Miss Christie's Kindergarten

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:07:00 +0000

News for week of 5-18-08

We had another great week! These kids are ending this year with as much enthusiasm as they began it, and it’s been wonderful to be part of. We started new centers this week and will continue them through next week. We continued with our vowel books in the ABC center, this would be a great summer activity to continue with your student. All you need is magazines, scissors, glue sticks and their books. They add pictures that correlate to the appropriate vowel sounds. It’s wonderful for reinforcing the short and long vowel sounds in words. It also clarifies the sounds for the words and the correct way to spell them if you work together with them on it. We have taken ours on vacation for a little easy down time activity that isn’t hard to pack or take-up lots of room. In the writing center we did “comic strip sequencing”, thanks to all of you who sent in your strips. We read the comics in order then cut them up. The kids then had to put them in the correct sequence from memory and write about it. It was a great activity and extended their thinking in more ways than one. In science we worked on position words. Initially, Leah and I were worried this center may be too easy…it wasn’t! They had to really think about where the animal in the picture was before gluing it. In math the kids played a fun game that was about going to a fair and buying the object on the card they picked. It was great because they got to play and have fun, but also had to buy objects with real change. It was great to watch them help each other during their games. We also played an adding game in the pocket chart area. The kids rolled dice and played an adding game with a partner. They had to say their dice in an adding sentence and use the total to color in the fish on the sheet, each student got to color in a different color on their fish.
We’re finishing our silly sounds books this week and next, so they can take them home at the end of the year.
In writing we are focusing on poetry. I’m not teaching a specific type of poetry, my goal is to get them thinking deeply about topics and use “pretty words” to develop those thoughts. They came-up with some amazing ideas, and it challenged me as a teacher, it was great! They wanted to develop a poetry book to publish also. We wrote poetry about the book we read last week The Relatives Came and decided to adapt it to poems about our relatives visiting. An interesting conversation came-up Friday morning during circle time. We started talking about Memorial Day and what we were celebrating, the kids turned it into a discussion about our freedoms and then connected it to the National Anthem. They realized that when the Star Spangle Banner was written it was the same thing that we experience today, realizing our freedom was a gift. I asked if they’d like to write poetry about it and they all got so excited, it was wonderful. I decided to teach them the technique of Haiku, to narrow their focus. The results were amazing, they loved the writing and it made the holiday so much more meaningful. I’ll be sending home their poetry in the next couple of weeks. We’re sharing them at our carpet time!
We flew planes to celebrate Lag B'Omear and I've put those photos with the shutterfly photos!
Enjoy the long weekend and beautiful weather!! Shabbat Shalom

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:14:00 +0000

News for the week of 5-12-08

This week was so much fun! We were so busy with everything, but it was really great. We got back into our center routine, which I think the kids really appreciated.
Our ABC center was a vowel book we’ve been working on and adding to, the kids cut out pictures from magazines and put them into their vowel book, it was so fun and a creative way to get them involved in listening to the vowel sounds. The writing center was creating sentences with magnets, they got very creative. In the science center the kids worked with magnets and different objects. They had to not only determine which objects worked with the magnet, but why. In the math center this week the kids worked with telling time; digital and analog. They have really done a great job with telling time and all seem to grasp the concept to the half hour. In the listening center they listened to a book called Feast For Ten it talks about planning a menu for a meal along with number words. In the overhead center the kids got to use clear tiles with words in them to create sentences again.
We worked on writing through our senses this week. I introduced the 5 W’s of listening to a story and then writing about them. It’s in the very early stages and we will continue to expand on this skill. To really get the kids involved we did a writing involving something we all love…eating ice cream! They had to write what it tasted, smelled, looked, felt and even sounded like. It was so creative and even a little tough. I think this is so important for kids to be able to stop and really “listen” to themselves and what they are sensing. It is so useful for so many other things, not just writing.
We read a great book called The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant. It’s a beautiful book about relatives coming to visit and just being together as a family. It’s old fashioned and led to a wonderful discussion about the importance of being with family. We also talked about the fact that in the book there were no TV’s or computers and that the family just sat together and enjoyed each other’s company. One of my favorite lines from the book is: “we were to busy hugging and eating and breathing together”. The writing is posted in the hall of the lower school, please read your child’s “house” if you come by. I highly recommend the book, as you can probably tell.
Our end of year celebration is June 5th, at 6pm in the classroom. We have changed the name from “graduation” to follow the other grades use of the term “end of year celebration” we feel like this is more descriptive of what we’re really here to enjoy; all of their successes this year!
We’ll start new centers next week before our year comes to an end. We’re also going to be doing projects like more mosaic art!
We really need comic strips for centers next week, if you take the paper please save them for us and send them in, THANKS!!

Dear parents,
This week we went back to our routine and the children are better then ever.
They are very comfortable with speaking simple Hebrew phrases and pick up on new words much faster.
We finished the letter “Raish” that means we only have two more letters and we will finish with the whole Alfa Bet.
The Israeli project was very nice, I hope you all got to see the exhibit, I am waiting for the combined presentation from Israel and then I will forward it to you all.
New Hebrew wards
gadol/gdolah – big (boy/girl)

tov /tovah – good (boy/girl)

sefer/sfarim – book/books

racavet- train

rosh- head

Shabbat Shalom
Morah Leah

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:26:00 +0000

News for week of 5-9-08

What a busy week we had! The school was buzzing with activities all week and we had lots of projects in the classroom as well.
The highlight of the week was definitely the Mother’s Day Tea, and we want to thank you all for coming, the kids worked so hard preparing and it was wonderful to share with you.

We will begin next week with the fun centers we started this week, our Science center is about magnets…should be very interesting to see what the kids come up with. We are continuing to work on time; both analog and digital. We’re making sentences independently in the writing and overhead centers.
These kids have grown so much this year and they continue to ask thought provoking questions and just absorb any information they are given.

