To cap off our week of Gingerbread stories, the Kindergartners were challenged to complete their own epic escape adventure. A social distanced escape room in a way! In the stories, the Gingerbread person had to escape several different characters on his way to freedom. In our adventure, the Kindergartners had to escape the oven, the house, the pig, the cow, the crowd, and the final challenge of escaping the fox!
   Each character had a special skill that they Kinders had to practice from rhyming to reading CVC words to even writing a sentence! Over the course of 2 days, the Kinders amazingly escaped all the characters and celebrated with their very own gingerbread playdoh and a gingerbread cookie!
   When we they had the cookie, we also compared who liked gingerbread and who didn't along with what they bit off first. We discovered that nearly every Kinder bit the head off their Gingerbread cookie first!
   It was such an epic adventure and the Kinders were able to show off just how much they know!

This week was one of my favorite weeks in Kindergarten! This week, the Kindergartners read SO many gingerbread character books and we compare/contrasted all the story elements in them! The Kinders compared the setting, characters, the main character, and the repeated words together. Then, the Kinders compared the endings of the story in their very own journals!
   We would talk about the ending and the the Kindergartners would create and write a sentence all of their own! After they wrote their sentence, they drew their picture, which showed the ending and what happened. We discovered that gingerbread books have SO many similar qualities but they all are just a little bit different from one another!

Can you believe that we have been in school for 50 days?? Wow! Not only have we been in school for 50 days but we have been in person that whole time. It was clearly time for a celebration!! On our 50th day, Miss Keenan's room traveled back in time to the 1950's! While in the 1950's, we talked about what life was like then and compared it to what we have and use now. We even listened to a few records that Miss Keenan borrowed from her mom from the 1950's and on! The Kinders were so surprised that a record is how they used to listen to music, especially since we just use things like our phones and Alexa now! 
  While rocking away in the 1950's, we practiced alphabetical order with 1950's vocabulary, used our eagle eyes to find sight words in 1950's pictures, and then had a sock hop!
    There were SO many friends saying "This is the best day ever!" You can't ask for more than that on the 50th day! Check out some pictures below!

Things got spooky and monstrous during Halloween week in Kindergarten! On Thursday, the Kinders walked into a room full of monsters! Each monster looked very different and had several physical characteristics that only they had (like stripes, color, polka dots etc). The Kinders spent the day working of describing characters physical traits along with personality traits like scary, huge, and creepy.
   Then, the Kinders switched gears and read a story "I Need My Monster!" We have been talking a lot about needs and wants, so this was a perfect time to review things that we actually need and things that we want. After reading the book, the Kinders wrote about what they needed along with what they really want.
    Lastly, the Kinders each received a "Make a Monster Kit" and they were able to create their very own monsters and described them! What a roaring success monster day was! The Kinders had a blast and learned SO much!

Even while social distancing, the Kinders are enjoying play based learning, using their imaginations, and having a little bit of fun! At the start of the year, we do an ABC bootcamp, focusing on a single letter each day, with the goal to build confidence, knowledge, and learning all of our letters/letter sounds quickly. Wow! Are they ever doing amazing! Monday-Thursday, we focus on a letter and on some Fridays, we have been turning into Alphabet Detectives! With some detective music in the background, the Kinders use their magnifying glass, their fancy detective marker (aka...a highlighter!), and got to work solving all the letter mysteries. They try and identify individual letters, beginning sounds, and sorting letters. They are loving the chance to use their imaginations and are building their confidence in their abilities. We are eagerly waiting to finish all the letters since we'll be having quite a celebration then!

Now that we have finished our unit on how our pictures tell a story and using "The Magic Line" when creating illustrations, we moved on to adding labels to our illustrations like authors do! To kick off this learning, we learned what a label is and then labeled Miss Keenan! After that, we used our schema and labeled apples! The Kinders were given all the parts of an apple and then were challenged to use their friend Lips the Fish (he helps us find the beginning sound in a word!) and figure out what the word is and then gluing it on our apple creations. Watching their little brains sound out words, problem solve, and show off their finished projects was so much fun! They are quickly becoming blossoming readers and writers!

The past few weeks in writing, the Kindergartners have been learning all about how our pictures and illustrations can tell the reader important things about a story. This will make our writing even better as we progress! This week, we worked hard on creating a detailed setting, using the "Magic Line" aka the horizon line. The we talked about how colors fill an entire paper and drawing with pencil/black marker before color. WOW! They are expert illustrators! To share our amazing skills, the Kinders drew pictures of how an apple tree changes throughout the season after reading a nonfiction text. We discussed what important facts the story gave us and tried to add them to our illustrations!
  Take a look at some of our spectacular illustrations below!

Has your Kindergartner mentioned our class Yeti yet? He is an important part of our class that we talk about every day! Our Yeti reminds us of the power of the word "Yet." In Kindergarten there are a lot of things that we can't do...yet. Instead of getting frustrated about not being able to do something, we can remember our Yeti friend and that we just can't to the skill yet. This is using a growth mindset and helping to remind the Kinders that they are going to be able to do these things, it will just take practice! We also learned that our teachers have things they can't do yet either! Every day, if there is a Kinder that is doing a great job remembering the Yeti and the word yet, our Yeti friend gets to come and sit by them! It is such an exciting thing and we get to celebrate our Kinder friend. We've had a handful of friends already get to have our Yeti sit next to them and there will be plenty more to come over the year (and our Yeti only goes to one friend a day and is sanitized to keep us safe and healthy!)

Did you know that Kindergartners have superpowers? To start our year off with a bang, we decided to learn, practice, and master all of our superpowers that it takes to be a Kindergartner! These included:

Writing/recognizing our name
Using glue correctly
3 Star illustrations
Counting/knowing numbers
Recognizing/names letters
Using a whiteboard marker
Taking care of Play Doh
Closing markers
Using scissors
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   Wow! We knew that the Kinders were super, but their superpowers are out of this world! Each day, we donned our capes, struck a superhero pose, and practiced away. Over the course of a few weeks, we mastered so many skills and are now ready to fully jump into all things Kindergarten for the rest of the year now that we are Kindergarten ready. Make sure to ask your Kinders about the different badges on their capes, what they stand for, and perhaps ask them to show you some of their superpowers!

Hello Kindergarten families!
   Welcome to our Kindergarten blog. Here you will find pictures galore of the Kindergarten class, highlighting different activities that we have done each week. We are looking forward to another spectacular and memorable year of Kinder!