Mrs. Grogan's Kindergarten: Week 30 Highlights!

What a nice week back from break!

We began our week with Mystery Reader. Thank you Mrs. Wesley for sharing Goldirocks and the Three Bears and The Princess and the Pony.

Our stories of the week were Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin and It Could Still Be a Worm by Allan Fowler. We reviewed character, setting, and main events with our fiction story. Using our informational text, we explore asking and answering questions about unknown words. Ask your child what the word burrow means in relation to worms. Please ask your child to share with you one or more facts about worms.

We added two new words to the word wall this week. Our new word wall words are here and was. Please continue to practice our kindergarten word wall word lists and sight word punch cards with your child at home.

In writer's workshop, we began the second bend of our opinion writing unit. Our mentor text this week was The Day the Crayons Came Home by Drew Daywalt. We listened to the book as writers and discovered that the author included problems, reasons why, and solutions in each crayon's postcards. We discussed and created a list of problems we may have at home. Next, we wrote letters to family members about our problems, why they are problems, and how we can solve our home problems. We also learned how to send a letter. Please check your child's folder for their letter to a family member today.

We continue to explore number bonds, addition, and subtraction in the fourth module of our math curriculum. This week we focused on using number stories to add and decompose numbers 9 and 10. We also introduced core fluency sprints. Students are given 90 seconds to complete as many number sentences correctly. Every Monday we will complete core fluency sprints to practice addition and subtraction facts to ten. During math tubs, we reviewed addition and subtraction to ten, Subitize Tree, one-to-one correspondence to twenty, dice addition, I-Spy, and Find Sums on the iPad. Take a peek at our kindergarten mathematicians hard at work.

We began a new FOSS science unit this week, Animals Two by Two. We also received our first class pet, red worms! Our focus question of the week was what are the parts of a red worm. Please take a peek at your child's homework packet to review the four parts of a red worm. We even made a tasty cooking Friday treat to celebrate our new class pet.