ALL ABOARD

Dressed in our pajamas, we boarded the Polar Express Train to celebrate the holiday season together.!We participated in fun holiday-themed centers that parents put together for us! We even watched The Polar Express movie. We had a wonderful day together. Enjoy the pictures from our day!

We hope that you and your family have a wonderful and restful holiday! See you January 5th!

To celebrate all of our hard work and the holiday season, we decided to take a break from normalcy this week. Each day this week has a wintery theme, and in each of our workshops we did activities according to that theme. Math included! To celebrate Monday's gingerbread theme, we played a dice game called "Roll-A-Gingerbread Man." The students had to roll the dice, and based on what they rolled, had to add a certain part to their gingerbread man. On Tuesday, we enjoyed a snowman themed day. We read stories about snowmen and wrote "How to Build a Snowman" stories, but our favorite part was the "Melt-An-Ice Cube" Game in Math! Similar to the "Roll-A-Gingerbread Man" game, we rolled dice to see what we would do to the ice cube in order to get it to melt (such as breathe on the ice cube for 10 seconds, drop it, shake salt on it, etc.). The students came to the conclusion that placing the ice cube in water and putting salt on the ice cubes helped it melt the fastest. Enjoy the pictures from Monday and Tuesday's Math Workshops! We are looking forward to tomorrow's "Polar Express" Day! "ALL ABOARD!"

**We apologize for the delay in getting the Pow Wow pictures posted! We were having so much fun on our Pow Wow celebration day that we forgot to take pictures! We are waiting to get some more pictures before posting. If you have any that you wouldn't mind sharing, please send them in. Thanks!

Preparing for Pow Wow

We have been busy busy busy preparing for Friday's Pow Wow celebration! We have learned about the Hopi Indians, made our own Hopi costumes, and made Kachina Dolls! Thank you to everyone who has sent in items and those who came in to help us! We hope that everyone will be able to attend our Pow Wow this Friday to help us celebrate the completion of our integrated unit on Native Americans. See you at our Make-and-Take Night tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. in our classroom!

This week's homework is based on the book Knots On A Counting Rope by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault. You can listen to the story read online at http://storylineonline.net/index2.html. Enjoy!

Literary Parade and Fall Centers

Enjoy the pictures from our exciting day! Thank you to everyone who helped make this day so much fun!

Native American Unit

It is a Kindergarten tradition at Chets Creek for each class to study and research different Native American tribes through an integrated unit on Native Americans. Our class will be the Hopi tribe. This week we will begin this integrated unit where we will learn all about our Native American Tribe. On Friday, November 21st, we will conclude our unit by participating in a Native American Pow Wow celebration and various centers. The homework for this coming week is to research the Hopi tribe. The following are great sites to check out:

Searchme

View in searchme: full lite

To learn more about the Southwestern Indians, check out this charity site that helps real-life Native Americans, such as the Hopi tribe, with basic life needs:

https://webmail.duvalschools.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.nrcprograms.org/site/PageServer?pagename=cin_index

Our First Field Trip

After weeks of anticipation, the big day finally arrived: FIELD TRIP DAY!! We started the day at the Metro Park Kids Campus, where we played and ate lunch. We then headed to the Florida Theatre to see one of our favorite "star" books: Harry the Dirty Dog! It was amusing during the show when the students heard one of our vocabulary words, "furiously," and immediately almost all 36 thumbs shot up in the air! The students really get into their vocabulary! Thank you to all the parents who chaperoned! The day was flawless and so much fun! Enjoy the pictures from our special day!

My Hero

One of our "Star" book vocabulary words for Little Red Riding Hood was "hero." The hunter was a "hero" at the end of the story because he saved Little Red Riding Hood and her granny from the wolf. The students were asked to draw a picture of their hero. It was interesting to see their perspective of a hero:

Sydni said her heroes are her parents!


Mia said her heroes are the people in the Army and Navy!


Markis said his hero was his dad because he is in the Army!


Emma said that her hero was her daddy because he is a firefighter and he saves people!

Ask your child who their hero is!

Our Shining Stars

Today our class was video streamed live to the Shultz Center, which is where all of the county's professional development takes place! The Literacy 101 class, which is a course that gives teachers more background in Reader's and Writer's Workshops, dropped in to watch the stars in our classroom. They were able to see the transitions students make from Reader's Workshop share time into our Writer's Workshop mini-lesson. We already know how brilliant our little stars are, but today they showed the world how hard they have been working. While Miss Lewis and Miss Thomson debriefed with the Literacy 101 class, students were able to show some of the Literacy and Math Coaches from our school their wonderful small moment writing. Ask your little writer what they wrote about and what strategies they used!

LOLA ON THE LOOSE!

