Reminder About Upcoming Testing in January

 We have many of the Kindergarten standardized tests coming up in January as soon as school resumes.   We will be giving the second round of the Texas Primary Reading Inventory.  This is the same test they took in the fall and we met to go over scores at the conference.   We are measuring for growth since last time. Most of the children have passed rhyming, we are working on blending word parts ( b--at) and individual letter sounds ( C--a--t) to see if they can hear the word and tell you what it was.  We have begun to work on deleting initial sounds (say nice:  now say nice without the /n/ sound-----"ice").  Most children should be able to complete these skills by the Jan. administration.  If you would like to practice at home, I have included a link for a printable game. 


Printable Game to Help at Home

We will also be doing the second administration of the MClass Math test.  Skills to work on at home is number identification 1-100, counting to 100 quickly, missing number series (  6, 7, ___) and which number is larger using numbers 1-20  (  Which number is bigger ?   12  or 16)  Each of these is a 1 minute timed test.


Also coming up in January, will  be the first Reading Assessment.  To be on level for this point of the year in kindergarten they should be reading a level 2 book.  These have a simple repeating pattern of test with large colorful pictures to help prompt the word that changes on each page.  When you practice at home, remind them to point to each word as they read it to have a one to one match. 

Thanks for all your help at home; it is really starting to show.  The fun time is about to begin in the second semester.  They will really begin to aquire skills quickly  and soar  now that they have the foundation of letters and sounds down. 

Current Sight Words List

Here is a current list of sight words that we have covered in class.  You child should be able to recognized these words within 3 seconds to make them an automatic or sight word.  We have these posted on a word wall in the back of the room and the students are beginning to learn how to use them in their writing to be able to write simple sentences and simple repetative pattern books. 

Today we made a Look Book.  They wrote the frame sentence "Look at the _________". on each page and then completed the sentence and illustrated it.  Those three words were on the word wall and are expected to be spelled correctly, but the final word could be spelled by writing the sounds they hear.

1. and
2. are
3. at
4. big
5. but
6. can
7. Dad
8. eat
9. green
10. I
11. it
12. is
13. love
14. little
15. look
16. Mom
17. no
18. not
19. on
20. see
21. the
22. we
23. was
24. with
25. yes
26. you
27. red
28. orange
29. yellow
30. green
31. blue
32. purple
33. black
34. brown
35. white

Soon we will be adding the number words for 1-10

December book orders are coming home

If you would like to order for Christmas, I am sending home November and December book order forms tomorrow.  They both contain a lot of holiday themed books so I wanted to make sure you get them back in time to enjoy before the holidays.  I had one parent place an order online last month and  I figured out how that works, after a bit of trial and error.  Please see the comment area under this post for the online ordering code for our class.  It should be easy for you to order and pay online. ( I didn't realize that I had to ok the parent order online before it would be filled.  Sorry about that delay).

I am going to set the orders to be turned in by December 1st.  There is a 3-5 day turn around after the order is placed.  So you should have the books near the end of the first week of December.  If  you would like to keep your order a secret for Christmas presents or stocking stuffers, you can order online or send it back to me in an envelope and I will call you to pick it up in the office instead of sending it home with your child.  Just make sure I know that before the order comes in so I don't spoil the surprise. 

If you would like  my suggestions of quality books, they are as follows:

FireFly November order form:
1. Christmas Holiday Countdown Value Pack of 15 books
2.Llama Llama Holiday Drama
3.Fox and the Snowflake Christmas (This is new but the others in series are good)
4. Silly Pigeon Pack ( class favorites)
5. The Hat
6. Froggy's Best Christmas
7. Bear and Friends Collection

SeeSaw November Order form:
1. Jan Brett Pack
2. The Berenstain Bears and the Joy of Giving
3. Season of Sight words winter pack of mini readers
4.Tacky's Christmas
5. Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes with CD (I have not read this yet, but have ordered it.  It is the new hit book on the teacher blogs and  NY Times best seller)
6.The Gingerbread Girl (Great book and we will be reading it soon in class)

Firefly December order form:
1. The Amazing Christmas Extravaganza (My favorite Xmas book!)
2. Gingerbread man floor puzzle
3.Pete The Cat: I Love My White Shoes with CD
4. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom pack
5. If you Give a ...Pack
6. Chester Pack


SeeSaw December order form:
1. Gingerbread Girl Goes Animal Crackers
2.The Duck Collection (class favorites)

Book It Pizza Coupons

I have set a reading goal of 2 books a week for each child.  These are their Tuesday/ Thursday homework books.  If they read all the books for the month, they will receive a free pizza coupon from Pizza Hut for the month.  Book It runs from October through March.  I will keep track of the books but if they do not return their books so they can get a new one, they may run into a problem of not reading the number of books for their goal.  If they are only 1 or 2 books away, I will try to have them read me one at school so they still get the coupon.  But if they consistently are not returning books on time and rechecking them out, they might not get the coupon for that month.  October's coupons are coming home tomorrow.  They are small, about 2 1/2 inches by 4 inches.  I will try to get the kids to put them in the clear plastic sleeve in their binders.  The coupons do expire one month from the date of issue. 