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:34:00 +0000

News for the week of 3-31-08

We were so busy this week! We started new centers with lots of fun ideas for Pesach, like a frog jumping game that reinforced taking measurements. We continue to work on the rules for reading, I’m targeting the long vowels. It’s so nice to see the kids apply the rules they know and problem solve when they’re reading. I’ve also introduced using the apostrophe sign in a very minimal way. We talk about it in our morning message writing time and the kids are really catching on. We are writing about the butterfly lifecycle which has been so wonderful because the kids have seen it first hand in our classroom. We set our butterflies free and loved seeing them go. It was wonderful to watch the miracle happen right in our classroom and then complete our task of letting them go. A real shechyanu moment!

We had a fun science project learning about the frog life cycle and made models of frogs that actually change from a tadpole to a froglet to an adult frog. The kids loved this activity and we wrote about it also. They quickly understood that it’s truly a “circle of life” when looking at the frog diagrams. It was a fun project.

We completed a book using the old nursery rhyme “Over in The Meadow”, it was a great way to incorporate number writing, rhyming, and even addition! We talked a lot about estimating this week, I told them an easier way to think about it was to use the terms “guess then check”. We used estimating stations for math and they really enjoyed it. I had materials out and they had to switch stations and estimate how many they could hold in one hand, then they had to grab a handful and count them to check. One of the stations was tiny pebbles, this was very interesting. It was taking literally hundreds of pebbles to fill their little hands. This led me to teaching them how to make groups of something easier to count, like 5’s or 10’s, (we call this counting by nickels or dimes). I showed them that by grouping them separately they could then count their groups much easier, and count on if they had an incomplete group.
We will continue to work on estimating and move into number operations like simple addition and subtraction after Pesach break. I will begin with concrete examples and then move to using numbers.

We’re continuing with the same centers through Pesach and have so many fun things planned for next week, we can’t wait!

Shabbat Shalom!
Miss Christie and Morah Leah

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:13:00 +0000

News for week of March 24th

The kids are already getting excited about Pesach which we will be starting on Tuesday, April 1st. We finished last weeks centers so we could start something new for the next two weeks. We started writing about the changes we are seeing in our butterflies, they have gone into their cocoons and are just “hanging” around-ha,ha! We’re waiting for them to emerge into Painted Lady butterflies around Pesach, when we set them free.

We have continued our writing about spring and the changes we’re seeing in the weather, not only the temperature and wind but also the sights and sounds that are all part of spring. We talked lots about the birthdays we’ve had lately and how the kids were also once spring babies. They thought that was so funny, I don’t think they ever imagined themselves as being babies like all the babies we’re now seeing.

In math we’re working on money which is sometimes very abstract and hard to grasp. I decided to use other parts of their world to talk about parts of a whole (fractions) to help them understand this concept at a more personal level. We took a pizza picture and I cut it into 10 parts, and we discussed how, though it was cut into 10 pieces it made a whole pizza. We then counted the pieces in different ways, by 1’s, 5’s and then by starting with 5 pieces and “counting on” by 1’s, to get to the 10. They seemed to enjoy this because it looked like a puzzle and so I’ll make this into a center for additional practice.

We also did a fun math activity involving chocolate, even better! I brought up the idea of measuring with our hand to introduce estimation. This was a huge discussion and there were lots of ideas (for several days), some of the ideas were: use tape to keep the objects in place, only use things that wouldn’t fall off your hand, count one by one but never get the whole amount, keep the things in your pocket, but what if you don’t have pockets…the list continues. It was so interesting to hear their thoughts. I let them think about it for a day and we came back together to discuss what they came up with.
Then for a math activity, I read the book The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn, and we decided to measure by drawing our hand and then putting the objects into the drawing, problem solved, nothing can fall off! The kids then got to measure their hand using Hershey Kisses, first making a guess and then checking their work.

You may be asked some questions about recipes because we started working on a special project for Mother’s Day which is right around the corner, it’s supposed to be a surprise so don’t ask too many questions…also, save the date for the morning of May 9th, we want to have a visiting day for mom, I’ll get you more information as it gets closer.

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:10:00 +0000

Chag Sameach!!

Wow! What fun we had this week preparing for Purim. The kids were really into the spirit of celebrating, and it was such fun to turn this into writing and math activities. We did things like graphing our Purim favorites to writing about spring changes we saw.

We actually took a spring walk to note the signs of spring then turned that into art work as well as explanation of their work. We walked through campus with our journals and really looked, listened and smelled the signs of spring. I told the kids to use all of their senses to note changes they saw that showed them spring was on the way. They loved this activity. We were all over writing about the new green grass, the new purple flowers on the trees and even how the wind sounded. It was great to see the kids stopping right where they were, sit and write their thoughts. It made the writing such a creative process. They then turned it into art and put their writing with it!
The kids also wrote their favorite things about Purim then they drew on a small card to make into a graph. We graphed them on our bulletin board in the room, of course, Hamentashen won by 4!! We talked about the “difference” in the numbers and the kids really understood what was being asked. They don’t know they are learning all about adding and subtracting, but by using language like “what is the difference in the two numbers” they are really understanding it on a deeper level. I think by presenting them with this language it helps them for later when they are asked to use higher level thinking skills to problem solve. We'll continue this process and use numbers in the equations so they can transfer the learning from concrete examples to using numbers in sentences.
Our “Ester’s Banquet” was so wonderful. We decorated the room to look like a palace and the kids throught it was so cool to sit under "tents" and eat with their hands. The kids loved the food and kept coming back for more, even the veggies and fruit! Lots of them said that the rice was their favorite. We kept it authentic and didn’t give them utensils, they actually ate it with their fingers. It was such a treat to see them enjoy a leisurely lunch while sitting on pillows with friends.
A special thank you to Leah for making it so special, from doing most of the preparation and cooking to decorating to make it so much more fun!!
Leah came up with some great ideas this week, she created a scene with two children and the kids got to paint them. She cut the faces out and the kids loved posing behind the scenes to have their pictures taken. She also created a bean bag toss with a picture of Haman’s face! The kids tossed the bean bags into his mouth and had a great time. She turned the Purim story into a play and the kids got to choose the character they wanted to be and we acted it out, they had a blast and really got into their parts.

