Welcome to
Kindergarten in Room 1!

This is our classroom!
Click on the pictures below to see
more.
Our
Giving Tree There are lots of little apples on our tree
with things that we will be using in our classroom. If you
would like to contribute anything, please take an apple! This
is completely optional.

Pictures from our Kindergarten Tea!

Happpy 5th
Birthday!!
We celebrated Mr S' birthday on Friday!
He chose a very special gift from the "Birthday Box!" We loved
the giant pencils, cupcakes and drinks. Thank you so
much for sharing the fun.

Happy faces on the first day of school!

Mrs. Slegers helped us stamp our
hands to make our puzzles.

Miss Carol helped us make our
schoolhouse pictures.


Brown Bear Tour

We
read a fun story about Brown Bear. All of the animals escaped
from the book and we went looking for them. We found Brown
Bear at Mr. Everett's office. Then we met a very hot Mr.
Everett, our custodian, outside the Teacher's Room.


We found Red Bird in Miss Valla's
office and Blue Horse in Miss Shelly's office!

Yellow
Duck was in Mr. Jetzer's office, and we met our new principal
outside his office.
After finding all of the animals, we made our own Brown Bear.

Mrs. Bergman helps us a lot!
YUMMMY SNACKS
............
OOPS!
Free Choice is one of
everyone's favorites!


We read a Monster story and made
our own Monster book to help us learn how to follow the rules at
school.
We are making a graph to count how many boys and girls are in our
class.
Fun Stories!
Let's Find Out Magazine 

Our first magazine talked about
feelings. We made all kinds of happy and sad faces!

Chicka Chicka, Boom Boom
We read this book to help us learn
all of the letters of the alphabet. Ask your child to tell you
what happened to all of the letters. We really liked the "skinned knee d!" We used the first letter of our name and
decorated it with stickers and a Band-Aid. Look at all of the
letters!! We will be using these to decorate our
room. We also sang the song to go along with the book.
We are also going to be making our own coconut tree this week.

We
made Chester, the Raccoon puppet! We used our puppets to
retell the story of "The Kissing Hand." Please ask your child
to tell you what happened at the beginning of the story, the middle
and the end of the story. This will help your child later in
learning to recall
information for reading comprehension.
Brown Bear Flannel Board Story

Reading Buddies
Each
Wednesday we go to visit our Reading Buddies in Mrs. Petersen's
Second and Third Grade classroom. The older children read
stories to our Kindergarten students at this time of the year.
We will soon be reading to them!

Apples, Apples, Apples!


As
part of our Social Studies and Science, we are talking about seasons
of the year. We learned that apples are picked in the fall and
that it will soon be fall. We have lots more fun things
planned for our study of the seasons of the year. If you have
any fun things that you can think of to share with us, we would love
to have your child share it. Anything such as fall colored
leaves, etc.
We're
making apple blocks.

We had a great time making giant apples to hang in our room.

We
like to sing and dance, too.

Making new friends.
One of the new songs
that we have learned is "Katalina Matalina" This is one of Dr.Jean's songs from her CD of Silly Songs. Ask your child if they can
remember any of the words. We have included the words for you to
help them remember!
Katalina Matalina
(Tune: "Shortnin' Bread")
Chorus:
Katalina Matalina Upsadina Walkadina
Hoca Poca Loca was her name.
Her head was shaped like a baseball bat.
And right on top was a funny, old hat. (Chorus)
She had two hairs in her head.
One was alive and the other was dead. (Chorus)
She had two eyes in her head.
One was purple and the other was red. (Chorus)
She had two teeth in her mouth.
One pointed north and the other pointed south. (Chorus)
Her neck was as long as a ten foot pole.
And right in the middle was a big, black bow. (Chorus)
Her hips were like two ships in port.
One headed south and the other headed north. (Chorus)
Her feet were as flat as a bathroom mat.
How did they ever get like that? (Chorus)
But she had a heart, so I'm told.
That was made of purest gold. (Chorus)
If you are interested in ordering Dr. Jean's cds. You can
visit her website at:
http://www.drjean.org/ We use all of her cds in our class
throughout the year |
Fun Pictures

September 10-14
We are having a great time with
our Apple Unit this week.