Reminder that tomorrow is a half day!

School lets out at noon tomorrow for the parent/ teacher conference day.  Lunch will still be served at school so they can bring  a lunch box or they order a hotdog lunch from the cafeteria.  

Sorry, I forgot to check out new homework readers.

I am not in the routine yet and forgot to send out the new homework books this afternoon.  I still hav a couple of kids that have not returned the book from Tuesday.  Please return  those so they can check out a new one. 

Carnival This Saturday & Book fair

The Parkview Carnival is this Saturday.  Kindergarten will be running 3 booths:  an Oobleck booth (making a mini science experiment of cornstarch and water), a bouncy castle and a balloon dart game.  We are needing parent volunteers to sign up to work the booth for a 30 min or 1 hr time slot.   Come out and play from 12-5.  There will be snowcones, a dunking booth, bouncy castles and much more.  Vendor booths are available to parents to shop.   I will see you there!

Book fair is coming up next week and will be in the library all week.  Kids will go "window shop" on Monday and make a mini wish list.  You can send money in an envelope labeled book fair and we will send them to shop during their specials class time.  Book fair does charge tax so please account for that when you send in money for a book. 

Kelloggs is teaming with Scholastic to offer free books for every 2 codes

http://www.scholastic.com/kellogg/?eml=SMP/e/20111013///Kellogg//gonow/EDU///&ym_MID=1371782&ym_rid=8903725

I received an email that for every 2 Kellogg's codes you enter you receive a $5 book!
Had a read this a couple of hours ago I would have bought Kellogg cereals instead of Quaker and General Mills.  Well, I will know for next time. Only catch is that the special label products are only at Walmart.

October Book Orders Coming Home Next Week

I am sending out the October book orders on Monday.  I will accept orders until Friday, Oct.21st. You also my order and pay online.  This option also gives the class a $3 book voucher for each online order.  I have our class  code at school and will add it to the comment area under this post tomorrow.  You will need it to online order.  I will also accept orders at school.  Make checks out to Scholastic, and you only need one check for the total even if you order from both forms.

If you are looking for good suggestions for what your kids might like, I recommend  the following books:


SeeSaw Order Form:
1. The Silly Pigeon Set of 4-  (silly classroom favorites)
2. Splat the Cat  pack
3. Pete the Cat with CD- (this seems to be on all the teacher blogs as a new hit book but I don't have it yet)
4. Word Family Tales Pack- (I may order these for the classroom since we are starting word families)
5. The Magic Tree House series are great bedtime read aloud chapter books for boys and girls- we will begin to read a couple at school as the bathroom break read aloud books

Firefly Order Form:
1. Spookley the Square Pumpkin  (they read this in art and made pumpkins that are displayed in the school stairwell)
2. Llama Llama Pack  (great rhyming books)
3. Fantastic Froggy Pack
4.Brown Bear, Brown Bear with CD
5. Pajama Pirates
6. Turkey Trouble
7. Berenstain Bears pack

8. Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day pack
9.Guided Reading box of 30 books for $20  ( I may buy that for the room so we can have a few more homework readers to choose from)

Thanks,

Ms. R--

October Parent Conferences

If you have not already sent in your slip with your top three choices of time slots please do so as soon as possible.  Nearly everyone has gotten their 1st choice of time slots.  I will send out conformation slips on Monday so you can plan accordingly. 

Our time with our student teacher, Mrs. Winemiller, has come to an end and she is moving upstairs to teach 7 weeks in the 5th grade science class with Ms. Bernard.  She will still drop in to say "Hi" and I will have a box for the kids to drop any notes or pictures off for her to ease in their transition of her leaving.  However, I am very excited to fully have my class back and have tons of fun things planned for our upcoming weeks with Pumpkins, Spiders and Bats!

Pumpkin Week

This coming week is pumpkin week.  We will be doing a variety of math and science lessons with pumpkins.  If possible, please send a small mini pumpkin with your child this week.  We will also be having a Pumpkin Products Tasting on Friday.  They will be tasting pumpkin seeds, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread and we will make our own pumpkin pudding cups.  We will send a note home on Monday.