The Purim festivities were great! The kids sat and listened to the Megillah and had lots of fun when Rabbi Silver said “Haman”. We got to have games with the 4th grade and everyone had a great time!

Enjoy the weekend and beautiful weather!!

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:04:00 +0000

News for the week of 3-10-08

We had a great week planning for Purim and experiencing all the great things that come with Adar and spring. The foggy day on Tuesday really gave us some great brainstorming ideas. We first took a walk through the fog and let them experience it first-hand. They thought it was so cool! The kids had great questions and comments about the fog, we then used their curiosity to create some beautiful art and writing. I asked them to tell me how they would “represent” fog if they were doing artwork based on it. They told me all the materials they needed, which included tissues, paper, paint, fabric, and “see-through stuff”.
I gathered all the materials and brought them back and they quickly got to work. I told them part of creating something is thinking about it first. What do you want your final project to portray? It was wonderful to watch, the got their materials and made a plan and then finally glued the materials to the boards. I then asked them open-ended questions about their work and attached their quotes to the work. It was an amazing process and really was so meaningful to them, because it was something they experienced first hand. We then wrote about it and they got so creative! It is so nice to have the time to dedicate to this kind of work. I am able to incorporate all of the Kindergarten skills while letting them work on something personal to them.
The kids wrote wonderfully about Purim and what it means to them, they’re starting to make stories with multiple sentences. They then drew pictures about their one favorite part, and we graphed them. They decided how to group the pictures in order to graph them.
We continued with centers that focused on skills such as, time, opposites, writing sentences, story order and creating sentences with separate words. The kids worked hard and enjoyed our added Purim fun too, making hamentashen, creating masks and decorating our room!

With the season’s starting to change and our spring unit starting, I started talking to the kids about sun safety this week. We have outside time EVERYDAY unless it’s raining. We talked a little about how to be safe in the sun and warm weather. One way is to wear a hat, not only to keep you from getting sunburn, but to keep your skin safe and to keep your body cooler. Please send a sun hat with your child to wear outside. Our playground is shaded but they’re not always under the canopies. It’s important to get them into the habit of practicing sun safety early!!

Dear parents,
This week we immersed ourselves in Purim. I told the story with the help of my Purim spoon puppets. The heroine, beautiful queen Ester fighting to save her people against mean and wicked man, a silly king and a wise Jewish uncle all living in a royal palace… Are these pieces of fairy tale? The children were fascinated and brain stormed ideas how to help queen Ester to solve the problem since she was not allowed to go before the king unless she was asked to. I liked Gabi’s idea, she said that Ester should create a problem so the king will come to her.
We pretended to be kings and queens, sang songs, played games with Purim symbols learned the movement for the song La kovah sheli shalosh pinot (my hat has three corners) and danced the dance of Latzan Katan (little clown). The children came up with the movements for this dance so ask them to show it to you.
The children are preparing little puppet theatre so they could act out their own Purim story.

Vocabulary

Queen - Malkah
King - Melech
Mask- masechah
Grogger- (noisemaker) Rahshan
Gift basket – Mishloach manot
Hamantashan—Ozen Haman.

Have a great weekend
Morah Leah

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 15:48:00 +0000

News for week of March 3rd—

First, we want to thank you for the conferences. I hope you all know how much Leah and I care for your children and how much it has meant for us to be able to be a part of their lives this year. We've watched them mature and grow in so many ways and we feel truly blessed to be part of it. We're so excited to see what is to come through the end of the year and can't wait for the adventure to continue.

For a week with a day off, we sure were busy! We started the week celebrating Michael’s birthday with cupcakes they frosted themselves. We worked at centers this week, changing some and keeping some that the kids seemed to really like. We’re getting ready to add new centers for next week in preparation for Purim! Should be a week filled with fun!

We will dress in costume for Purim, Friday, March 21st, which is a half-day.

We finally finished our silly newsletter, the kids were very proud of their paper and enjoyed hearing the stories they made-up. They chose everything, from the layout of the paper to the collaboration of the stories. Their writing has come so far this year, we’re so proud of their growth. They seem to really enjoy writing these days, the light bulb has definitely turned on!

In math this week I combined journaling with graphing. We took our shoes off and put them in the middle of the carpet, then they got their journals and “noted” their observations about the shoes. We got so much writing from just letting them chart their thoughts. We then took their information and made a graph with the results. The next morning we taped-off the floor and graphed our shoes again to see if there were differences in the information from one day to the next.
We continue to work with money and are connecting the combinations of the coins with a puzzle I introduced this week. For example, they are starting to understand that a nickel is made of 5 pennies and a dime is 2 nickels. To continue our work on time we charted the time and weather throughout the day, it was particularly interesting Thursday and it changed from rain to snow and the temperature dropped about every 15 minutes--they loved it!!
Friday was lots of fun and we watched “American Legends”, which is from our generation. It’s narrated by James Earl Jones and shows little stories about American Legends; John Henry, Johnny Appleseed, Babe and his Blue Ox, Paul Bunyan, and Kasey Jones.

We’re going to start our Spring unit next week and all the things that go along with the season.

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 18:58:00 +0000

News for week of 2-18-08

What a great week we had! For some reason on Tuesday the class was extremely loud, not out of control “coo-coo crazy” but the noise level was HIGH…we then got back to business and having fun and had a great week.

We worked on money books that involved starting the idea of change and how many cents make a coin amount, it was a fun creative project and the kids seemed to enjoy making them. We also had a great center activity about time, transferring digital time to analog clocks. Lots of thinking happening at that center.
We worked more on short vowel sounds and making sentences with words.

Our literacy focus has been determining pretend from real information. We ask ourselves “could this really happen?”. We are also continuing to work on being a good reading detectives…looking for information without even reading the words, then we’re making predictions based on the text. We will continue this along with building on other skills.
We worked on learning the “ay” family and the “y” rule at the end of a word.