First,
we read the words for our book. We are learning to track the
words with a pointer.
Ask
your child to tell you something he/she has learned about Johnny
Appleseed. We are working on a book about some important
things that he did to make our world a better place. We have
some special things that are also planned to celebrate his birthday
next week. We'll keep your posted!
Then
we made our own Apple Book and drew apples to match the words on
each page. Please practice reading and tracking (point to each
word read) this little book with your child. Also, please save
the book for your child's special Treasure Box that we will soon be
making.
Our "Bite into an Apple" helped us
to learn how we track words. Everyone got a chance to "read"
this fun, little book. The children loved the ending!
Please save this little book and continue to practice reading and
tracking with your child. Help your child point to each word
as you read it together. He/She may use a pointer (pencil,
finger, etc.) as each word is read.

We
heard a special, flannel board story about a little boy looking for
an unusual house. Please ask your child to re-tell the story
to you. If you would like to read t he
whole story, please click on the apple!
Each day we like to retell the
story. This helps us with sequencing, building vocabulary,
speaking in front of the group....and we have so much fun, too!


Everyone
was very proud of the apple blocks we made for September. Next
month we will be making a pumpkin. If you have any extra wood
at home that you might be able to cut into 2x4x6" pieces, we would
greatly appreciate it.

Morning Message

Each
morning we have a morning message that helps us learn many different
skills. Everyone loves to help us answer the question of the
day.
Fun with Phonics

We love singing the "Alpha Friends" song!
Our Brown Bear Shape Book
helps us to learn all of the shapes!

Making New Friends in Kindergarten--

Fun Stories
Ask
your child to tell what this story was all about! Mrs.
Critchell told us a story using a piece of paper. It was about
two little mice. Mr. H is holding one of the characters in the
story!
Super Sack Sharing!
Everyone
looks forward to taking the Super Sack and bringing something
special from home to share with us. Mr. S shared his crystals
with us. He demonstrated how to "grow" crystals and told us
that it takes a LONG time to grow. We are anxious to see what
happens.
We learned how to do the "Tooty-Ta!"

Puzzle People
We are all fitting together, but
are missing a few people. If your child hasn't returned their
puzzle person, please do as soon as possible to finish our puzzle!

Hi, Friend!! Come on in!!

Ask
your child to tell you about the fun game and the class book we made
to help us learn everyone's name!

Everyone seemed to have a great time
at the park! Thanks to everyone who made it so much fun for
all. If you took pictures of the kids and would like to share
them, I would love to have them for my files. I will be
keeping a picture folder for each child this year. You will
receive a copy of these photos at the end of the school year!
We will also have a slide show presentation in June.

September 17-21
Constitution
Day was celebrated in our classroom with a story about
Bubbleland. This was a story about a land without any rules
and what happened without rules. We discussed why we have laws
and rules. This was a great time to talk about our own laws
and why we ha ve
our Constitution. We learned about the words and what they
mean in our Pledge of Allegiance. We also learned about
the words in the patriotic song of the month, "America, the
Beautiful."

Glyphs are a fun way of gathering
information and comparing! We found out how many: boys
and girls, age and how many children are in each family!

It was fun to see if
parents could find their child from the "dolls" we made in class!
Wednesday
is our library day! Mrs. Edwards, our librarian, read us a
story and helped us to learn how we check out our books each week.
Our library books will stay at school!


We made a little book
to learn how an apple tree grows and changes through the different
seasons of the year. Our reading buddies helped us put our
books together.


We used our flannel board to tell
the very funny story of Silly Sally. This is a great story to
help us learn rhyming words. This is a great pre-reading
skill to work on with your child. We liked the book so much
and decided to make a Silly Children book. Ask your child to
tell you about Silly Sally and how she got to town.
We are making a book about Johnny
Appleseed and his life.
Learning how to make a square into a
circle for Johnny's eyes!

We like making puppets! They
help us in learning about the parts of a story, the characters
and using vocabulary to retell the story.

