A Celebration of Presidents, Regular Routine,and Outside Recess

It feels so good to be back in the real swing of things.  It has literally been since early December since we've had five consecutive days of kindergarten.  We took full advantage of all our time together and had lots of new learning goals.  We read "Abe Lincoln's Hat" throughout the week and worked on finding 'key details' in the text. We listed them on the anchor chart and reviewed them each day.  The students really enjoyed learning about him and should be able to tell you quite a few things about him.  The journal writings were prompted by our readings about Abe.  We learned how Abe loved to tell jokes and how people found him very funny. The students wrote about who made them laugh.  These journal entries were quite adorable.  Another thing we learned was that Abe was a little forgetful with important paperwork and letters so he kept them in his hat. So at the end of the week, the students made Abe's hat and then wrote 2 facts about him on pieces of paper and "stuck" them in the hat. 

Several of our centers were inspired by Honest Abe as well.  The students got to build log cabins (just like Abe) with Lincoln logs.  

They practiced their penmanship by tracing and copying sentences about Abraham Lincoln in the Writing center.

In the Math Games center, they spun and added pennies to their ten frame mats, trying to beat their partner to 20 cents.  We had been struggling to get a handle on adding one more; what that meant, what that looked like. This game was a great visual for the students.  Plus, they were playing with MONEY which was sure to keep their attention.

 

The other centers included making CVC words with letter unifix cubes in the Word Work center, reading/playing on raz-kids.com at the computer center, and playing a ten frame/numeral memory game in  Number Work.

 

Whole group learning time has been jam-packed with new music videos and games.  This week we focused on the long vowel sounds that are created with the Super E (aka Magic E and Silent E).  Here are links to the catchy songs/videos that got us familiar with said 'e.'

   In math, we have been playing some pretty cool games to help us with our addition facts. They can't get enough of this Penguin Game. They also really like this Shark Numbers game which helps them recognize numbers in the teens and twenties as groups of tens and ones.        

    To build up and prepare for today's big sight word test, we played Quiz Quiz Trade with our sight words a few times this week.  By the way, both classes had big gains in their sight word recognition today.  I am so proud of them and I am so glad to get back on track with our reading.

 

    Of all that we accomplished this week, I think what I am most excited about is that we got to enjoy OUTDOOR RECESS!!!!  We have had indoor recess for the last 3 months.  I try to keep it fun and creative but nothing really compares to being free to run and play in the fresh air. I leave you with a few pics of their jubilation.