Kindergarten@Birnham Woods Elementary: November 2013

Monday, November 18, 2013

This Week

ORDER YOUR YEARBOOKS ONLINE
[ http://www.balfour.com ]www.balfour.com

*Check and initial the daily folder, EVERY DAY!
*Remove any items that do not need to be signed and returned.

Good afternoon! Your child will receive his/her green reading folder tomorrow. Remember, you will write the date under "the week of," fill in the title of the book, and sign ONLY after your child has read the book 5x. 1 line/book/week.Folders are due on Friday. I will give your child a new reader over the Thanksgiving holiday to read. :)
Thank you for signing up to bring items for the feast on the email Mrs. Tidwell sent out. If by any chance you are not receiving her emails, please let me know asap.
We are having a wonderful start to Generation Texas week. We have been talking about college and careers. We already had a petroleum engineer do an exciting presentation (including dinosaurs and props) about his job, thank you Mateo's dad!
We have a nurse, a Beauty Salon Owner, a professional chef, and others coming in to talk with us, also.
I hope you can make it to our Thanksgiving feast this Friday, and thank you for always helping out so that we can be successful in every thing that we do.

- - - - - - - - - -
Letter: Ee, Gg
(practice the /e/ and /g/ sound, finding Ee/Gg words, and writing Ee/Gg correctly)
Sight words:, up, went, the (practice reading and writing these words daily)
Books: The Bicycle
Math: review
**practice sounding out and spelling 3-4 letter words***
- - - - - - - - - -
Homework:
1) Complete the packet being sent home today, due Friday 11/22
2) Reading folders are due FRIDAY
3) Practice reading the little readers, and weekly sight words EVERY DAY
(Students should know a, I, the, can, see, my, to, go, is, on, it, no, up, look, said, like, we, you, up, went by the end of this week)
- - - - - - - - - -
*Don't forget to send in BOX TOPS!
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
GREAT WEBSITES
*[ http://www.starfall.com ]www.starfall.com
*[ http://www.abcya.com ]www.abcya.com
*[ http://www.pebblego.com ]www.pebblego.com (great for reading, I encourage you to check it out)
-username: birnham
Email me to get password
- - - - - - - - - -
Upcoming Events
***Nov. 19- college shirt day***
Nov. 22- Thanksgiving feast @ 11am
Nov. 25-29- Thanksgiving holiday break
Month of December-kindergarten food drive
Dec. 11-Chuck E Cheese night
Dec. 18 or 19?-kinder holiday rotations
Dec. 20-early release @ 11:45

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Thanksgiving feast

Dear Parents,

I am so thankful for getting to know your student as well as each of you. It is because of your involvement and participation in various school activities that our year has been such a success. I cannot wait to celebrate our Kindergarten Thanksgiving feast on Friday, November 22nd at 11 AM with you and your student.

Please be on the lookout for an email from our room moms for a sign-up of the items that we need for the feast. Thanks in advance for your participation and support!

Because of all that each of you do, BWE is the BEST place to be!

Thanks,
Johanna Cox

P.S. We will be using ipads on Friday, please send in headphones for your child if you have not done so yet :)

This week

ORDER YOUR YEARBOOKS ONLINE
[ http://www.balfour.com ]www.balfour.com

*Check and initial the daily folder, EVERY DAY!
*Remove any items that do not need to be signed and returned.

Good afternoon and happy Wednesday to you! Please make sure your child reads his/her "reading book" to you 5x time throughout the week. Reading folders are due on Friday (with the reading log filled out and initialed). Upon return, your child will read the book to me, and I will send a new book on Monday (if I feel like they need more practice, I will return the book home). If you have any questions, please let me know.

Next week will be Generation Texas week where we will be learning about College and Careers. If you would like to come speak to us about your career email me by tomorrow (Thursday) to schedule you in.
We would love to hear about different careers!
- - - - - - - - - -
Letter: Ss, Tt
(practice the /s/ and /t/ sound, finding Ss/Tt words, and writing Ss/Tt correctly)
Sight words:, the, look, I, can, at, me, you (practice reading and writing these words daily)
Books: Ice-cream
Math: patterns
**practice sounding out and spelling 3-4 letter words***
- - - - - - - - - -
Homework:
1) Complete the packet and return on Friday 11/15
2) Green Reading folders are due FRIDAY
3) Practice reading the little readers, and weekly sight words EVERY DAY
(Students should know a, I, the, can, see, my, to, go, is, on, it, no, up, look, said, like, we, you by the end of this week)
- - - - - - - - - -
*Don't forget to send in BOX TOPS!
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
GREAT WEBSITES
*[ http://www.starfall.com ]www.starfall.com
*[ http://www.abcya.com ]www.abcya.com
*[ http://www.pebblego.com ]www.pebblego.com (great for reading, I encourage you to check it out)
-username: birnham
Email me to get the password
- - - - - - - - - -
Upcoming Events
Nov. 13 Tonight- Spring Creek BBQ night! Come eat or pick up for take-out to support our school, remember to mention our school and your teacher :)
Nov. 19- college shirt day
Nov. 22- Thanksgiving feast @ 11am
Nov. 25-29- Thanksgiving holiday break
Month of December-kindergarten food drive
Dec. 11-Chuck E Cheese night
Dec. 18 or 19?-kinder holiday rotations
Dec. 20-early release @ 11:45

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Becoming Authors

We launched writer's workshop during August and September and worked on:
How to work independently
What to expect during writer’s workshop
Stretching and writing words
Adding information
Drawing hard to make ideas
Booklets

The students felt very accomplished when they finished their first book, and we were able to have our first author's celebration. They shared their stories with the class and since that day we had a stuffed animal party, they were able to show off their books to their stuffed animals. We walked around the room admiring everyone's books.

In IIn October, we had a labeling unit all month. Labeling provides a way to help children focus both on the fact that writing represents the world and has real-world purposes and on the graphophonics involved in turning oral language into print.The actual amount of writing required in a label is limited, so this gives children an opportunity to focus on recording sounds they hear in a word.
We learned the rubber band technique to stretch out words, had fun labeling our room, ourselves, body parts, making booklets, etc.

Jimmy labeled the computer screen.

Labeling herself

Labeling the table

"Calendar"

wall

marker

forehead

lunch boxes

"two"

Mirror

Flowers

Mirror

books

Learning mode: Science

In Science, we work in an Interactive Science Notebook, where the students record their thoughts, observations, and what they know about the subject that we are currently studying.

Dameer illustrating the three states of matter.

Caeley showing us that we can touch matter.

Zach wrote about and illustrated the three states of matter.

In Science, we also do hands-on experiments. Here we were studying about the five senses and did an experiment on the sense of taste.The students sampled sour, sweet, salty, and bitter foods. The students shared their observations, we recorded them on a graph, and they made conclusions based on their experiences.

Fun Run

Thank you so much for all of the support we received during our Boosterthon Fun run this year!

Mrs. Gratz and Mrs. Tidwell decorated our door.

Thank you room moms for decorating our shirts!!! Here we were walking out to the playground.

I loved having all of the family members come in and stand on the sidelines to support our Bulldogs! The fun run was a great team building event in our classroom!