It's Homework Book Time!!!

It is an exciting time at school.  The kids are beginning to recognize sight words and sound out words.  Reading is just around the corner!  It is time to start the homework readers.

Your child will be bringing home a homework reader every Tuesday and Thursday night. The book is one they have chosen from the level tub. They are to read the book 3 times, pointing at each word as it is read before returning it.

       Books must be returned to get a new one.

 

1st read– let them try to sound out the words but help them if they need it and read together. You are reading to try and figure out the words and point out picture clues and sight words.

2nd read– They should try to read alone. This time they are reading for comprehension.

3rd read– They should be able to read it quickly and are reading to improve fluency and expression.

Book Care– Please encourage children to take care of the books.  They are my personal books to share.  If one does get lost or damaged, let me know and we can discuss how to replace it.  Most of the books came from 1/2 Price Books, book orders or ebay.  You don’t have to replace the exact title but I would like it to be in the same reading level box so we don’t run out of that level books since 22 are out at a time.

As the books become too easy, they will move up to the next color box..  I will be reading with them in reading groups in class but if you notice the books are too easy let me know.

                                                    Ms. R-

Discovering Light and Sound energy is going to be FUN!!!

In science this week, we will be learning about light and sound energy.  Some of the lessons are hands on and I hope will excite the kids.  We will be using toilet paper tubes (if you have any, please send them in) and wax paper to discover vibrations.  I have a cool screaming balloon trick to teach them that involves vibrations as well as discovering chemiluminescence, a chemical reaction that produces light without heat, better known in glowsticks.  I have even cut one open to see how it works on the inside.  We will be doing several glow stick experiments as well as making Glow Water from old highlighters, and bending light using mirrors and flashlights.  The kids don't know it but they are even going to get some fun items that they can take home from the lessons.




The Sound Hose

School photos & hearing/ vision screening

Just a reminder that school pictures are on Monday.

The nurses will be checking the kindergarten kids vision and hearing on September 22nd. You will be notified if your child failed either of the screenings and needs further testing.

In It to Win It! Curriculum night was a success

Thanks to all the families who came out to curriculum night. We had a standing room only crowd and were thrilled to see you all. I hope we answered a lot of the questions you had, and please contact us if you think of any as the progresses. We will be sending out notice soon about the October conferences. We will meet with you to discuss the report card , Texas primary reading inventory and the mclass math assessment. Thanks again for coming last night and being involved in the school/home connection. It is crucial to their success.

Today was Apple Day!

We had a great day studying apples today.  We began our day by graphing how many of each color apple the kids bought.  We had more red than green and no yellow ones.  Luckily I brought 3.  We tasted a bite of each color and then graphed which one tasted the best---green won.   I guess they like the tart ones.  We put an apple in a tub of water to see if it would float.  We tried out some of the kids' theories and tested large apples and small apples, and one of each color to make sure that they all floated.  We read a story about a mother who asked her son to find the answer a riddle and bring her a little red house without any doors or windows that had a star inside.  Finally, the little boy figured out that she was talking about an apple.  We cut the apple cross ways and saw the star shape of seeds inside the apple.  They took turns coring their apple  with Ms. Winemiller, our student teacher, and adding it to the crock pot with sugar, cinnamon and butter to make cinnamon apples while I prepared  samples of all the apple products they brought in to try.  We sampled apple sauce, apple pie, apple butter with crackers, dried apple chips, apple juice and cider.  The big hit of the day was the apple butter, 16 of the kids liked it.  We made a tally chart of each item and how many kids liked that item.  The largest categories were apple butter and apple sauce with apple pie and the dried apples scoring the lowest.    We made an Apple Lab file folder of all our apple projects from this week.  That should be in there backpack.  I would like to post some photos  of our day as soon as I get the permission forms signed at curriculum night on Tuesday, so check back soon.  We also learned about the seasons of the apple tree and learned to use a balance scale and weighed different apples to see which were lighter and which were heavier.  They had a great day and are looking forward to Pumpkin Day next month and sampling a few more items!

Scholastic Book Orders Are Coming Home!

