We started Reading Ticket!

The children really enjoyed starting our Reading Ticket today! They had a blast playing alphabet and sight word games. Many children wrote in their journals and drew beautiful pictures. Stories on tape were fun to listen to. We were also impressed that we had children reading in some sight word easy readers. The children remembered most of the routines we've been practicing in order for Reading Ticket to run smoothly. We were very proud of our students and look forward to having these fun activities each day. Gina Holcomb and Debbie Hodges, two of our parent volunteers were very helpful in checking off the students after their Reading Ticket activities were finished. We would love to have more parents to come and help us. We have Reading Ticket Monday through Thursday from 1:20 to 2:20 if you'd like to join us.

Please continue helping your child each night with homework. We can tell who is making great progress on our weekly sight words. Remember that the homework contract should be returned each Friday inside the homework folder. We must have the folder so that the new homework can be put inside and sent home on Monday. We do not need any of the completed work, ONLY the homework contract. At this time, we are hopeful that your child should be able to read the first two weeks of sight words. These are: a, and, the, of, to, it, is, in, that, you. If your child does not know these words, please continue to work on these at home.

In phonics, we've covered the letters L,O,G,H, and this week's letter T. Your child should be able to recognize both the upper and lowercase letter and give the sound each letter makes.

In math, we are working on sorting. You can encourage this at home by having your child sort things in your house, such as the laundry, foods in the pantry, toys, etc... We have been practicing sorting attribute blocks in lots of ways. We've sorted our attribute blocks by size, color, shape, and thickness.

We all had a blast on Grandparents Day. Mrs. Sirmans, Mrs. Whitaker, and I really enjoyed meeting our students Grandparents. The students sang "AEIO Moo" song about vowels and "Love Grows" to everyone. We had delicious breakfast treats. We really appreciate Gina Holcomb and Kristie Gauthier who planned the refreshments. Many of the pastries offered were made by Tara Tomlinson, Jadyn's mom, who owns Sugar Kneads in Loganville. If you are in need of some baked goods or cakes, this would be a wonderful place to go. It is located in the same shopping center as Johnny's Pizza. We really appreciate her donating those tasty treats. I have made pictures of the kids with their grandparents, so I should be sending a copy soon.

Please continue to encourage your children to follow the rules, not pull sticks, and earn enough stickers for our next behavior party, Movie and Popcorn. Most of us are having a great month so far!

What We've Been Learning and Doing!

We have been having a great time learning so much at school. This week we've been talking about the letter G and singing our song about Gus the Goat. Now that we've learned L O and G, we can now read a new word -"log". We are so excited that we all can read! We've also learned some new buddies, "all", "sh", and "ee." Ask your child to tell you the buddy cheer that goes with each group of letters. We also learned a song to help us remember the short vowel sounds. The children enjoyed holding up the letters as they were sung. Our next week's letter will be Hh.

In math, we've been counting items in our counting jar. We also like counting the number of friends who are present each day and figuring out how many of our friends are absent. We've also been working with attribute blocks, buttons, and square tiles. Math is a lot of fun! Zero the Hero visited us again on our 20th day of school. He brought us Cheerios for our zero treat.

We were very pleased that most all of our students brought in their homework. Please make sure to work with your child each night on homework, so that he/she will recognize all the sight words and will start reading soon. Our sight words for next week will be in, is, you, that, it. We will send home the new homework on Monday. Please continue to review this week's sight words which are a, and, the, to, of.

At this time, your child should be able to recognize a, and, the, to and of by sight and recognize L, l, O, o, and, G, g and give their sounds. This should not be a problem if your child is a good listener in class.

We had a great time celebrating our great behavior for the month of August. We hope all of our students will be able to participate in our September celebration, which will be a movie party, with popcorn, candy, and soda. Please encourage your child to continue following the rules and not pulling any sticks.

We have been talking about and practicing what we will be doing during Reading Ticket, we have a few more days to explain our Popcorn and ABC centers. We should be ready for our first reading ticket on Wednesday. We are so excited!

Thanks SO much to everyone who provided snack for our class. This is the very first time since we've been teaching that no one forgot. So thank you for making this a priority. Also, thank you to all of you who've sent in items for our fun Friday treats. We couldn't do it without you!

Mrs. Broome's class normally will visit the library each Thursday and Mrs. Sirmans' class on Friday. Please make sure your child brings his or her library book on these days. Both classes will visit the computer lab on Friday. The students have enjoyed visiting the website
www.starfall.com. This is a wonderful site for teaching reading. If your child is allowed to use your computer at home, please help him/her visit this site. On our main class website, click on the "kids links" tab for other educational, fun sites. :0) Have fun!

We hope everyone has a great, long, weekend! We will see you on Tuesday!

A Great Week!

Our week has gotten off to a great start. We've had lots of children who have mastered writing their names correctly and have been able to arrive at school and choose a puzzle or math center. We have been happy and smiling as we sing our morning meeting song, "Welcome to School." The children have also enjoyed the responsibility of having a job. We've chosen several of our students to be the caboose, teacher's helper, bathroom monitor, trash patrol, center patrol, and door holder. We continue to be impressed by how well our students have adjusted to all the rules and procedures we have in order for our classroom to run smoothly. Yesterday and today, we compared the materials we've been using during math and discussed how they are the same and how they are different. The children have been introduced to graphic organizers and how they show a picture of what we know. We specifically made a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast the manipulatives that we used in math. Ask your child if he/she knows what a Venn Diagram is.

The children are still enjoying singing our song about Larry Lion. This week we've met a new friend named Ollie Octopus. He, just like Larry Lion, has a very special song that we've learned. We've watched him in his music video. Mr. Pencil has also taught us how to write the letter Oo correctly. Ask your child to sing his song. We continue to talk about our vowels. Today we learned a song/cheer about the short and long sounds of the vowels. We also introduced our students to letter "buddies." These buddies are made up of two or more letters that make a different sound when they stand together. These buddies each have a cheer. This week we've practiced three of them. They are: "oo, oo, I love school, too." "or, or, a horse, of course." "sh, sh, shopping for shoes." Learning these buddies will help the children learn to read those words with letter and vowel combinations. We've also started our sight word instruction this week. Our words are: a, to, the, of, and. Next week, we will begin sending our sight word homework home for you to use to help your child recognize these words. We hope by the end of the week your child will be able to recognize these words, along with the letters and sounds they've covered in phonics. So far, he/she should recognize L and O and the sounds they make. We also introduced journal writing yesterday, which went very well. We are so impressed with how smart our students are. We hope you will be able to join us for Curriculum Night this Thursday at 7:00. We have so many exciting things to share with you.

Learning Lots!

We have gotten most of our routines and rules perfected, so we were able to begin our academic instruction this week. Our letter of the week is L. We learned a song about a special friend, "Larry Lion." He loves lemon drops and lollipops. He even stars in his own DVD and sings his special song. After Larry Lion performs, Mr. Pencil teaches us how to write the letter L. By the end of the week, we expect that each student will be able to recognize the letter L, both upper and lowercase, and say the sound this letter makes. We've also begun talking about the alphabet. The children should be able to tell you that there are 26 letters in our alphabet. We sing a great song that teaches all the letters and sounds of the alphabet. We've also learned that A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y are vowels. We sang a funny song about a cow who likes to sing about vowels, but she likes to sing, "A, E, I, O, MOO, and sometimes Y.

We also began math instruction. Each day, we pass out a name tag to each child with his/her name on it. The children identify how many nametags I have left. This shows them how many children are absent. Then we count how many children are here and record it on our chart. We've also been exploring pattern blocks, geo blocks, and snap cubes. The children have been discussing the ways that they interact with them. Some children make patterns, others make designs. We will do lots of exploring with these materials involving sorting, counting, and making patterns.

Something VERY exciting happened today! We have been at school now for 10 days. Zero the Hero visited our classroom and brought us zero treats. (Fruit Loops) Ask your child to tell you about Zero. We hope he will visit again on another 0 day.

Please remember to help your child practice writing his/her name at home, if he/she is still having difficulty. Let us know if you need some handwriting paper.

Please continue to encourage your child to follow the rules and be a good listener at school. Our first behavior celebration will at the end of the month and those who've pulled 5 sticks or more this month will be unable to participate. No one has missed yet, so we hope this continues.

We hope EVERYONE will join us for Curriculum Night at 7:00 on August 21st. Mrs. Sirmans and I will be discussing the Kindergarten curriculum, our daily schedule, passing out Sight Word Boxes, and helping you to understand what a day in Kindergarten is like. Mrs. Sirmans and I really enjoy this night, so we hope that you will plan to be here.

Bye for now!

Our First Fun Friday!

The children were so excited when they arrived at school and were able to choose a math center or puzzle center. We heard from many, "Wow! We don't have to work on our name paper?" We explained to them that every Fun Friday they get to choose a center when they get to school. Beginning next Friday, we will be enjoying a Fun Friday snack that begins with our letter of the week. On Monday, we will begin phonics instruction. Our first letter that we will focus on is the letter L. We have a fun song that we sing about Larry Lion. I'm sure that your child will come home singing it.

Thank you to everyone who sent in snack. We were very pleased that no one forgot. Ask your child to recite our "Thank you" poem that we say each day before we eat snack.

We have been very proud of how our students have learned and adjusted to all the procedures and rules that we have in order for our classroom to run smoothly. We are impressed that our students are so smart and remember all the things they are expected to do at different times durning the day.

Our friend, Colten, was the first student to take our class mascot, Logan, home. Logan sat in the front of the room watching to find someone who is a good listener, follows directions, and is a good friend. Colten was SO excited to have Logan visit with him for the weekend. We can't wait to find out about their adventures. Look for Logan to visit your house.

We are also excited about beginning our Math instruction on Monday. The students will be exploring lots of different manipulatives. Each week we will be adding more and more instruction as the students master our different routines and procedures.

We hope everyone has a great weekend!

A Great Week So Far!

We are having a great week so far. We began practicing writing our names. The children are working hard practicing to make sure their names start with a capital letter, making sure that all the other letters are lowercase. Your child will be bringing home a paper to practice. Please work with your child on this. We began introducing our math center. The students had a great time counting, making patterns, and sorting the different manipulatives in our math center. Mrs. Whitaker began calendar time. During this time, the children are exposed to the days of the week, months of the year, seasons, weather, place value, odd and even, a song of the month, counting by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s, counting money, patterns, telling time, ordinal numbers (first, second, third, etc...) and shapes. The students help Mrs. Whitaker with the daily news. A special friend of the day is chosen, and this person dictates something he/she would like her to write in the daily news. After the daily news is written, the children find the word matches, count the words in each sentence, discuss which sentence is longest, and other important skills. Please encourage your child to be a good listener during this time, because a wealth of important skills are reinforced each day at this time. We also visited our specials classes for the first time yesterday and today. The children had a great time! Please remember to always keep a pair of tennis shoes and socks in your child's bookbag in case we have P.E. on a day your child is wearing sandals or Crocs. We also continue to enjoy lots of great music. We sing "Welcome to School" each morning. Our latest numbers include "Gumslot", "Chicken Dance", and "You've Got a Friend." We hope your child is enjoying school. It is our mission to make learning fun! Thanks for sharing your children with us!

See you on Monday!

We were SO happy to not have any of our friends come to school crying! Everyone came to school with a smile on his/her face! We were also very impressed that all of our friends knew exactly where to put their bookbags, agendas, and lunchboxes. When we played the line-up song, all our students got in a straight line and were ready for the hall. We had a chance to play in our puzzle center. What fun we had! We read a silly story about Morris the Moose who had to go to school because he couldn't read. He did some crazy things! Ask your child to tell you about it. The children also had a great time on the playground. We began practicing writing our names. This would be a great skill to begin practicing at home on the paper with lines. We talk about the capital letters and tall letters touch the top line, "the sky". The small letters stay under "the fence", the dotted line, and all the letters have to stop at "the grass", the bottom line. Please make sure you help your child write his/her name with the first letter a capital one and all the others lowercase. We practice this each morning when the children arrive.

All of our students have done a great job following the rules. We seem to have the most difficulty with talking instead of listening. Please discuss the importance of listening. Those who are good listeners seem to have the most success learning. On Monday, we will begin pulling sticks for those students who receive more that one warning for breaking a rule. Please support us with our discipline system in order for us to have a productive learning environment. Thanks!

There is a change in the way ice cream is handled. The PTO will be selling ice cream tickets on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Each ice cream is 50 cents. When you send ice cream money to school, we will send your child to the school store to purchase a ticket. He/she will carry the ticket with him to lunch. After eating lunch, the ice cream will be handed out by a teacher or PTO member. Ice cream is offered everyday at lunch, BUT tickets can only be bought on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If your child will be eating ice cream frequently, it would be a good idea to have your child purchase several tickets, which we will send home. When you'd like your child to have ice cream, you can send a ticket in his/her agenda for that day. Money that is put in the agenda on days that ice cream tickets are not sold will be returned in the agenda.

We'd like to invite you in advance to our Curriculum Night which will be held on August 21st. This is a very important night to learn about all the things that your child will learn. We will be discussing homework, and you will receive a sight word box, which will set your child on the road to reading. I am unsure of the time at this moment, but it is usually around 7:00 p.m. You will be receiving an invitation at a later date.

Thanks so much for visiting our website and blog. We hope it helps to keep you informed! Have a very nice weekend, and we look forward to seeing your children on Monday!