We started a “Silly Newsletter” that the kids really got into. We looked at real newspapers and decided on the layout then put some silly stories together. The kids were put into groups then given the objective to make a story of silly ideas, they each had to give input. The only perimeters were that it had to have the basic story elements, characters, setting, problem and solution. The ideas generated were amazing and it’s going to be wonderful when it’s complete. Hopefully we’ll complete the stories and our newsletter can go out by the end of the week. We’re going to begin planning for Purim---YEA!! Can’t wait, we have so much fun stuff in mind, should be lots of fun.

We have really enjoyed the parent conferences so far and are looking forward to the rest, the extra time has given us more time to share wonderful information about the year we’ve had!

Dear parents

The last few weeks we added few more words to our vocabulary. The children can say now more complex sentences in different combinations. We still have to repeat over and over again the old phrases that we learned because if we don’t use them on a daily basis the children tend to forget.
We learned the verbs ochel/ochelet (eat) omer/omeret (say) and the names of different kind of foods.
I use pictures of foods that their names sounds a lot like English so the children look at the pictures and can say it with out difficulties. For example: macaroni, melon, yogurt, pizza, pancake and so on. We also learned the word beteavon (have a good appetite).
We are up to the letter Ayin in our Alef Bet song, which mean we only have six more letters and we will know all the Hebrew letters, the children are so excited about that.
Here are the parts of the Alef Bet song for the letters Samech and Ayin

Samech--- chag sukkot

Ayin--- aytz yarok

Leah

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:40:00 +0000

News for week of 2-11-08

Happy President’s Day! We worked this week on learning new information about why we celebrate President’s Day, and the kids really enjoyed the learning. We talked about why these president’s were important and what it means to be patriotic. They remembered so much from our Veteran’s Day trip to the Veranda!

We continued the centers from last week and will begin start new ones next week. We’re continuing to work on vowel sounds and the “rules” of reading. Our targeted reading skill for the week was making predictions. We talked about what a “good reader” does, prior to and during reading to make predictions. I tell them to use all of their “tools” to find information about the text, pictures, known words, and familiar phrases. We’re also summarizing what we’ve read, I tell them it’s like saying it in your own words.

Two weeks ago we put some new writing tools into place: Monday journals, “theme” journals (Tues-Fri.) and Center journals. Leah and I can see a difference in their writing already. These provide the kids a time to “just write”, without teacher help and correction. The use their Monday and theme journals each morning to free write, this is writing they choose, with a little help. Monday journals help give them some framework to write about their weekend. The theme journals help guide them about writing something related to what we’re doing, this is just something to help them formulate ideas. The center journals are another way to infuse writing into their daily experiences. They write about what they did in each center, not just what it was but how they experienced it. I see a difference in their writing during our defined writing time, they are taking more risks and really hearing sounds that they turn into text. Their ideas are becoming more sophisticated also, they are extending their thoughts. It is a wonderful progression to be a part of!

In math we’ve continued working on time and money. They are starting to understand the concept of counting by fives, which is tough when you are “seeing” different numbers on the clock! This is what is deceiving, when children rote count we think they can easily apply the counting, it’s a different level of understanding to be able to rote count numbers and then apply them to something you are using. They’re getting there though!!

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:52:00 +0000

The kids were in the best mood this week! The excitement of our 100th day and the Torah celebration just made the week so special.
We had great Centers this week with lots of focus on writing and using short vowel sounds. We also learned a new song to the tune of Old MacDonald about the vowels, the kids loved it.
We did some amazing writing for our 100th day, I’ll have them for you during our conferences. They also made beautiful cards for the senior citizens at Veranda and the JCC. They really understood they were making someone’s day better by something as simple as writing a card. We also got the first and second grades involved and had so many cards that need to be delivered. The kids loved delivering the cards and did such a beautiful job! The faces lit up when they saw us walk in with our gifts filled with joy. It was a wonderful experience for the children.
We successfully collected almost 200 cans of food for the JFS food bank. We’ll plan a time to deliver them, we’ll need 4 parents who can drive. If someone can coordinate the drivers, JFS will gladly have us drop off when we can. I’m also getting a “mitzvah central” list to talk to the kids about more opportunities for volunteering in the community.
We had a rare experience speaking to and learning from Rabbi Levin, the sofer that was here for the Torah dedication. He gave us so much information about tefillin, and mezuzot, we got to touch the cow skins and learned so much information about the process and skill involved in his work.
Our 100th day celebration was a huge success, we had crafts and activities in both rooms and the kids got to go into both classrooms to enjoy the activities. Their “counting by 10’s” has really improved, we practice it so much!
In Math, we started learning about time. Each student got a small analog clock, we had some “discovery” time prior to the learning. It’s so important for kids to really see, touch and sometimes even smell things before real learning begins. We have to give them an opportunity to experience something before asking them questions or answering questions about it.

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:52:00 +0000

News from our week of Qq!
This week was short for us and we had tribes on Tuesday for
Tu B’Shevat! The kids ate the fruits of the trees and planted parsley, we also had a Tu B’Shevat Seder in the classroom, eating and learning the brachot for each food. Again, there were many brave tasters, especially with the olives!

This week I gave our assessment for reading. I will be sending home information about your child’s particular level and the skills I will be working on. The kids have really grown in their problem solving and reading skills, it was great to see their progress!

In centers we worked on “ing” and weather books. We also had a cool science experiment that involved salt and ice cubes. These kids really love science! We worked on putting sentences together and will continue building on these skills. They really transfer into the kid’s writing.

Please continue working on the sight words with your children. It helps build their confidence so much and we use them in games in the classroom and makes them feel very proud when they know the words. When reading with your child, stop to ask them questions about the reading. What happened first? What happened in the middle? What happened last? What was your favorite part and why? These build their comprehension skills and help them understand, they’re not just reading to read words, a good reader reads to gain meaning from what the text. If you can go to the library and let them choose books that interest them, this let’s them read to you but also let’s them truly enjoy the task of reading itself.
Also, continue on working on the vowel sounds with them, some students are still confusing them, ask your child what sounds they make, /a/e/i/o/u.
In addition to reviewing the silent “e” rule, we introduced the rule about two vowels. Ask them to sing you the song about when two vowels go walking…this is a great remembering technique to help them in their independent problem solving. We will continue to reinforce these rules daily.

