We had an amazing first week of school in the Kindergarten classroom. It was so much fun to meet all of our new classmates. We started our school year off by reading the story Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready For Kindergarten. We read about all the different things Miss Bindergarten and her students do to get ready for the first day of Kindergarten. Then we each said something we did to get ready for school. This week we really worked on some of our daily routines like lining up, walking in the hallway, lunch time, and so on. Finally we did several Kissing Hand activities. We read four different books about Chester the Raccoon. We also made a Kissing Hand book, learned about being a bully, and created a Chester Raccoon.
Monday:
Happy First Day of School!
It was an exciting day in the Kindergarten classroom. We spent the day getting to know our teacher and new friends. (There are 14 students in kindergarten this year.) We started our day by learning our morning routine. When we enter the school in the morning, we need head down our classroom. Our first task is to empty our back pack and hang it up. When we enter our classroom, we put our folder in our mailbox, put our name tag on the table, and take care of our chair. Once our morning jobs are done, we get to find something to play with.
We started our morning with prayer and pledge. On Mondays our class gets to raise the flag outside, so this morning we headed outside. After flag and prayer, we took some pictures before we headed back inside.
Next we put away all of our supplies. First we separated out the things that have a “special” spot like the glue, baby wipes, paper plates, napkins, and kleenex. Then we added our names to our headphones, folders, notebook, and binder and put them away. The last thing was to put our supplies in our pencil box and cubby like pencils, erasers, scissors, crayons, paints, and paint shirt.
Part of our job today was learning some of our daily routines. Besides our morning routine, we practiced lining up, walking through the hallways, entering the classroom, lunch, and washing our hands.
After snack, we were off for a ride on the big Blue Bus. For some of us, it was our first bus ride! We ended up at the church. There we attended Mass together as a whole school. We did a great job following directions and listening to Father.
When get got back we had a few minutes before lunch, so Ms. Torborg read us a story, Miss Bindergarten Is Getting Ready For Kindergarten. We heard about all the different things Miss Bindergarten and her students did to get ready for the first day of Kindergarten. Then we each said something we did to get ready for school.
In the afternoon, we had PE time with Mrs. Thompson. Ms. Torborg also read us a story about Chester the Raccoon, The Kissing Hand. Chester doesn’t want to go to school, so his mom tells/shows him a secret: The Kissing Hand. She kisses the palm of his hand. Then when he is missing her, he just needs to touch his check and he will know that his mom loves him. Our project today was to make a poster with our handprints around a poem of our first day of kindergarten. We each meet with Ms. Torborg so she could help us press our hands on a huge ink pad and put them on a special paper with a poem.
We ended our day with some free time.
Tuesday:
We started our morning in our classroom by learning our morning routine. We need to unpack our backpack, put our folder in our mailbox, put our bird at our spot and take down our chair. After completing our morning routine, we had some free time in our classroom.
After a little free play time, we start our day with prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance.
We were introduced to several new things during our reading time. It started with Ms. Torborg
giving each of us a whisper phone and explaining how to use it. We put one end by our ear and then speak into the other end. We can whisper a secret and we are the only one who can hear it. Our whisper phones are kept in our reading bin and are used during quiet reading time. Next Ms. Torborg explained to us how to read a book by doing a picture walk. We start at the beginning of the book and tell a story by looking at each of the pictures. After Ms. Torborg showed how she does it, we each gave it a try. We took our reading bin to a quiet spot in the room, picked a book out, and created a story from the pictures. After 7 minutes, we came back together to talk about how it went.
After recess we were back at reading, we read the story A Pocketful of Kisses. Chester the Raccoon gets really jealous when his mother gave his little brother a kissing hand. But then Chester's mom gives him a very special gift, an extra kiss to keep in his pocket. Then we made a kissing hand book. We each made our own kissing hand. We started by having a partner trace our hand. Then we traced a heart in the middle. Finally, we colored it to look just like our hand with a red heart in the middle. When everyone has their page done, Ms. Torborg will bind it together to look like a book. She will also upload the book on our website, so we can share it
with our families. When we were finished, we spent some time playing with play-doh.
We started math by completing our calendar binder. As Ms. Torborg completed each part of the calendar on the SMARTboard as we did it in our calendar binders. We had to make a tally mark, graph the weather, check and graph the temperature, and write the number of days we have been in school. Then we played a game. Ms. Torborg gave us of us a piece of paper. It was our job to find the person with the same size paper. We had to work together to measure the pieces and compare the sizes. We had to determine if our piece was longer or shorter or the same size. We tried to see who could find their partner the fastest.
