Beginning readers often mix up "me" and "my". This video will help them figure it out. | Many beginning readers mix up the lowercase b and lowercase d. This video will help them figure it out. |
As children really begin to click with learning phonics, reading and writing, there are some common mistakes that we see. Typically, kindergartners (and even first and second graders) mix up their b's and d's. The words "me" and "my" are also commonly confused by beginning readers. So to help the kids gain a solid grasp of these concepts, I created these two practice videos. I will be showing them in class...you can watch them with your child at home as well. With the daily practice of watching the videos, reading and writing, the kids should have it figured out in no time!
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Where does our food come from? That is the question on the floor this week at 123 KinderStreet as we begin our Down on the Farm unit. We will learn about crops and animals that give us the food we eat and even the clothes we wear. I will be asking you all to send in some food containers so that kids can analyze ingredients and learn what their source was. Stay tuned for that later this week. We have started our geometry unit in math this week, and first on the the agenda is learning the names of the 3-D shapes: sphere, cylinder, cube and cone. We will be discussing what shapes we can see on the flat surfaces, and where in real life we can find examples of each. Search your house and yard...see what 3-D shapes you can find. For practice, here is another awesome video created by Harry Kindergarten. When we do this in class we have hand motions to go along with the song (big arms around for sphere, rolling fists around for cylinder, trace a big square in the air with hands for square, and touch fingertips over your head for cone). Do the motions together with your child...not only will they learn the 3-D shapes, but you will both get some exercise too! And to round out our math video category, here is a gifted and hilarious first grade teacher named Mr. Smith who I just discovered last night on YouTube. He has a series of videos called Teacher Tipster, which is full of games, rhymes and songs that help kids learn. Here is a hilarious video he created on 3-D shapes that we watched today. If you like Mr. Smith, check out more of his videos at his Teacher Tipster YouTube channel, or go to Teacher Tipster.com for printables and more. Enjoy the warm weather!
If you were a kid in the 70's like me, you probably have fond memories of a PBS show called The Electric Company. Once I got too big for Sesame Street, The Electric Company became the show to watch. Well, one day for some reason I was thinking about my old favorite and the skit where the beginning and ending sounds come out of the actors' mouth, and I thought, "Hey...I can do that!!!" So here is my attempt to recreate the famous onset and rime sketch for words with the short /a/ sound. **By the way, being able to recognize familiar word chunks is a very powerful reading tool, and a great one to practice using during your daily story time at home.** Bringing the Electric Company into the new century! Wait...there's more. If you have PowerPoint on your computer, here are two Click-N-Play interactive powerpoints that you can play with your child at home. They were shared to me online by two fantastic teachers, and now I'm sharing them with you. We used them in the classroom this week, and they are great for practice at home.
Enjoy!
I have a variety of random "stuff" to share with you today. First of all, here is a cool website that Ms. B (our ESOL teacher) shared with me. It covers math, reading and other academic topics on a variety of levels in a fun way. I look forward to trying this site out with the kids in class. Try it at home and let me know what you think. By January, our county expects kindergarteners to be able to read at least 10 of the 30 kindergarten sight words. So I came up with this poster to help the students with their reading...it's a fun, I Spy-like photo with sight words hidden throughout the picture. Click on the picture below to bring up the larger version and have your child find and read each word. If you're really ambitious, you could even print it out and laminate it to make a reusable wall poster. Can you find them all? And the last thing for today is the latest piggie pups update. On Saturday, they turned a week old! They are hungry little guys, and just want to eat, drink and poop all day. Marmalade is a wonderful and gentle mama; she keeps them clean and full. Have a look... The guinea pig pups are a week old today. "Good Day!" The K-Team is really focusing on reading comprehension this month, and we are encouraging you all to put your focus there as well by reading daily with your child and having lots of discussions about the stories you read. With that in mind, I want to let you know about a fantastic website called Storynory. Natasha is the narrator, and she reads wonderful adventure stories aloud about Prince Bertie the Frog, who is really a handsome prince. There are also classic stories there, like Alice in Wonderland, or