Jan 29-Feb 2

We really have had a wonderful week in kindergarten. It really seems like students have made a shift in maturity both academically and socially, it's truly amazing to think about how much they have all grown and changed since September.
We looked at some fancier pattern books this week, and also started studying the vowels. We are learning the short vowel sounds, and learned that every word has at least one vowel, so they are pretty important to learn! In the next few weeks we will be studying CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words and word families that use these vowels. On Wednesdays our writing time is a little shorter so the last two weeks we have had a focus on practicing handwriting, which has been really great. It is fun to see how independently they can practice with just a little direction! This week we began practicing spelling and writing both our first and last names. Great to practice at home too!
In reading we practiced using our voices to bring books to life, sounds like the adults that read to us (fluency). We also read the song "Where is Thumbkin" to learn about punctuation, and students added it to the new "I Can Read" binder they have in their reading bin. They got new reading partners and learned how to give book introductions before reading to their partner!
In math we have continued exploring numbers and number lines. We learned a new game called "Read My Mind" where children write out number 1-10 or 1-20 depending what they are ready for, and then try to guess what number the teacher has in her pocket. They get hints about whether the number is greater or less than the number they guessed, and erase or cross off the numbers that it couldn't be, and guess again. This is great number writing practice, numeral recognition, and most importantly reinforcing language like before/after, greater than/less than. Today we used number cards to play "Scrambled Numbers" with a partner, working on ordering numbers.

This morning we stayed inside because it was so cold. The room was humming quietly as every child was engaged and it was neat to see they all chose something sensory related or using their creative imaginations.

Ms. S. came for her weekly guidance and we are talking about The Green Zone. This is the first step for students to learn about the Zones of Regulation, which helps them identify what zone they are in and then build tools to help themselves depending on what zone they are identifying with at that time. Here is a chart we use at Allen Brook School: