Mrs. Powers' Kindergators

On my way into Tech tonight, I saw some students stop, thank and shake hands with another young man in military uniform. It made me think about our Veteran’s Day unit this week and how small kindnesses can often be a big deal. Here are some of the big things our small kids worked on this week in class. Reading: We worked hard to understand the terms “main idea” and “details” as we learned about the Bald Eagle, Veteran’s Day and the branches of the military. We also began thinking about how an author adds details to support their point. We wrote letters to soldier moms this week and will work on soldier dads next. Math: We wrapped up our unit on comparing numbers using strategy and we will be comparing and contrasting strategies that work best for the situation next week. We now have 17 out of our 18 students counting to 100 by 1s and our last one is very close so we will hopefully be celebrating 100% soon. We continued our introduction to word problems and introduced some of ...

We made it through Halloween week! And despite visions of candy corns dancing in the children’s heads, we managed to do lots of learning too! Here are some highlights: Reading: We continued working with word endings and added –ly and –ful to our list. We found lots of word endings in the stories we read this week. The kids loved the stories, “Creepy Carrots” and “I Need My Monster.” We began thinking about the points an author makes to support an idea in the text by choosing a monster from the story, deciding if the little boy wanted it or did not want it under his bed and listing the reasons why. It turns out your kids are pretty picky about which monsters they would allow under their beds too! Math: We continued with our unit on comparing numbers to see which one is more, less or if they are the same. The key to this unit is to be able to explain your thinking and show a strategy for how you decided which is bigger or smaller. We have been working on strategies called “budd...

Please feel free to skip homework this evening and have a Happy Halloween!  Tell the kids to look out for Irma Birnbaum if they go trick or treating!

Well, it feels like Fall is here finally! The kids have enjoyed some extra-long recesses this week in the beautiful weather. We have also enjoyed working through some big lessons in class. Here is what we learned: Reading: We have been working on word endings (-ing, -ed, -s, ly) and trying to listen for them in the stories we read in class. The kids are doing an AMAZING job with sounding them out in the words they are reading. We are blown away. In class they made “Bat Mobiles” that teach the many things they have learned about bats this week. We are still working on helping the children learn to “look for the tricks” before they sound out a word they don’t know. Please encourage them to take a pause and find the letters that work together to make one sound, bully e, two vowels together, bossy r or weird o’s in the words before they try to sound it out. Math: We began our units on comparing numbers and word problems. For the word problem unit, we introduced the term “math dra...

Each year the PTA sponsors a creative arts contest called "Reflections."  For the contest students are asked to submit an artistic piece that reflects the year's theme. This year's theme is "Heroes Around Me." Students can choose to enter a piece in one of six categories: Dance choreography  Film production  Literature  Musical Composition Photography  Visual Arts The piece they submit will be judged to find grade level winners, then primary grade winners and then school wide winners which allows for your child to win in multiple categories. It is a really fast and fun contest. Projects are due by November 5th. As an incentive, students who choose to participate can submit a project in place of homework for one week.  If you wish for your child to participate, please let me know which category or categories you are looking at and I can email you the specifics for that category and an entry form. We hope you will consider participating in Re...

Thank you so much for coming to talk with me/us at conferences. It is always exciting getting to know more details about the kiddos and working together to brainstorm ideas to help them. I really appreciate you coming in to meet. Though it is a short week, we squeezed in lots of learning. Reading: We continued to work on retelling fiction stories while we began discussing how to retell non-fiction by figuring out the main idea and three supporting details. We used bats as our topic to explore for both fiction and non-fiction. Math: We continued our work on classification and focused on how you can sort the same group of things in different ways of you think out of the box. The students are getting much better in the skill and we thank all the parents who are sorting and classifying with the kids at home to reinforce this skill. Halloween candy is a great thing to sort with. May I suggest the groups of “Candy you should let Mrs. Powers eat for you” and the much smaller group of ...