fairy tales by Hans Christian Anderson and other authors. You can select the story for the evening, then cuddle up together and listen. Pause the recording as you go to discuss and ask questions. This activity will develop your child's listening comprehension, which carries over to their reading comprehension. Earlier this week, we listened to the first story in the Prince Bertie saga in class, and I added the player below for you to listen to. It's called...How Prince Bertie Became Bertie the Frog. Enjoy! How Prince Bertie Became Bertie the Frogby Storynory First and foremost, I must say... CONGRATULATIONS to the kiddies for earning their PIZZA PARTY on Friday!!!! We have been collecting rainbows for weeks trying to get this party. Next up...ice cream soda party!!!! Keep up the good behavior, kids! Now on to book recommendations for the holidays. Parents love to give their children fun games and toys for the holidays, but don't forget the value of books, expecially great read-alouds. I love reading chapter books to kids--books written on a reading level for older kids, but that are rich with action and vocabulary, but not a lot of pictures. Reading chapter books--and other books-- to your kids every day is so important to your child's future reading susccess!! It develops all of those critical thinking skills that are necessary for learning, and it fosters a life-long love of reading as well. Take a look at a few of the benefits of reading aloud daily to your child: -vocabulary building -higher level thinking skills (wondering why, making inferences and predictions) -great bonding time -develop a love of books -using imagination to make mental pictures -modeling using your "reading voice" (fluency) Book Recommendations:First, let me recommend a great book for you to read to learn more about reading aloud to your child... "The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. I read this book when my own son was very tiny, and it helped me tremendously with my read-alouds. Great Read-Alouds: Some of my personal faves to read aloud to kids... -Charlotte's Web -Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -The Wind in the Willows (we are reading this one right now) -Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle -Stuart Little -The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe -Little House on the Prairie, -Ribsy (there is a series of Ribsy books) -A Wrinke in Time -Winnie the Pooh -The Mouse and the Motorcycle -The Cricket in Times Square -Where the Sidewalk Ends - Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH I hope you take a look at some of these books for holiday gifts, or choose one of your own childhood favorites, and introduce chapter books to your child today!
We are learning phonics!!! There seems to be a little confusion on the parents' part about the homework regarding stretching, breaking and writing words as part of our writing instruction. So I thought I'd give a little tutorial here so that you can work with your child at home. Our focus for writing at this level is not for spelling (although spelling is very important, that comes later on), but for learning to hear sounds within words. This can be tricky, especially with vowel sounds and what I like to call "Letter Buddies". So here are the steps that we do in class to help us figure out how to write words phonetically:
Here is a helpful video where Jonathan and I demonstrate phonetic writing: Jonathan and Mrs. Jenkins give a demonstration on how to stretch out and break up words in order to hear and write the sounds. One more thing!!! I have to give a big shout out to an awesome kindergarten teacher named Mr. Harry, who creates the best learning videos on You Tube. All of his videos are colorful with fun action songs which help the kids remember what they learned and have fun doing it. I just added several more of his great counting videos to our videos page, so please click on over and have some counting fun with your child. Mr. Harry makes videos on just about every subject that we teach in Kindergarten, so if you would like to watch many more, please surf over to the Harry Kindergarten Channel on YouTube and check it out. I'm sure you'll find more videos that you and your child can watch together. Well, that's all for now. Thanks for reading! This week the Kindergarteners are getting a taste of the good things to come in First Grade by participating in their first official book report. So far, we have only received reports from half of the students, so please help your child get them done and turned in this week. Once the students hand in their report and present their findings to the class, they will be creating a "Blabber" about their animal. Blabbers are fun, short videos which allow you to animate a picture and make it talk. If you click on or hover over the Fun Stuff tab above, you will find a new page called Kid Blabber! Go there to see all of the Blabber creations we have made so far. p.s.--You can make your own Blabbers with your kids at home. They are a fantastic way to encourage your child to read and to write over the summer. Check it out for yourself at the Blabberize website. Have a fun week!