We say prayer several times a day. Each time we say prayer, we start with the Sign of the Cross. Today we started learning the proper way to do it. We start with our right hand. When we say “In the Name of the Father”, we touch our forehead. When we say “And of the Son”, we touch our chest. Then we say, “And of the Holy Spirit”. When we say Holy we touch our left shoulder and Spirit our right shoulder. The last word is Amen and we fold our hands in front of us.
We ended our day with some free play time. We also each took a turn to meet with Ms. Torborg so she could get to know us a little better. We answered some questions like what is our favorite color or what do we want to learn in Kindergarten. She wrote down all of our answers and is going to make a special book for our class.
Wednesday:
Today we went to the computer room for the first time. We worked on learning the routine for entering and leaving the computers. Our first task was to get our headphones, sit down in our computer spot, put our headphone around our neck, plug them in, and wait for directions. Today we played an alphabet game. After opening the Chrome browser, Ms. Torborg helped us get to our game. Our task was to drag the letters to put them in order. When time was up, we had to click out of our game and close the browser. Then we had to unplug our headphones and put them away.
We started our reading lesson with a picture walk through the book Miss Nelson is Missing. Then we took some time to do a picture walk through the book in our reading bin. Just like yesterday, we found a quiet spot to sit and read using our whisper phones. When we came back together, Ms. Torborg hung our first Reading Strategy up on our “CAFÉ” board to remind us to use the pictures to help tell the story. She also read us the story that goes with her picture walk book, Miss Nelson is Missing. As we listened to the story, we identified the things the kids were doing right and wrong and how things changed. We also read the story Chester Raccoon and the Big Bad Bully. Before the story, we talked about what a bully is. We decided bullying can be pushing, shoving, hitting, and spitting, as well as name calling, picking on, making fun of, laughing at, and excluding someone. In our story, Chester Raccoon and friends suddenly don’t want to go to school anymore because there is a badger that is bullying them. Mrs. Raccoon gathers a group of forest animals together and tells them a tale that helps them find a solution to their problem. Chester and his friends learn that the best way to get rid of an enemy is to make a friend. Our project was a Chester Raccoon color by number. First we worked on identifying the numbers and then the color words. We colored the number next to the color word, so we would not forget. Finally, we took some quiet time to color the picture.
Everyday we complete our calendar binder. We were introduced to our calendar binder on Monday. Since today starts a new month, we added a couple of new pages. For our lesson today were introduced to different shapes. Today, we examined the attribute blocks. (I can’t believe how smart everyone is!) We found a green triangle, tan rhombus, blue rhombus, orange square, red trapezoid, and yellow hexagon in the box. (Rhombus is a special name for a diamond.) Ms. Torborg also had pattern card that we could used to create different shapes.
In religion, we we talked about Saints. We know that saints are in heaven with God. That when they were on Earth, they lived just like Jesus did. They helped people, prayed to God, did things God asked them to do even when it was hard, etc… Today we learned a little bit about St. Theresa of Calcutta. She is also known as Mother Theresa. Her feast day is September 5th and she is the patron saint of Missionaries of Charity. St. Theresa heard God ask her to take care of the poor and sick especially the people who were dying, so she did. She spent her life taking care of people who were sick and teaching people to respect life. After watching a short video, we colored her picture in our saint coloring book.
Thursday:
We had a spectacular first week of school. This week we really worked hard on listening for directions and waiting for the teacher to tell us to go before we start moving. We also practiced social distancing, lining up, walking in a straight line, lunch routine, bathroom behavior, and so much more.
We started our day a little differently with our Marathon Rally. (Usually we have them at the end of the day, but since it was suppose to rain we gathered in the morning.) We started by praying for the Marathon intentions. Then we found out we have raised $6995. That means we earned the first 2 Marathon Incentives. We picked having a bubble gum day and the first graders pick having extra recess. One day next week we will get each of the prizes. Finally we did a activity in small groups. Each time had to find the plastic eggs the color of their team. When we had all of the eggs, we had to put the pieces of the puzzle together that were inside the eggs.
In reading, we spent sometime reading the books in our reading bin. Then we listened to the story Chester The Brave. Chester was scare of answering questions in front of his class. Chester's mom told him a story about a little robin and three special words- Think-Tell-Do. “If I think I can’t, I tell myself I can and do it!.” Chester found it worked for him. Now he is able to conquer his problems.
After recess, we went to the computer room. Just like yesterday, we had to get our headphones and plug them in. When everyone was ready, we had to open our browser and go to our classroom webpage. Then we could open our game. Today we played a couple of games with Curious George. The first game involved popping the bubbles and counting them. Our second game involved making a guess and catching bugs. We are really practicing our mouse control skills.
After our calendar, we spent some time coloring the board of our All About Me page, building with the pattern blocks, and playing with play-do. During this time, we spent a little time working one on one with Ms. Torborg. She checked our letter and letter sound identification. We ended our day with free play time.
Friday:
No School