The Mitten and more!

Along with acquiring all of their literacy and math skills, a major component of Kindergarten is being able to retell important details within familiar stories. This year we have been focusing on understanding different genre types such as folk tales and animal fantasy, and we continue to work on our "Show me 5" skills which includes retelling five or more important details from text and writing that the kids work on. 

This week, the children listened to two different versions of the folktale, The Mitten. We read The Mitten by Jan Brett as well as The Mitten by Alvin Tresselt. Both stories are about a boy who loses a mitten in the snow and various animals crawl into the mitten to keep warm.

Following the readings, the children worked together to brainstorm details in each story that were the same and some that were different from the other. They were then sent off to their seats to illustrate two of their favorite details that were different from each story. Earlier in the week, the children brought home their own paper mittens. Ask them to RETELL the story to you!

We have some busy little writing bees in Writer's Workshop as well! The children are moving from the labeling process of their writing to actually starting to write full sentences. We learned this week that good writers stop, think, and say their sentences out loud before they begin to write. They are continuing to stretch and tap out sounds in words that they hear, remembering to use spaces between words, start each sentence with an uppercase letter, and end their sentences with a period. They have come so far in their writing and I am so proud of their accomplishments!

Emily modeling what "good writers do". She is thinking about her writing piece before she starts to write it!

Fun in dress up!

Diving into the new year!

We have had quite the productive first two weeks back! Can you believe that in just a few short weeks, our little kinders will officially be celebrating Day 100 and on their way to being First Graders?! Time has flown this year!
Today we spent the day talking about Martin Luther King Jr. The children have no school on Monday and we spent a lot of time talking about why. Mrs. Papa, our librarian, also did a nice job presenting a slideshow on the Smartboard explaining about Dr. King while in library yesterday. Check out some of our fabulous and thought provoking work!

This past Tuesday, the children participated in an all-school assembly. The Kindergarten students and teachers presented the story of The Mitten Tree to the rest of the school. Students had the opportunity during the assembly to donate mittens that they brought in from home. The mittens will be donated at the end of the month to those in need. Thank you for your very generous contributions!

Check out Ada donating her mittens to our Mitten tree!