In science, we made crystals! The kids loved this. They made predictions about what the outcome would be and graphed our ideas, then we went back looked at our graph again to find out how close we were to the true outcomes. The crystal designs are on our classroom bulletin board, come in and see them, they’re beautiful!

I attended a state wide Kindergarten conference Thursday and Friday and got some wonderful ideas. I’ll be implementing them in the classroom this semester and I know the kids will get as excited about them as I already am!

We’ll be continuing to talk about weather through the next two weeks, what a perfect time to do it with all the crazy changes we’ve had…

Have a great week!

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:10:00 +0000

Yea for the letter K !!! We had a fun-filled week with activities that involved our new theme about weather and our letter of the week “Kk”. We worked daily on our sight words, which I encourage you to do at home as well, it’s really showing in their reading. They recognize familiar words and feel confident using them in the classroom.
We started using the “rules of reading” this week was the silent “e” rule. I taught the children that the “e” is silent but it makes the first vowel say its name. You can practice this with them at home. There are also changes in some of the words “ce” says “s”, as in nice, and “ge” says “j” as in cage. They caught on quickly and we’ll continue adding rules for reading and working on the ones we’ve already covered.
As you saw in the Friday bags, we did lots of “Kk” books and the kids liked finding the familiar words and letters they knew.
We ended the week with a morning of tribes in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. We learned about his work and life and did some wonderful writing on him. It’s on the bulletin board outside the classrooms, please come in and enjoy our work!

We celebrated Ethan Wainman’s birthday on Thursday with funfetti cupcakes that the class made!! Thank you Ethan for letting me share my birthday with you, it made me feel a little bit younger…J

In math we are really working on different types of graphs. We want the children to seek information in different ways and be able to analyze it. We’re not only using picture graphs, but graphing the letters in our names, and using rulers for line graphs.

I’ve been asked to remind those who purchase hot lunch to be specific on the menus you turn in. If your child doesn’t like the entrée, please specify the alternative or bagel/baked potato if you think they would like it better. Like you, they don’t want the kids to go without eating what they’re provided.

Please remember, we eat at 11:45 am daily. If you plan on bringing lunch, it’s important to bring it before that time, as we are very busy and it “throws off” our day if your kinder is waiting on his/her lunch. Plus, they tend to get worried when they go their backpack and find nothing L

As you know, there is no school on Monday. We will have tribes on Tuesday morning for TuB’Shevat. Our letter next week is the letter “Qq” and we have lots of fun planned! I will be in a Kindergarten training Thursday and Friday learning great new “tricks” to bring back to the classroom.

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:42:00 +0000

What a busy week we had getting ready for the winter break! We had so much fun talking about our upcoming rest and learning a few new things along the way!
The weeks highlights included…
Writing an “All About Me” book during our writing time. They also wrote with Miss Liz this week about the story “Corduroy” while I was out on Monday. The activity turned out so cute and the kids enjoyed getting creative with the project.
In math we started discussing the concept of time. We played a fun game called “Duration Game” the kids had to guess which activity would take more or less time. It was fun because after guessing they had to actually find out which took longer. An example included “singing the alef bet or singing the ABC’s”. This got the kids thinking about actual time it takes to do something and that time is finite. It’s such an abstract concept for them to start.
We worked on handwriting and really started working on the short vowel sounds. I want them to recognize them in every aspect of language, listen for it in rhyming, songs, and recognize the letter making the sound…that’s the tough part. When we get back in January, we will begin making “Vowel books”. They are a type of scrapbook that the kids will use to locate pictures from the catalogs and magazines that you have sent in. These are wonderful resources to have and a great project to have at home, you could start one over the break.
Here’s how:
You can find a cheap scrapbook at the craft store. On each page write or print from the computer the ABC’s, each page gets a letter. I like the font “comic sans”. They then go through magazines and catalogs to find photos of things that start with that letter.
This is a fun and ongoing project that can be something you can always add to. Its fun to fill all the pages with photos, and for some reason the kids just love it. It’s so creative!

On Friday, we had a nice break in the afternoon with a movie made by Leapfrog called “The Letter Factory”; the kids enjoyed learning through a new way. We also had a nice cookie exchange with Miss Liz’s class in honor of our “Cc” week.
We also said good-bye to Laura (our extra set of hands). She is going to UNT next semester and we will be joined by a new person in the classroom to help, his name is Benji and he will be here each day.

It’s been a beautiful semester, we want to thank you for sharing your children with us. It’s been such a treat to watch them grow and learn.
Have a wonderful break! See you next year!

A note about next semester:
Our schedule will be changing slightly next semester, Morah Aidy will be coming to us first thing each morning for Torah time. We will continue our day with centers, Hebrew, lunch, writing and specials. I will send home a schedule the first week of next semester.

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:16:00 +0000

News for week of 12-10-07

What a great week we’ve had! The children had so much fun with the rest of our Hanukkah activities. They LOVED the surprise pizza lunch on Wednesday! The Hanukkah party was great, they got to move between the two classrooms and enjoy being grouped with students from Miss Liz’s class. The activities were lots of fun and creative and it was like having our own little “Hanukkah Carnival” right here in Kindergarten. I hope you enjoyed the mosaic tiles, they all worked so hard on them for two weeks and it was such a satisfying feeling to see the finished product. I think most of them were surprised they would turn-out so well. When they grouted the tiles, everyone got a bit concerned about how it would work out. I think they were all so beautiful, I had a hard time parting with them. I told them, we will definitely have to do mosaics again this year!
Back to work…
Centers:
The kids worked hard at centers this week. When they bring home their “pile of papers” ask them to tell you about them. I think it gives them pride in their work to show off for you.
Writing: They used dreidel shapes to create words with word families. We’re really focusing on this now, as it will empower them in their reading when they can recognize familiar words.
ABC: They worked on ending sounds. This was a new concept and a little tough for some. It’s a transition to go from knowing beginning sounds to adding an ending sound. It was unfamiliar territory, but I think with more practice the kids will catch-on quickly.
Pocket Chart: This was a cute poem about a pig “Mistress Pratt”. It was great practice for word families also and a cute poem too!
Science: In honor of our “Vv” week, we did an experiment using vibration. It was great to see the kids really thinking as they tapped the different glasses and noted their findings. We also talked about vibration having two qualities: sound and movement.
Overhead: The kids worked on dreidel math. It was simple adding game, played with a partner.
Math: They had to build a menorah and follow the directions for building it using their number recognition.