Mrs. Bergman helped us in learning how to make patterns!
Sammy
Seal sailed the sea! We are concentrating on learning about
the "S" sound and how to correctly make the letter S. We
appreciate your help in reinforcing how to make the letters
correctly at home.
Johnny Appleseed Day

We celebrated Johnny Appleseed Day
with finishing our puppets and seeing a special movie about his
life. We will be using all of this information to make our own
stories next week. We made a graph to see what colors of
apples everyone brought. This was a great time to talk about
more and less in comparing numbers. We are also planning on
using our apples to make applesauce. YUM!

September 24-28
We
started our VIP of the week this week. Each child
will have a week to be our STAR! Click on the VIP trophy to
see detailed directions for being our VIP of the week.
Mr. B is our very first
VIP. We learned so many interesting things about him while
working on his very special VIP book. We found out that he
likes baseball, his favorite color is red, he loves chicken nuggets
and his favorite book is Sam and the Dinosaur. Everyone
enjoyed seeing his pictures of him and his family. We are
looking forward to him sharing more throughout the week.
We all had fun making his book for him.



Morning message is a time for Mrs. Critchell to share the pen!

First, we made the applesauce with Miss Tonja.
Then, we ate the applesauce---YUM!!

Mr. Jetzer came to visit us and he loved our
applesauce, too!


The last thing we did was make a graph to find
out how many people liked the applesauce! We found out that
there were more students who liked the applesauce than didn't like
it. Ask you child if he/she can remember how many students
liked applesauce. Also, ask your child if he/she liked our
applesauce.
Treasure
Boxes
Everyone
did a terrific job decorating the Reading Treasure boxes! Mrs.
Critchell thought they were the BEST ever!!! Please continue
to save all of the little books that we make throughout the year in
the treasure box. These little books are great for reading
practice and don't forget to record the time on the RAH log!
We loved the keys, too!!


Fun pictures this week!

Click on the ABCs (left) to see a
picture of our Alpha Friends. We work on the alphabet sounds
each day in class. We love to sing our Alpha Friends song.
Ask your child if he/she can remember how it goes? A for
Andy..../a/ /a/ /a/. The song is sung to the tune of
"Jeopardy!" This helps us to learn the
letter names and sounds. Please continue to practice and
reinforce these sounds and motions at home.
Great quote--
"All children need a laptop.
Not a computer, but a human laptop. Moms, dads, grannies and
grandpas, aunts and uncles--someone to hold them, read to them,
teach them. Loved ones who will embrace them and pass on the
experience, rituals and knowledge of a hundred previous generations.
Loved ones who will pass to the next generation their expectations
of them, their hopes, and their dreams."
by General Colin L. Powell
To read the complete article,
click on the gold medal above.
It's
going to be a great year!

Nitty Gritty Things
1. If you haven't returned
your Parent Conference form, please do so as soon as possible.
Conferences are scheduled in the afternoon during the week of
October 15. If you have other conferences already scheduled,
please let her know those times. If you don't have this form,
just let Mrs. Critchell know what day of the week and time is best
for you by email or note
2. We would like to
encourage everyone to join the PTA. We have a wonderful group
of parents who work very hard to bring all kinds of great things to
our students. All of our field trips, Smart Boards and many,
many extra things are funded by the PTA. Please join!
3.
Treasure Boxes--- If you did not pick up your cardboard box to
make the treasure box with your child, please see Mrs. Critchell.
The boxes should be decorated and returned to school on Friday,
September 28. Everyone is very excited about the magic "Key to
Reading Success!" Each child will receive the key when the box
is decorated and returned to school to share.
4. The Kindergarten classes are planning a field trip to
the Westminster High School pumpkin patch for Friday, October 12.
This will be our first field trip and we will be taking the school
bus. This is very exciting for those children who have never
gone on the BUS! Westminster High School has a real pumpkin
patch with pumpkins growing in the field. They also have a
small FFA farm with animals for us to see. If you are
interested in going along on this field trip, please let Mrs.
Critchell know. We will be at the pumpkin patch between
10-11 a.m. (approximately) Parents will be able to meet us
there. More details will be provided as we finalize the plans.
Sorry, no younger siblings will be permitted to attend.


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