September 9-13

Apples, Apples, and More Apples! This week the kindergarteners learned about apples.  We started by learning a few facts about apples.  Did you know that there are more than 7,500 different kinds of apples?  We found out that apples start as seeds, grow on trees, and are flowers before they are apples.  We read several non-fiction books about apples to gather more facts about apples.  This week we each brought an apple to school from home.  Everyone’s apple was a little different.  We counted, measured, and weighed our apples.  Finally we made a class book about the apples we brought.  After drawing a picture of it, we had to write the color words that matched our picture.  

Monday:

• Continued working on building our reading stamina with silent reading using our reading bins

Reading:

• Introduced to the Secret Stories Book and Posters

• Listened to the story of the Letter A - Letter A is a vowel and all vowels are superheroes in disguise.  When a vowel because a superhero, it says its name.  When the letter A is in her lazy disguise, it sits around all day and eats apples.  (It says its short name.)

• Gathered information about apples from songs, videos and books

• Listened to the story, Ten Apples Up On Top

Math:

• Played the counting game, Gotcha

• Created a picture of our head with ten apples piled on top of it

Religion:

• Listened to the story of Creation from the bible

Tuesday:

Reading:

• Shared our “Treasure”Boxes”

• Reviewed the story 10 Apples Up On Top

• Practiced balancing apples on our head

• Continued working on building our reading stamina with silent reading using our reading bins

• Listened to the story of the Letter E - Letter E is a vowel and all vowels are superheroes in disguise.  When a vowel because a superhero, it says its name.  When the letter e is in his lazy disguise,, she is a little old lady who can’t hear.  She always cups her hand around her ear and says Ehhh.

• Gathered information about apples from songs, videos and books

• Listened to the stories, Apples and From Blossom to Fruit

• Explored the life cycle of an apple

Math:

• Calendar

• Introduced to the iPads - procedures and rules

• Introduced to standardized testing procedures on the iPads.  First Ms. Torborg should us the different kinds of questions and how to move and click on the answers.  Then we practiced for ourself. 

Religion:

• Retold the story of Creation and colored a picture

Wednesday:

Reading:

• Listened to the story of the Letter I - Letter I is a vowel and all vowels are superheroes in disguise.  When a vowel because a superhero, it says its name.  When the letter i is in his lazy disguise, he bends to the side, puts his fingers next to his mouth and says “ihhh”.

• Introduced to a new sight word, the

• Read through our first emergent reader, The Farm

• Introduced to our reading finger (monster finger). We use our reading fingers to point to the words as we read them.

• Listened to a story about Fall Apple Fun

• Identified different facts about apples.

• Took a NWEA screening reading assessment.  It was like practicing to take our standardized reading test. We had to do things like identify letters and sounds, find matching sounds, and match capital and lowercase letters.

Math:

• Calendar

• Gathered data from our apples.  We drew a picture, measured, weighted, and checked the buoyancy of the apples we brought from home. 

Religion:

• Reviewed the story of creation

• Watched a video about creation

Thursday:

Reading:

• Listened to the Secret Story of the letter O. Letter O is a vowel and all vowels are superheroes in disguise.  When a vowel because a superhero, it says its name.  When the letter o is in his lazy disguise, he is always at the doctor.  He is worried about germs and doesn’t want the stick the doctor uses to touch his mouth so he opens really big and says Ahhh.  

• Identify the Front and Back of a book (the front of a book such as the title, author, illustrator, etc.)

• Practiced tracking from left to right

• Reviewed our 2 sight words, I & the - looked for our words as we read books in our book bin

• Created a class book about our apples - we each created a page by drawing a picture and writing a describing word

• Introduced to Reading Stations - Completed the Read to Self, Writing Work, and iPad Stations.

Math:

• Calendar

• Took a NWEA screening Early Numeracy math assessment in the computer room.  We had to do things like match, count and identify numbers, identify more and less, and answer questions moving objects.  

• Went on a number hunt - Looking for items in our classroom that have numbers on it.  We had to make sure to find numbers not letters.  After looking around for a bit, we created a list of the different things/places we found numbers.

Religion:

• Discuss Saint Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mary, watched a short video about her life, and colored her picture in our saint book.  Her special feast day is September 8th.

• We had our Marathon Rally Thursday night at our Back to School Night.  After singing our song, we took some time to pray for all of the intentions we have gathered.  Then we found out we have raised over $4000 and received our first prize a sucker.

  
  

Friday:

Reading:

• Reviewed our two sight words, I & the

• Listened to the Secret Story of the letter U. Letter U is a vowel and all vowels are superheroes in disguise.  When a vowel because a superhero, it says its name.  When the letter u is in her lazy disguise, she pretends to be a student who never listens to the teacher, so she doesn’t know what is going on.  When asked a question, she scratches her head and says uhhhhhhh.  

• Introduced to fiction and nonfiction stories.

• Listened to two different stories, Let’s Go Apple Picking and Apple Trees.  After each story, we had to determine what kind of story it was.

• Reviewed the life cycle of an apple and completed a apple life cycle worksheet

Math:

• Calendar

• Explored the number 0 and completed the first page in our number book

• Played Moose Math on the iPad

Relgion:

• Mass at Church

• At the end of the day, we spent some time playing games with our 5th grade buddies in our classroom.  We could pick any game from the game shelf.  Our buddies were able to teach us how to play some new games!