Collecting and Pressing Leaves

Hello Families!  I hope your kiddos are enjoying their time off.  I have a favor to ask.  Beginning next week we will be starting several projects using fall leaves.  Would you mind taking a leaf walk with your child and collecting some beautiful leaves for us?



We are looking for all different sizes, shapes, and colors.  The leaves also need to be pressed.  Laying leaves between newspaper and putting heavy books on top works well.




Phone books also work well for pressing leaves.  Once the leaves are inside the book, it will take several days for them to dry out.



Thanks for your help collecting leaves!  Think of all the beautiful projects we will be making with these!



Happy leaf collecting!

I Really Owe Her One

Most of you know my pathetic story of falling down the stairs and breaking my foot. Sadly, it happened the day before the pumpkin farm field trip! I called Mrs. Parkhurst, who was very excited to chaperone her daughter's class on the field trip, and begged for help. Of course, she happily said, "Of course! I'll take 50 kindergartners to the pumpkin farm for you!" I really owe her!!!

The kids had a fantastic time on the trip. The weather was beautiful and the kids loved picking their pumpkins! The next day, the kids spent the whole day doing pumpkin math.

The measured how tall their pumpkins were.



They measured the distance around their pumpkins.

We counted the ribs in each pumpkin.

We weighed the pumpkins too.

Thank you, Mrs. Parkhurst, for jumping in and taking our kids on this fabulous trip! The kids were so excited to tell me all about their field trip and pumpkin math when I returned.

Our First Reader's Theater

We have started our first Reader's Theater in kindergarten. Every three weeks, our classes will participate in reading a book which is written like a play. Each child will have a part. We focus on reading with expression and reading fluently.

This week, we also focused on concepts of print. The concepts of print seem obvious to adults, but to a child, this is a whole new territory. Here are some of the questions we ask kids (and model for them).

Where is the cover?
Where is the title?
Where is the author's name?
Where should I start reading?
How many words are in this line?
Can you point to a period? What does it mean?
Can you point to an exclamation mark? How do we read a sentence with an exclamation?

You get the idea. These are all questions that seem to have an obvious answer, but many kids are quite unsure. These are just a few things to keep in mind as you are reading with your child.

Happy reading!

Two Books Can Be Confusing

We have started sending home two different books in kindergarten.

For the past few weeks, you have been seeing books like this one:


These are the books we are asking you to practice with your child.  Your child should be reading them to you on three separate occasions.  When they have read their book three times, and you have signed them off in their folder, we will put a stamp in their reading log.  (Oh, they love earning these stamps!)

This week, we changed things on you!  Are you confused?  These books look different from the others.  They are smaller and focus specifically on the sight words we are introducing each week.


When you see these books come home, please have your child practice them!  We don't have a special reading log for these books, but the more they practice, the better readers they will be!

Sight words are the words we expect children to know quickly, without thinking or sounding them out.  When your child entered kindergarten, we assessed them.  We gave them a list of 25 sight words and asked them to read each one.  To be meeting standards as a beginning kindergarten student, your child should be able to read at least one word.  We will share results of how your child performed at our upcoming parent/teacher conference.  We would love it if you would practice these words with your child at home.

Here's the first list:

the
of
and
a
to
in
is
you
that
it
he
was
for
on
are
as
with
his
they
I
at
be
this
have
from

We have also been working on:
Mom
Dad
me
you
like
can

Keep reading at home!  Thanks for your support!

Our Take Home Reading Books

This week we started sending home our Take-Home-Reading books.  The first two books in the series are wordless books.

Wordless books are a wonderful way for young children to feel like readers, even if they aren't able to read words yet. 

In class, we model how to tell the story of a wordless book.  We point out to our students that there are no words in the story, so we have to be detectives and look very closely at the illustrations to see what the story is all about.  We look at the details in the illustration and practice "reading" this story. 

The language of picture book with words may come out as your child is reading to you.  Kids might start with, "Once upon a time" or "One day" as they read.  They may say, "the end" as they get to the last page of the story.  This type of reader-like behavior lets your child demonstrate their knowledge of traditional stories.  It shows that they've been listening as you've been reading to them all of these years!

This is a great opportunity for your child to read to you.  It may even be the first time they are able to do this.  It's the start of a new chapter in your child's literacy life.  Please remind your child that even though these first two books have no words, they are still books and your child is still reading!

Over the past few weeks I've been pinning some of my favorite wordless books. Pinterest is an online bulletin board. I have a button on their site for my favorite children's books. You can follow me on Pinterest and see these books by clicking on the button below.



You can also visit my other blog for an additional post on wordless books.

lovelaughterandliteracy.blogspot.com

Happy reading!

Homework for Parents

Am I allowed to assign homework to parents?  If I could, I'd assign THIS book for all parents to read.

I read a lot of books on early childhood education.  It's my passion!  As you know, I have kids of my own and 50 kindergarten students who rely on me to have a firm understanding of how they learn.  This is the SINGLE BEST BOOK I've read about early childhood education.

Mariah Bruehl is the author.  I purchased my copy of the book from Amazon.com.

This book is brilliantly written for parents with young children.  Mariah briefly discusses developmental stages in reading, writing, math, science, and social awareness.  She explains what parents will see when they work with their children.  The best part about the book (in my opinion) is the fact that it is all about learning through play and life experiences.  It's not about sitting down with a workbook.  It's about real life.

Mariah also writes a blog and offers online classes for parents and teachers.  I have taken her Playful Learning class online and it was fabulous. My kids took her writing/photography class  over the summer and enjoyed it as well.

Happy reading!

Proper Pencil Grip

Next time your child picks up a crayon, pencil, or marker, check to see how they hold it.  Do they look comfortable as they are writing?  Are they using a proper grip to hold the pencil?  Are you wondering what the proper pencil grip actually looks like?  Here's a great picture of the proper way to hold a pencil.  Notice the way the fingers are positioned and the angle of the pencil. 

You and I don't even think twice about the way we hold our pencils or pens.  We just pick them up and start writing.  A five year old is just starting on this adventure called writing.  We want to help them develop good habits from the start.  I have to admit, when I see a student who looks like they are struggling with their pencil grip, I really have to watch them to figure out what they are doing that causes them challenges.  I'm not an occupational therapist.  To my eye, I'm just noticing that they are struggling.  An occupational therapist could tell exactly which finger leads the pencil,  where the error is in the position of their fingers, and know exactly how to help the child correct their grip. 

Over the years, I've started to figure out more and more ways to help students with their small motor skills.  Playdoh, clay, Leggos, and finger paint are all really fun ways to help build the muscles in our hands.  Kids love it and they don't even notice that it's work.  

One of my favorite discoveries is the Crayola crayon for beginners.

 

These crayons are triangular shaped, which encourages the proper form for holding a pencil.  Brilliant!

Take a look at the way your child hold a crayon, marker, or pencil.  If it looks uncomfortable, it probably is uncomfortable.  We may not be occupational therapists, but we know when our kids are struggling with something.  Give these crayons a try!  Oh, and don't forget the playdoh and fingerpaint!  Have fun!!!