In Writing this week, we worked on writing in our journals, completing a sentence:
“I like to…” They also started using a title for their writing. I explain this as: “one or two words that explain what you are going to write about”. We also worked on writing the steps to a process, I demonstrated with “making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich”, they had to write the steps to making a volcano.

In Science we made our own volcano! We measured and mixed the batter and molded the volcano deciding what colors to use to make it look more authentic.

We completed the assessment for Theme 3, which was included in their Friday bags. This test was assessing the specific skills we covered in our last unit. I tell the kids I only use it to show me what I need to teach them more.
Dear parents
This week we added to our vocabulary the words “aba” (dad), “ema” (mom), “veh” (and).
The children can now make short sentences like: ani eme (I am mom)
Aba veh ema (mom and dad),yeld veh yaldah(boy and a girl).
We use pictures and words printed on cards to make sentences, I show the cards with the pictures and the children produce a sentence.
The children love to do it and feel so proud of themselves.
Our favorite word to say to each other is the praise word yofi (great).
The letter of the week is “kaf”.
Vocabulary for “kaf”:
Kelev – dog
Kipah – yamakah
Kovah – hat

Have a great week
Leah

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 15:15:00 +0000

Chag Sameach!! We started off the week so excited that Hanukkah is here! The kids were asking if we get out early though, and wondering why we have school on Hanukkah…we didn’t have any answers they liked.
Our letter this week is “Hh” and it fit perfectly for our first week of Hanukkah. I’m trying to rearrange the letters of the week to fit better with what is going on in the kid’s lives. I think it makes it much more meaningful to them and they are able to internalize the meaning because they can transfer the letters to so many things in their lives outside of school. For example, the letter “P” in the curriculum is supposed to be the week we get back from winter break. I plan to move it to Pesach along with “Gg” and “Ff”. What a better way to reinforce the learning of a letter than to be involved with it in every aspect of your life, Pesach, green and frogs.
Centers-
Science-the kids worked on a “sink/float” experiment. They really enjoyed the idea of making estimates and checking their hypothesis.
ABC-they loved a game called “Creepy Cave”. It reinforces beginning consonant words with color matching. The game pieces are creepy monsters which made it even more fun.
Writing-the children wrote in their “This is” books, once again, reinforcing initial consonant knowledge.
Math-the kids wrote numbers in “salt boxes”
Overhead-we continued working with our word families
Pocket Chart-they sorted pictures based on beginning sounds and matched the words with pictures
Writing we worked on a Hanukkah card for our families. It was lots of detailed folding and following directions. It was a tough activity, but the kids were so proud of the product and the fact that they actually folded paper to make a house!
In Math we worked on money and started counting backwards. Counting backwards seems simple, but when you take a row of objects and cover an amount, you would be surprised to see how hard the concept is. When I present information and ask for input, I always follow-up with asking, “why”. Sometimes a good guess can fool us into thinking they fully understand the concept at hand, when you go deeper and ask them how they got to that conclusion, it’s very interesting. It really shows me what I need to teach more, when asking your child a question, follow it up with, “why”, and let the learning begin. The kids could understand taking objects away in a group up to 10, but many couldn’t answer how they got to the number they ended-up with. That let’s me know, some of them don’t know they are actually counting backwards. Some were counting the remaining objects to get the answer. Some counted backwards on their fingers, it was a good start!

Please continue to work with your child on the sight words, you can now add the second page if they have the first page memorized. These words should come to them immediately or they still need to work on them.
This is part of our “whole language” approach to reading. Some words are known by sight only, they don’t follow the rules of “sounding it out”, some of the words that can be sounded out are taught phonetically. The sight words are just as important as learning the phonetic words, please continue to reinforce this with your kinder, you will see a real difference in their reading.
When you’re reading a book at home, ask them to find a word they know: the, and, or like, in the reading. You will be surprised how much pride the have in themselves, we want to give them as many successes as possible.
Your student will be coming home with paper books to keep. These books are leveled and work on specific skills as you may have seen from the “Dan the tan Man” book. We’re really working on word families and these books reinforce everything they are seeing in other parts of the classroom. You can keep them in a basket by their bed and they can read them over and over again. I know in the past week or two I have seen tremendous progress in their reading with me, let me know if you have seen any changes. I actually got goosebumps the other morning reading with them, it was a real “lightbulb” moment for several of the students, and I was so proud of their progress. I can tell the learning is coming together and they are connecting all of the skills. The best part for me is that they are having fun while learning, and I think that because we try to present the skills in a fun way that is connected to happy emotions, they are really starting to take-off!
Next week we will work with the letter “Vv” and have more Hanukkah plans as well.
Hebrew Circle:
This week we immersed ourselves in Hanukkah activities. We learned the Hanukkah story, talked about the characters and what role they had in the story. The children learned the Hebrew letters on the sevivon (dreidel) and how to play the game. They sang songs and danced to the point that if we just said the word sevivon it was like a magic trigger to start them singing. We played lots of games, made sufganiyyot (doughnuts) and levivot (potato latkes) and decorated the room to get that Hanukah feeling. The children are so excited about the holiday that I am afraid eight days might not be enough.
The letter for this week was “Yud” but now they also know “Nun” and “Shin” thanks to the sevivon.
Hanukkah vocabulary:
· Chanukiyah – menorah
· sevivon – dreidel
· ner – candle
· kad – jug (the oil jug)
· Sufganiyyot – doughnuts
· levivah - latke
Yud vocabulary:
· Yeled –boy
· yaldah –girl
· yeladim – children
· yad – hand
· yadayim – hands
· Yareach – moon.

