The last couple weeks!

We have had a busy couple of weeks in kindergarten!
Recycle Rhonda has been here from CSWD teaching about recycling, composting, and today worms! She is really engaging and has been at lunch as well to help kids learn how to take care of their waste in all the right places!
We had a great field trip to the apple orchard and beautiful weather too! Students learned about honeybees and how they pollinate the apple trees, how to make cider, and picked apples too. This morning we cut up apples and made our own applesauce right in the classroom! We will continue reading lots of books about apples, pumpkins, and leaves over the next several weeks.

The last two weeks of outdoor classroom (on Fridays rather than Wednesdays as make up days) the kids have enjoyed playing outside and exploring how to use puddle pants (and also be independent in changing wet socks, clothes, and/or boots!). In the afternoons we have been rotating through stations including a predator/prey game, making clay masks on the trees, doing some force and motion play with ramps and balls, and playing a social thinking games about the zones of regulation.

In math we've been playing games with the number line, learning how to identify dots and flash numbers on our fingers, write numerals, and play math games. It has been really fun!

We are continuing to read books about kindness and feelings. As students make friendships and feel closer with each other, we are starting to discover how to use words to share how we are feeling and work through more disagreements and problem solve. All great work and lifelong skills to be practicing!
In literacy we have made some class books, are practicing writing our names, and going to stations. We are building independence at stations (read to self, partner read, word work, ipads) so that I can work with groups at my table during this time on specific skills like phonological awareness, letters and sounds, sight words, reading, etc. This week we are beginning to do a "literacy swap" at the end of reader's workshop where students go to mixed groups with Ms. Read and Mr. Deyo's classes. We also began using RAZ Kids on the ipads where students can read books at their level and be read to! Soon we will be getting into more of a routine around writer's workshop as well.

We had a class celebration last week making playdoh, and also a school wide celebration doing laps around the school!