I will be sending home our first Scholastic Book Orders tomorrow.  This is an inexpensive way to buy some beginning readers for your child.   They will begin to bring home homework readers in October.  If you need some ideas on quality literature for children you can see the list of suggestions below.  I know that I have a hard time reading those Spiderman and Strawberry Shortcake books over and over again because they are so poorly written and rely on the character appeal to sell the book. 
     There are a few different sets of leveled readers in the SeeSaw Order.  I saw My Little Pony or a Hot Wheels set of 10 readers and 2 workbooks for $12.  There is also a non fiction science series with sets A-D increasing in difficulty.  If the budget is tight, there are usually a couple of $1-$2 books in each order so that your child will not be disappointed when the order arrives and they don't receive anything.  I will collect all the orders and process them on Friday, September 9th.  You may order online or fill out the back of the order and send in a check made out to Scholastic.  You only need to make out one check even if you order from both forms.  All the money goes to the same place.  If you order online from our class area, I think the class gets an extra $3.00 book pick.  I usually choose homework readers for the kids to bring home or an extra copy of a picture book from the listening center so the kids each have their own copy to follow along during literacy center rotations. They are having technical issues setting up the online ordering for my account so I will add a comment  under with the new order number if I get it.


Suggestions of good books:
Firefly order (picture books and great stories to read many times)
1. The Llama Llama series
2.If you Give a Mouse a Cookie Pack
3. animal and space non fiction sets
4. Bereinstein Bears set
5. Eric Carl classic books with CDs
6.  there are also several Halloween seasonal books

Seesaw Form: (for beginning readers)
1. The Kissing Hand set of books
2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar
3. Any of the Junie B Jones series of chapter books ( we will read many of these as teacher read alouds and they are always a favorite of kids)
4.The Magic Tree House series of chapter books
5. sight word pop corn game

What is Coming Up in the Second Week

This week we will be working on the letters N, O and T.  The new sight words for this week are Can and See.  We will be using Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? as a focus book.  In class we  will be studying the 5 senses in science and  getting to smell a variety of smelly jars to see if we can name the scent, tasting items for sweet, salty, bitter and sour to learn about how we use our tongue to taste, trying to identify common sounds made behind a screen or on a sound bingo game.  We will continue calendar math strategies and exploring a variety math manipulatives.  Our focus this week will be on the theme "All About Me" and friendship.  We will continue working with names and learn some of our friends names, make a chart about what it means to be a friend, and play several name games.

Wrapping up the third day...

We have had a fun first three days of school.  We have been busy learning an alphabet chant, working on the letters R, E and S, learning positional words and about mixing primary colors.  I have planned a science activity for tomorrow where they will mix primary colors using pipettes. Just a heads up, I am planning on letting them paint on Friday, so you may not want to dress them in their best clothes.

They seem to be having a good time and have enjoyed going to art and P.E so far this week.  Tomorrow they will be going to computer and library on Friday.

Magic Playdough

 Here is a hint about what tomorrow will bring!   

              Magic Playdough
                Oh so white.
             I make this wish
             with all my might.
        If another color does appear,
       It is sure to be a great school year!

The Final Countdown

I have been making the final push getting things ready. My team and I put in yet another 13 hour day but I'm finally ready ,except for a few things I can do from home. I'm beginning to think it is a bad sign when I refer to conversations that occurred this morning as happening yesterday. This has been a long, long week but it's always so much fun. I am going to attempt to use crayons, scissors, glue and paint during the first days lesson plans. We will see how that goes and how brave I am feeling about the paint. Don't worry moms and dads, I'm controlling the paint and it will be quick. The new school clothes should be fine. I will try and warn you through the blog or facebook when I start letting them paint so you can dress them accordingly.

Curriculum Night is coming up soon. Please make plans to attend. I will send a note with the date as soon as it is set. It is very important because this is not the kindergarten we remember growing up. It is the new 1st grade. There are standardized tests and set reading level expectations we need to discuss. Hope to see everyone there.

Look forward to seeing you Monday morning! Check back here Monday night for anecdotes and a summary of our day. I'm not posting it early to spoil the surprise.

Sneak a Peek!

What a success! I had nearly all of my kinder buddies come by tonight to sneak a peek of our classroom. I really enjoyed getting to meet everyone and their parents. I am looking forward to a wonderful first day. Our student teacher, Mrs. Emily Winemiller, was able to come this evening to help out and meet the kids. She looks like she will be a a fantastic asset to our classroom for the next 7 weeks. I am beginning to get excited. I hope the kids are too.

It's Right Around the Corner!

I am so excited about starting a new year in kindergarten and am working hard getting the room ready for a whole new batch of kindergarten kids to come and enjoy. Please make plans to attend the meet the teacher night on Thursday, August 18th at 5:30. Childcare will be provided for the first half hour so that we can brief you in "All About Kindergarten"! At 6:00, you may bring the children down to the room to have a look around. You may bring school supplies that evening. We have community supplies so there is no need to label items except the watercolors. I am looking forward to seeing all of you soon!

Ms. Rutherford