Many of you may have heard about our class pet, Lola the hamster. Well, on Monday during Literacy Stations, a student informed us that Lola's cage door was open and she was not in her cage. We discretely checked the cage and realized he was right, she was GONE! We had cleaned her cage on Friday after school and must have forgotten to lock the cage door. We frantically searched the classroom while the students were at lunch, but Lola was no where to be found! After still not finding her on Tuesday, we started to think that she may have been gone for good. As the students were returning to their seats during Skills Block, a student shouted, "THERES A MOUSE IN OUR CLASSROOM!" Of course, we were delighted to realize that it was just Lola running into the math manipulatives! Lola is now safe and sound back in her home!

Literacy Stations

We have added a new part to Reader's Workshop: Literacy Stations! At this age it is hard for students to read independently for more than 15-20 minutes. To extend the time students are reading, we implemented Literacy Stations. Literacy Stations are centers that focus on reading. Some of the Literacy Stations that we are participating in right now are reading genre books(ex. Dr. Suess books, Arthur books, etc.), retelling "Star" books, retelling nursery rhymes, and telephone reading (students talk into a "telephone" made out of PVC pipe which allows them to hear themselves read).

Meet Chet!

This year, we are going on a blogging adventure around the world with a little help from our new friend Chet! We are so excited because our classroom is one of the lucky rooms that is home to the new traveling bear for our school.
Are you wondering how Chet is going to get to travel the world? He gets to go with you! If you are going on vacation and would like to take Chet with you, he will pack his bag and be ready for an adventure. The only catch is that you will have to share your adventure with Chet with our class. You can take pictures, write a story, draw a picture - anything you can think of to share with us the adventure that you and Chet went on. We will post your adventure on this blog so that other classes can see the adventure you went on, and Mrs. Phillips can read all about it.
We can't wait to see where Chet will end up this year! Is anyone up for an adventure?

Educational Websites

The following is a list of websites that contain educational games and activities:


http://pbskids.org/lions/games/

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bll/

http://www.starfall.com/

http://www.little-g.com/shockwave/loading.html

http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/

http://www.kidsreads.com/wordscrambles/index.asp

http://www.sesamestreet.org/home/?scrollerId=games

http://www.kidport.com/Gradek/math/mathIndex.htm

http://www.learningplanet.com/stu/kids0.asp

http://schools.u-46.org/index.pl?id=13503

Star Books

You may have noticed your Kindergartener talking about mischeiveous monkies, an ordinary peddler, billy goats, or maybe even a mean ugly troll lately. This is because we have started our "Star" book retellings and vocabulary. "Star" books are classic narrative stories that we read over and over again in the beginning of Kindergarten. Most students do not come into Kindergarten as conventional readers, so we use students' abilities to retell a story as a means of assessment. After we have read the "Star" books several times as a class, students are able to retell the stories orally and also by acting them out. We also study vocabulary words from the stories, such as ordinary, finally, disturb, etc. We encourage you to read these stories at home as well. Here is a list of the "Star" books we will be studying this year:

Caps For Sale
Three Billy Goats Gruff
Red Riding Hood
Where The Wild Things Are
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Harry the Dirty Dog
The Gingerbread Boy
A Pocket for Corduroy
Peter's Chair
Mop Top
Frederick
The Little Red Hen
Jack and the Beanstalk
Big Al

Primary Composition Notebooks

There has been some confusion as to the Primary Journal Composition Notebook on the Kindergarten Supply List. The above pictures are the correct notebook required. The bottom half of each page is lined, and the top half of each page in this composition book is blank so that students can illustrate their written work. If you are having difficulty finding these notebooks in stores, you can also purchase them online. Each student is required to send in two. Thank you to parents who have sent in more than the required amount! If you are able to send in more than two, we would greatly appreciate it! Also, if you have had luck finding these notebooks, please share by adding a comment to this posting as to where you purchased yours.

First Day

We had a wonderful first day of school together today! We went on a Scavenger Hunt around the school to help find Corduroy's lost button, practiced the rituals and routines of our classroom, read stories, talked about what we did on our summer vacations, and even got to see an assembly! We had a great day and can't wait to have a wonderful year together! We would love to hear comments about how your child's first day went!

P.S. Don't forget to wear your new Chets Creek shirt tomorrow!

Wish List

Please help us enhance our learning environment by donating some of these items:

-HP #94 Black Ink Cartridges
-HP #97 Tri-Color Ink Cartridges
-Cordless Glue Gun
-Large Glue Gun Sticks
-Avery Shipping Labels #8163
-AA Batteries
-Velcro Dots
-Walgreen Gift Cards (for film developing)
-Silver Sharpies
-Black Sharpies
-XD Digital Camera Memory Card

Welcome California Dreamers

We are so excited to meet you all and have you become a part of the classroom we have been working so hard to create for you! This year we will be traveling around the world in 180 days! Kindergarten is North America. We have chosen to transform our classroom into California. There are so many exciting places to visit there like the Golden Gate Bridge, Hollywood, The San Diego Zoo, etc. We are thrilled to start this journey with you!
Love,
Miss Lewis and Miss Thomson