Mrs. Grogan's Kindergarten: Week 26 Highlights!

What a wonderful week!

During our Shared Reading, we focused on the poem, Splish, Splash, to explore letters, sounds, rhyming words, and print concepts. We reviewed sight words this week. The words we can read in a snap are the, I, a, in, my, if, can, the, and she. Please practice identifying, reading, and writing our sight words with your child at home.

In Reader's Workshop, we began our fourth unit, Becoming Avid Readers. This week, we learned and explored what it means to be an avid reader. As avid readers, we read a lot, find places everywhere to read, keep a stack of books in waiting, can't stop reading, really pay attention to the book, and feel what the characters are feeling. Take a peek at our avid readers!

During Read Aloud this week we began our author study unit. Each week during the month of March we will explore a different author and/or illustrator. This week's author study was Lois Ehlert. We read Snowballs, Feathers for Lunch, Top Cat, Mole's Hill, and Market Day. We created a list of items we noticed she included in all her stories. Please ask your child to share with you the similarities and differences in Lois Ehlert's texts.

During Daily Five word work stations this week, we played Sort It, Color, It, Roll and Read It, and Spin It with our snap words. We continue to explore phonics skills using our Word Sorts. We began new sound sorts this week. Please ask your child to share with you their new sounds for sorts. We also practiced our phonemic awareness skills using Lexia on the iPad. We practiced labeling and creating lists at the writing table. Please ask your child what was their favorite Daily Five station this week.

This week during Writer's Workshop, we began our opinion writing unit! We learned that opinion writers have strong feelings and write about them. We can see, think, and write about a problem. This week's focus was problems we see at Irving School. Please ask your child to share with you a problem they see at school, why it is a problem, and how we can solve the problem.

We continue to practice lowercase letter writing in our Handwriting curriculum. We introduced correct letter formation for lowercase diver letters r, n, and m. Please review our uppercase letter, number, and lowercase magic c letters with your child at home.

In Whole Group Math, we continue to explore number pairs, decomposing, and composing numbers in the fourth module in our Eureka Math curriculum. This week's focus was subtraction. We used pictures, manipulatives, number bonds, and number sentences to subtract. Please ask your child to share with you a subtraction equation.

This week during Math Tubs, we completed our round of tubs. Our rotation will focus on number writing, teen numbers, subitizing, one-to-one correspondence, manipulating 100 objects, and basic addition to 10. Please ask your child what their favorite math tub was this week!

On Friday afternoon, we explored our STEM Tubs. Over the next few weeks, we will use different materials to construct a bridge. We will discuss the properties of the materials, collaborate to plan how to build a bridge, predict if the bridge will hold, and build a structure. Take a peek at our kindergarten scientists!