Worms in Dirt Dessert

The "Animal Cracker" mom surprised us again today with the "Worms in Dirt" pudding dessert for a nice Halloween snack!  The kids loved it!  

Jack-O-Lantern Carving

Today I taught a lesson about how pumpkins grow, how people use them for food and how we use them as decorations for Halloween.  Most of them helped to pull out some ooey, gooey seeds.  When I was about to punch out the piece of pumpkin I just cut, I had them sing, "Pop, Goes the Weasel!" Then when they said "Pop!" I'd push it out and one flew up in the air and then it landed on Zach's face!  Oh my! They all thought that was funny!  It was a fun time!

Kids seem to love this activity!

They were so silly when they pulled
out the seeds!

"Teacher!  Can we keep some seeds?"

"My turn!"

I put it in front of my house for the 
kids to see on Halloween night.

Whose hat?

We have a nice stocking hat in the room that no one will claim. If it is your child's hat, please send me an email.

Scooby Doo does quite a job at modeling hats!

Animal Crackers All Around!

A big thank you to this little girl and her 
family for bringing in a huge container
 of animal crackers for those times when 
the kids would like a little snack.  
Thanks!

A Big Thank You!

A local business, Fairway Seeds, surprised us to day by donating some animal books and mini bird flashcards for each child to take home!  We were so happy!  Please thank Larry and Lea when you see them!  Also, keep them in mind when you are looking for gifts as they have a huge selection of bird gifts: flashcards, plush toys, bird books, bird feeders, etc.  Their store is right in town.  It is very convenient and affordable!  Check them out!

The animal books are for the classroom and the 
mini-playing cards have a different bird on each one.  
The students know all of them.  They are thrilled to 
have their very own set of bird flashcards!

Thank you SO much!

Segmenting Words Helps with Writing

Teaching students how to write words is not easy, but this tactic is very helpful.  Teaching students to tell the sounds they hear in a word is called phoneme segmentation.  It is something that they are actually tested on at mid-term and at the end of the year.  After lots of practice, they are able to succeed at it. Here are some examples to get you started.  You can work on it at home and we practice it everyday at home.

You ask, "What are the sounds that you hear in cat?"
Your child should respond, "/c/ /a/ /t/"

Other examples: 
stop  /s/ /t/ /o/ /p/
lend /l/ /e/ /n/ /d/  Students often miss the middle sounds, especially /n/.
bird /b/ /er/ /d/
spoon /s/ /p/ /oo/ /n/

O and R go together as /or/

Follow this link to watch a helpful video about phonemes - click here.

Common Core Standards for Kindergarten

The Common Core Standards are the skills that your child will be taught during the school year.  Here is a link to the many skills that we will work on in Reading and Math during the year.  You can help by looking them over and reinforcing these skills at home.  

I chose the standards that are written in "kid-friendly" language, so that you can discuss it with your child.  It is amazing all that they learn during their kindergarten school year!  Click on the link below:

Common Core Standards for Kindergarten