Happy Hanukkah!
Leah

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 19:01:00 +0000

Week of 11-25-07

We got back to our much-needed routine this week. We started working on “word families” and understanding the idea of adding a new beginning sound to make a new word. It can be a nonsense or real word. The goal with this is to start the process of understanding the letters and their sounds when putting them together as well as making new and unknown words.
We are already planning on Hanukkah fun! The kids are so excited. We had many discussions this week about the meaning of a gift. Is it something you have to buy? What is your favorite gift? Sometimes, we as parents, think it’s got to be the latest toy or gadget.
During centers the kids created “noodle” art, hopefully it got home in one piece…They worked at the overhead creating shapes, letters, and numbers. At the ABC center they made words using word families. We started this week introducing word families and vowels and how they are both used, to write and read. At the math center they worked on writing their numbers with number templates. It’s a great way to reinforce writing numbers in a very controlled way. Their number writing is really getting great, as you will see. For science we worked with oil and water with food coloring, they had to chart their findings, and look for different reactions in each.
In Math we used a Venn diagram to sort materials. I first sorted letters without giving them the reasons why, when the kids started asking questions and making observations is was great. They had such good theories as to why the letters were sorted, they finally narrowed it down and got the right answer. This type is activity is a great way to let them guide the learning. They then split into groups and had to come up with a strategy for sorting buttons they were given. They had to sort them and then let us ask questions about why they sorted the way they did. It truly let them be the teacher; they loved this activity so much!

We started a very cool project making a Hanukkah book. Earlier this year we had a visiting teacher from Israel, Morah Efrat. She taught the children movements to a song called “Aquarium”, and the children loved her! She emailed us the beginning to a Hanukkah story some of her kindergarten children wrote, and asked us to finish it and send it to them. The kids came up with amazing ideas and we wrote a book! They illustrated the pages in groups and dictated the text to us. Leah scanned the pages and is putting them into a Power Point presentation to send. We’ll be using the pages to make a class big book to keep and read over and over. The teams worked together beautifully to collaborate on the illustrations for the book. It was amazing to see the leadership and cooperation.

We will be working on our Hanukkah project next week and have lots of fun centers based on Hanukkah learning! We’re making Donuts and Latkes too!

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 20:18:00 +0000

News for week of November 19th-

Though it was a short week, we had so many projects to do! We were very busy getting ready for Grandparents/Special Friend’s Day. The kids wanted to make something special and make yummy treats for our special visitors. They took so much pride in their efforts it was great to see.
Our feast was a great treat! Of course the spice cake was a favorite, but we did have lots of kids who were what we call “Brave Tasters” and they tried new things like vegetable soup and broccoli. They loved singing for our visitors and showing them around the room too.
You’ll see some new things coming home this week. We’re going to really start working on “word families”. These are the ending parts of words, you change the beginning sounds to create new words, but they all end in the same “family”. Our letter for the upcoming week is “Nn”. We’re also going to start working on verbs which I will refer to as “action words” they tell what is going on. We’ll be working on syllable recognition also.
Lots of learning to get to before the end of the semester, and lots of Hanukkah fun coming also! We want to create a special ABC scrapbook and need your help…please send any catalogs or “kid friendly” magazines to cut and tear. Thanks

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 01:51:00 +0000

Greetings from Miss Christie’s Tribe!

We’ve been talking all week about the Thanksgiving story. The kids loved hearing about the Native Americans so much we let their creativity blossom into many projects that will be coming next week.
This group is really drawn to nature and all things that encompasses, so the Native American people and their lifestyle were a perfect fit for them. We talked about how they used things in nature to create colors in their art. We read The Legend of The Indian Paintbrush by Tomie dePaola. It’s a story about a little boy “Little Gopher” who just wasn’t cut out to be a warrior, but he created beautiful pieces of art on buffalo skins. He had a dream vision that showed him how to recreate the colors of the sunset, he used the Indian paintbrush flowers to get the colors “just right”. He left them on the hill after painting with them, and that’s where they grow every year. They loved this story and decided to be Indians at our feast, they made Indian headdresses using only natural materials and even came-up with their own Indian names.
They made leaf collages to replace our hanging fish in the room, the kids decided it should look more like Fall. This class is so observant, we laugh that there are 16 student teachers in the class with us!
We cooked garbanzo beans to make hummus. We talked about how the beans felt and looked when the beans were first dry. Then they made the hummus and they couldn’t get enough. We even saved some for next week. They love to cook. We made lots of yummy treats for Grandparent’s and Special Friends day next Wednesday.
We had a very successful Science center this week as we have been talking about temperatures changing. They used thermometers in warm, tepid, and cold water to see the change in temperature. We will use this later to watch our temperatures change (now that they are beginning to…) to transfer the learning they already have into more areas.
In the listening center they listened to Goldilocks and The Three Bears. They loved the story so much they wanted to act it out. We had to first decide what to do with everyone; there were only four characters? We came up with a very creative idea…some of the characters would be the forest creatures that Goldilocks and the bears encountered along the story. In the end, the forest creatures made-up the largest group, there were bunnies, squirrels, and mostly howling wolves (of course).

We had a surprise from "Zero the Hero" this week as we celebrated the 50th day of school!! He left the class a special treat while they were at Music, they just missed him! They were so sad to have missed him, I told them we'd keep an eye out for him. I happen to know him very well, and promised them he'd be back!

Please continue with your daily sight word practice, it will enhance their reading so much as well as build confidence!

