Montessori Words:  an app that helps kids sound out words
Word Wizard:  another app for creating a word
Line 'Em Up:   math app that teaches number order
Counting Board:  basically a virtual hundreds board
Sketchio:  basically a virtual white board

I hope this list helps!

Fun Sight Word Activity

If you've been saving the newsletters that I have been sending home each week, you are starting to gather a small pile of sight words that you can practice with at home.  What to do with all of these?  Try practicing in a fun way at home.  How about sight word hockey?  Sounds fun, right?  Your kids might not even realize they are practicing!  Here is a link to the directions.

Reading Activities

Here's a peek into some of the activities we have done during reading centers:

Reading books with our sight words with whisper phones  (Whisper phones are tubes in a phone shape that make it easy for kids to hear themselves read.  This can be very powerful in developing fluency and keeps reading interesting.  Want to make your own whisper phone to use at home?  Here is a link to a simple tutorial.)

and reading with funky "monster fingers."   We also read to a stuffed animal and read to a buddy.  The repetition of reading these short books, high in sight words really helps develop fluency and confidence with reading.  At home, try using some of these strategies with the sight word books that come home during the week.  

Any practice reading will help develop reading skills.  These are all great ways to keep reading interesting.

First Week

First week of kindergarten was a success!  Our first days were filled with learning to follow rules and learning procedures.  We spent lots of time practicing correct gluing procedures, getting materials out and putting them away.

We read the Kissing Hand and wrote how about how we felt on the first day of school.

 We also made stop lights and talked about getting to and from school safely.

We talked about filling each other's buckets.  This is an idea from this book that describes everyone as having an imaginary bucket that gets filled every day.  Good things  help to fill the bucket and people saying things that make you feel bad, take away from the bucket.  We discussed ways that kids can be bucket fillers rather than bucket dippers.

Welcome to the 2012-2013 Kindergarteners!

Tonight was our school supply drop off night.  Hopefully you had a chance to come and meet me, see the room and make some new friends.  If you would like to learn a little about me, read on!

I am Mrs. Duncan.  This picture is with my daughter Chelsea.

I have 4 kids:  twins who are 6 and in first grade, a 3 year old and a 2 year old.  Their names are Caitlin, Chelsea, Spencer and Ellie.  We have lots of fun together doing things like camping, going to parks, and doing arts and crafts.

 Another thing I like to do is run.  I am planning on running my first half marathon in December, which I am really excited about!  My brother and I sometimes run in races together and my twins have started to like running in the kiddie races.  Spencer and Ellie ran in their first race this summer and had a great time!

I have been teaching for 11 years, but this is my first year at this school.  I went to school at the University of Oregon and got degrees in psychology and education.  I also got my Masters degree there.  I have taught Kindergarten through 4th grade and also have my license to teach English Language Learners.

 I love this time of year and getting to meet all of the new kindergarten students!  I hope you are as excited about our year as I am!

Our Class in a Movie

Last week our fabulous technology teacher Mr. Engstrom created this stop motion animation movie with the kids. Check it out below.

A Fun Number Game

This looks like a fun number game to play with your kids.  Don't be afraid if you don't have the dot markers or the blocks.  You can also just write the numbers and colors down on torn pieces of paper and make 2 bags to draw from (one with numbers, one with colors).  The dot markers also aren't necessary.  You could also use colored dot stickers or just plain markers/ crayons and draw dots.  Go here for the details.  To make it even more of a challenge, you could try to make the dots into a picture.  Just have fun and play with numbers and colors!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

We got comfy in pajamas and comfy clothes today to celebrate reading and Dr. Seuss.  Today was our day for computer lab so we started there and got to use our new computer lab headphones to do some reading with the computer.

Then we came back to the room and had a scavenger hunt for words.  They had to be careful, though, because some were "nonsense" words in true Dr. Seuss spirit.

After that, we got comfy with friends and shared favorite books with each other.

Then we talked about favorite Dr. Seuss books and the book One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  We made a goldfish graph using colored goldfish and then ate them.

Some of the ideas for the activities we did today were derived from here.  (Be sure to click on the Cat in the Hat picture for the entire unit to download to your computer.)  There are many other activities that you could do with your kids at home, but we did not have time to complete them in our class.  Use your discretion, since some of theses activities might be a little too hard for kids at this page (but you certainly could bookmark it and come back to it when they are a little older).

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!  Thanks for making reading fun!

Happy Groundhog's Day!

We learned a little bit about Groundhog's Day today.  After discussing what Groundhog's Day is all about, we predicted whether a groundhog would see it's shadow at our school today and made a graph.  It was a pretty sunny day, so the class mostly agreed that it would see it's shadow.

Then we made groundhogs out of potatoes. We put them into their burrows and took them outside to experiment. 

6 more weeks of winter for us!  Next up, we will write about our  groundhog burrows and work on describing what might be in a groundhog's burrow. 

Great Practice for DIBELS

This activity is a great way to practice for the DIBELS test initial sound test, where students are asked to say the first sound in the pictures.  Just click on the picture in the link, print and sort the words by their first sound.  Click here.

Ready for Soemthing a Little Harder?

Contractions are a great thing for kindergarteners who are already reading quite a few words.  If you think your kids are up to it, print these cards and have your kids practice matching them up.  They may need some help with this at first, since we haven't talked about contractions yet.  There is also a great activity to work on the Long I sound that you can print.  Click here.

An Opportunity to Teach About the World

One of the things that kindergarteners are still learning is where they live and how their city and community fit in the world.  Unfortunately, we often aren't able to fit this type of activity in in our short half day.  This is a great opportunity to teach that at home and requires only a few materials:  paper, paper plate, markers, etc.  Click here for more information.

Letter Recognition

One of my own kids' favorite ways to practice their letters, try this game found here.  Grab some Scrabble Junior Cheese Its and start playing.  What could be better than a snack and learning?

Counting Practice

If you are looking to help your child with counting here is a link to an easy and cheap way to help them.  Pipe cleaners, beads and masking tape with a number on it -- what could be easier?  Great way to keep kids busy and help with counting.