CASA Kindergarten

CASA Kindergarten

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Pumpkin TIme!






What a fun week it's been! Old Baker Farm was a blast! The kids had so much fun riding on the hayride and picking pumpkins from a real pumpkin patch. We also picked cotton, pet lots of farm animals, ran through a maze of hay, and had lunch in the loft of an old barn! Thanks to all of the moms who joined us too!
On Tuesday, we visited the pumpkin patch at Asbury. We listened to a story, got cool pumpkin tattoos, and got to choose another pumpkin. We're saving those to decorate during our Harvest Hoedown next week! The pumpkins purchased from our church go towards missions for the youth. If your family doesn't have a great pumpkin to carve yet, they have lots of pretty ones to choose from!
Jackson Bradley was our Star Student this week. We loved learning more about him from his great poster and from the show and tell that he brought to share with us. We also celebrated Leyton's birthday this week. We enjoyed a special treat of pizza and cupcakes on Wednesday to celebrate!
We wrote about pumpkins this week and made some funky witches too. We learned how to play new math games this week called "Path games." This is basically any board game where the players take turns rolling a die and moving along the path with their marker. It is a great counting game and teaches one to one correspondence. Any game such as Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders is great for reinforcing these skills. We continue to work on properly forming letters as well as sounding out words phonetically with inventive spelling. The homework pages that will occasionally come home will be for practice and reinforcement of these skills. There is no grade attached to this homework- just good practice! I have also worked with small groups this week specifically on initial sounds, ending sounds, rhyming words, and word families.
***I am going to do some fun M&M and Candy Corn math next week. If anyone would like to send in a bag of the harvest colored M&M's or a bag of the harvest mix Candy Corns, please email me and let me know!***
Don't forget... Open House/ Spaghetti Supper next Tuesday evening, October 26 at 5:00! Please plan to join us and take a look around our classroom to see all of the hard work your children have been doing!
Harvest Hoedown next Friday , October 29 from 11:00-1:00. Parents are welcome to come. Children dress in your cowboy/ cowgirl attire! No need to send a lunch on this day.



Have a great weekend!













Thursday, October 14, 2010

Fall is Here!

We have had fun this week as we have begun our Fall unit! Although it has been a short week, we have stayed busy! We have read some stories about the season of fall and we made a list of all of the things that remind us of fall- such as falling leaves, cooler weather, Halloween, and Thanksgiving. The paints were out in full force this week as we used water color to paint fall leaves and bright orange to make a huge jack-o-lantern. We also made torn paper pumpkins this week too. We're getting our classroom very festive for the month of October!

We focused on the letter L this week and the children have been so excited to point out L's that they find all around! We are continuing our October journals and I am already seeing a lot of progress as they are becoming more and more independent in sounding out words on their own. Please continue to work on writing both upper and lowercase alphabet letters at home as well as writing our names correctly- with a capital letter at the beginning and the rest lowercase.

**Don't forget**
  • Field trip to Old Baker Farm on Monday! Please have your children to school between 8:30 and 8:45 on Monday morning. Wear CASA shirts! Pack sack lunches and an extra water. Return permission slips and $7 by tomorrow.
  • Tuesday, October 26- CASA Open House from 5:00-6:00 and Spaghetti supper and silent auction at 6:00. Please return your reservation and dinner money if you and your family are planning on staying that evening after Open House.
  • Harvest Hoedown- Friday, October 29! This is a fun day for the kids to celebrate! They should wear their cowboy and cowgirl attire for this day- no other Halloween costumes please. Be looking for information from our room moms about items to be sent in and activities planned for this day.
Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the fall weather!

Friday, October 1, 2010

A week full of fun!

This has been such a fun week and a busy one too!! We have continued our unit on Fairy Tales and have continued focusing on bears. We read Corduroy, This is The Bear, Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You See, Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See, and Corduroy Goes to School. We talked about parts of a story- beginning, middle, and end. We also focused a lot this week on rhyming words and on clapping out syllables in words.
Our letter of the week was B and the kids came up with so many B words. They have also been pointing them out all week around the room and around our school.
We did some fun math activities this week as well. We used three different kinds of Teddy Grahams to sort and distinguish most and least. And then we got to have a yummy snack too!
We had a blast having bear day today. I loved all of the different kinds of bears that the kids brought in to share. We compared similarities and differences in all of our bears. We lined them up on the floor and sorted them by bears who were wearing outfits and bears who were not wearing outfits. Then the children did their own graphs comparing the bears. We colored pictures of our bears and came up with special words that described our bears.
Thanks so much for returning the bears that the kids decorated at home. They are all so different and adorable! They have loved showing them to each other. We have them proudly displayed in our room right now.
Christian was our Star Student this week and we loved getting to know more about him. His mom came and read to us this week and brought a special treat to share on Friday.
It's been a wonderful week! I hope that everyone has a great weekend and enjoys this cool, fall weather! Thank you for sharing your sweet children with me each day- they are truly a blessing!