We are going "hog wild" with animals this week! On Thursday, we have a field trip to Clark's Elioak Farm in Howard County. The kids will get a tour of all the animals with their new babies, and have the opportunity for a pony ride. There are also slides and fun storybook characters to play with there as well. Please remember to turn in all permission slips and money today or tomorrow. The pony rides cost an extra $1.50 We also have our first book report for the year. The students will select an animal to study here at school. They will write down what they want to learn about that animal, and bring their questions home. Then it is up to you and your child to do some research to answer the questions and learn more about that animal. You can type your child's words or help them write their own words, then get the creative juices flowing to create a drawing, photo, or model of the chosen animal. Book reports are due on Monday, May 16, and students will present their reports to the class. This is great preparation for first grade, and a chance for the kids to show you what they can do when it comes to reading and writing. Have fun! Math Fun!The kids are learning how to add with Mrs. C. We covered the basics in the last chapter. This week we learn about plus and equals signs, and how to add on. Please check out these fun and educational links for more addition learning: IXL--Kindergarten Addition And...more Harry Kindergarten for you! Lovely Language ArtsWe have one vowel left to learn, and that is the short /u/ sound. Listen to poor Uncle Umbrella as he forgets everything he ever knew in the video below. Have a great week everyone! There's something cooking down in Kindergarten this week! This week in Language Arts, Mrs. Jenkins read a story called "The Great Big, Enormous Turnip," a story about a farmer who needed help to pull his giant turnip out of the ground. The children then put on their actors hats and acted out the story using a real live, enormous turnip from the grocery story, which was quite a sight to behold! Then, Mrs. Jenkins decided it was high time the kids tried something new and declared that a turnip taste test would be held. On Tuesday, Mrs. Ellie brought in her crock pot, washed and sliced up some of the turnips, and began to cook them while the kids were busy in their small groups and centers. By the time lunch was over, our classroom was smelling quite delicious (like broccoli, one student proclaimed). Mrs. Ellie added salt and pepper to the pot and let the turnips simmer some more. By the afternoon, you could smell our bubbling turnips all the way down the hall! We ran out of time for turnip tasting on Tuesday, so we placed our treats in the refrigerator and waited for Wednesday morning . Each student received a tiny taste of cooked turnips and raw turnips on their plates, and were asked to taste and rate each on the flavor. The results were quite surprising to both teachers and students! Most of the taste testers liked the cooked turnips. In fact, Justin begged for seconds and then thirds. Mrs. Jenkins and Cynthia even fought over the last turnip!!! Despite the bitter flavor, many of the taste testers loved the raw turnip. Some, like Mrs. C, Nicholas and Sam preferred the raw turnip over cooked. Four brave souls held their noses and took a taste, but liked neither cooked nor raw turnips. And almost all said that they would definitely eat a turnip again. Mrs. Jenkins, Mrs. C and Ms. Ellie were so very proud of all the kids (and themselves) for trying a new food, and declared them all to be "Big Boys and Girls". We plan to plant the remainder of our delicious treat in a large pot to see if it will grow turnip greens (yum!) And if anyone out there has a great turnip recipe to share, we'd love to give it a try! We need your help with our Math curriculum next week. As an object lesson on fractions, Mrs. C plans to bake a pizza for the students, which they will slice into halves and fourths. Mrs. C will provide the pizza dough. If you are able and would like to help, please send in pizza toppings, such as mozzarella cheese, pepperonis, pizza sauce, or fresh vegetables. We will communicate with you via email as supplies come in so that you will know what we still need. Thank you so much for your help! Finally, in celebration of Spring, here is a slideshow of some flowers in Mrs. Jenkins' yard and neighborhood, including her beloved camellia bush. Happy Springtime everyone! |
Welcome!We are Mrs. Jenkins and Mrs. Koeppl, this is 123 KinderStreet, our little home away from home! Click on the pictures for more info about us. short /u/is
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