GLENDALOUGH!

We had a great walk at Glendalough State Park on Wednesday - what a gift to have that resource just 5 minutes away! We looked for signs of fall - and saw and heard many! The leaves were crunchy and when an animal was near the trail we heard that also! The birds were chattering back and forth and of course we heard our friends excited voices when they saw something new! There were lots of snakes and even some mosquitos! The snakes and many bugs were sunning themselves on the warm blacktop of the bike trail.

Enjoy these pictures!

I wonder what Winter looks like at the park?

Zero the Hero! Day 10

We had a fantastic day :O). We started the day by learning about our BRAND NEW Calendar Binders - we track the date and how many days in school. We also keep track of the weather.

 

Then at Reading Time we used the SMARTBoard to help us keep track of what to do on our work - and clipboards were a great tool to write on.

We celebrated "10 Days of School" and the number 10 having a zero by playing some Zero the Hero games - your child has them in their backpack! I shared a round snack - Oreos - since zeros are a round number. I can't wait for Day 20!

 

 

Books, Books, and More Books!

Favorite stories are a great way to connect learning in our classroom. We have been busy with projects and not many papers have made their way home, so I wanted to share a peek into our classroom!

 

 

Cutting, gluing and matching our illustration to the text was our job for this project.

 

Eric Carle's story The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a great repetitive text. We learned to SNIP circles from squares to make these caterpillars, plus we made an AB pattern. Guided discovery of our markers helped us get ready to color the butterfly.

 

 

Chrysanthemum is a great story about a little mouse whose name is sooooo long! We used this story as a lesson for learning that mean words can hurt someone's heart.

 

 

And of course, no project is complete without our name!

 

 

 

 

 

Week 1 in Review

We had a great first week! I can't wait for Week 2 to get started.

We do a graph each morning - it helps us to determine which number is greater with visual support and we also learn to take turns!

We are earning classroom rewards by earning smiles for doing good things - things like lining up quietly, working hard, listening to stories and being AWESOME! When we earn 5 we cash them in for a reward - this week it has been playing outside!

 

The Kissing Hand is one of the first stories we shared as a class - and we made a Chester Raccoon puppet to help us remember to retell the story at home and share a kissing hand with our family. Using crayons helps us get strong finger muscles! We are building our stamina for working with our fingers. We use our hands a lot at school!

 

 

 

Look at Me! I'm in Kindergarten.

We completed self-portraits to document our fine motor skills. I can't wait to tuck them into their memory books for Spring!

Building routines is an important part of our first days at school. Each day we 'sign-in' by placing our name card on the apple.

 

Gingerbread!

We baked cookies to end Week 1. When we read the story of the Gingerbread Man, it didn't take the students long to read along! We used our 5 senses to explore the gingerbread dough - it was really sticky but it smelled great!

 

 

When we went back to the kitchen to get our cookies - they were gone! But thanks to the notes left behind, we were able to find our way around the school and CATCH THE GINGERBREAD MAN!

We had a chance to cut and glue when we "frosted" our paper gingerbread. We frosted our real cookies with white frosting and decorated with M&M's -YUM!

 

 

Welcome to Kindergarten! It's time to Play with a Purpose!

April Family Fun Time

Hope to see you there!

Newsletter #31 - April 12

Black!

The calf is black!!! A picture will be coming soon - I just need the weather to cooperate for a photo.

What color will the calf be?

Today I shared a picture of one of the cows on my farm that is about to have a calf. Since we are going to be gathering data in survey format later in the week, I decided to gather some data using my cow.

I asked the students "What color do you think the calf will be when it is born?"

We brainstormed a list of colors it could be and we came up with this:

Red

Black

White

Brown

Spotted

Then we chose our answer and made a tally mark graph.

And now, we wait for the calf to get here. 

Newsletter 30 - April 4, 2013

Newsletter 29 - March 28

Newsletter 28 - March 22

Newsletter 27 - March 15

I'm Lucky!

I’m lucky!

In case you have been wondering what on earth Mrs. Kugler has been up to because she hasn’t posted on her blog for AGES – I’ll let you in on my secret. I have been too busy enjoying 5 and 6 year olds! Which means there is VERY LITTLE time to sit down at my computer and craft an entry.

But today during Math I realized just how lucky I am and thought that I should share.

The class was engaged in a group math lesson. I was calling groups of 3 students to the center of the circle to work together and create a triangle with their bodies (we had practiced this with squares, rectangles, trapezoids and hexagons as a whole group with my direction and now it was time to apply the learning.) 

Groups 1 and 2 went off without a hitch. Group 3 consisted of a boy and 2 girls. The little boy eagerly huddled up his “teammates” and quickly gave them directions: “Ok, you be the unicorn and you be the princess.” WHAT!!!! Wait!!!! We are making triangles and he is planning an escape from the kingdom! I surpressed a giggle and directed him to just decide which side of the triangle they would like to be. 

Do I really sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher when I’m teaching? I guess I’ll never know.

See what I mean, lucky.

P.S. and here is evidence of our learning :O) We love to explore math concepts with hands on materials.

Working with number sequence, 2 digit numbers and the hundred chart.

100 is 10 groups of 10.

10 in a bed - subtracting 1.