Dear parents
The children are getting more and more excited about Hebrew.
We now know nine Hebrew letters so our “Alef Bet” song is longer and the children take every opportunity to sing it over and over again.
There is something about attaching words to melody that helps them learn the word no matter how difficult it is.
We also learned twelve Hebrew words that they can use to create simple sentences.
For example: I am a boy/girl (ani yeled/yalda) or I say hello (ani omer shalom)
The children feel so accomplished and proud when they produce a sentence and that gives them incentive to learn more.
We have so much fun at Hebrew time, if you ever want to come and join us please do.
I am at Christie’s class from 12:30 to 1:00 and Liz’s class from 1:10 to 1:40.

Words we know so far: shalom (hello) shabat shalom, boker tov(good morning)
Lehitraot(see you later) naim meod(nice to meet you) ani(me) atah(you /boy)
At (you /girl) omer(says/ boy) omeret(says/ girl) yeled(boy) yaldah(girl),yofi(great)

Have a great weekend and Happy Thanksgiving
Leah

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 01:30:00 +0000

News for week of 10-29-07

We started theme 3 this week, which is all about Family! It’s great because it fits so well with the Thanksgiving holiday. We started talking about generations in families and read stories that had this theme. We read a story titled Tortillas and Lullabies and the kids loved it, it’s a lovely story about a great-grandmother, grandmother, mother and a little girl and her doll. They all make tortillas through the years and generations, and they are all the same, but different. We had lots of discussion about it and the kids liked finding the details in the story. We also made homemade tortillas, the kids gobbled them up!! They turned out great, it’s so nice to be able to do these things with the kids, as it reinforces the learning so well. It also brings up the discussion about the literature at another time, which also reinforces the learning.

Center Time:
We worked on the letter “Tt” this week and listened to Tikki Tikki Tembo, a Chinese legend about a little boy and his brother. It is a wonderful perspective on family and gave the students another perspective on a culture they may not have known. By the end of the week, the kids were chanting the book! The kids are working on increasing their sight word knowledge, we’re working on I, see, and my. They may not be able to “read” them, but they can recognize them as they are exposed to them more. We add words as their letter knowledge increases, its part of the reading continuum that we build on when learning to read.
Writing:
We’re continuing to work on labeling pictures we draw. This week we drew family pictures and labeled the family members. We also wrote lots of sentences during center time. The students are learning that letters make sounds and sounds make words, and separate words make sentences. It seems like such an easy concept to an adult, but it’s not part of who a child innately is. It is a foreign concept that has to be learned. It’s just like learning that written print (even scribbles) represents spoken words.
Math:
We worked more with symmetry of letters, it was tough! The kids used sticky letters on a chart to decide what kind of symmetry the letters had. It was very interesting because the students really understood the concepts of symmetry; they could quickly show horizontal, vertical, diagonal and rotational symmetry, and even knew the correct words to use. It was so great! This came through being exposed to the concept of symmetry many times in different ways. We will continue this through the year. Math is never completed; we will continue to revisit concepts even when the children seem to know them very well. They need to know the concepts in varied situations to truly understand the meaning. The math program we use is also fun because the students don’t know they are learning math. They think they’re playing with sticky letters on a chart!

We had a very special visitor in our classroom on Monday. Her name was Morah Efrat from Israel. She’s a music specialist that travels the world teaching how children can learn so many skills through music. She loved our students and did a wonderful activity with them using the music “Le Carnaval des Animaux” which translates to “Carnival of the Animals”; the song she shared with us was “Aquarium”. It was amazing to see her working with the students; she kept their interest for more than 30 minutes! For a Kinder, that’s a LONG TIME! They loved the music so much, and used instruments to play with the music at different times, they pretended they were fish and acted the parts, then she brought out an ocean of netting and they were fish and fishermen. It was an amazing experience for the children. I found a book by John Lithgow using the same piece of music relating it to a little boy stuck in a museum overnight, and we listened to that the rest of the week. It was perfect timing because we hung our fish to swim in our room the next day!

It was a great week, and even though we were very busy, it was lots of fun!

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:19:00 +0000

Newsletter for week of 10-22-07

This week we worked on the letter “Rr”! We read a story about a sneaky raccoon, measured a racoon's tale and even cooked differerent types of rice (one sweet with raisins and one made with chicken stock...the salty, chicken flavored rice was the winner)! The kids loved bringing in items that started with the “r” sound and using the “mystery box” to feel them and guess what they were. Along with our color words, we added two more high frequency words to our word wall: “I” and “see”, we also worked some on the word “the” throughout the week. We’re continuing to work on end punctuation, looking for it in our reading. We use simple terms for punctuation, a period means you are stopping that thought, comma means you take a breath; exclamation point means “wow”. We also have started working on when to use upper case and lower case letters when writing.
Center Time:
We listened to the story Rumpelstiltskin and the kids seemed to enjoy this classic story. We talked about how “creepy” he was and about how greedy the king was in the story. We plotted the characters and this reinforced the story even more. We did word work at the light table, sorting letters and words into their beginning sounds. The students then had to transfer their work to the tracking sheet. We also measured a raccoon’s tale with different objects, this works on multiple math topics, measuring as well as counting and writing numbers. The students finished their pattern fish and we’ll be hanging them up in the room, they turned-out beautiful. We’re working on the sequence of events in a story using the words: first, then, next, last. We use this structure in our writing as well.
Literacy:
We read an Indian tale about “How the Birds Goth Their Colors”. The story was set in the woods a very long time ago and only animals were the characters. We had to really stretch our imaginations about how the wolf came-up with paint. It was so interesting; the kids first had ideas like going to buy the paint, just using pastel colors and using markers. They had no concept of using things in nature to create colors. After letting them think about it a while, and returning to it the next day, they came up with great ideas: using rock and scraping it and mixing it with water to make gray and white, using an acorn dipped in water then scraping it to use the color brown, sing grass and leaves smashed to create green, and even bark from trees to make brown! I wish you guys could hear the amazing conversations we have. The kids really think about things and come up with such creative ideas. I plan to take them into nature, gather materials and try some of the experiments they suggested to test their theories.
Math:
We worked on estimation this week, measuring each other with different objects. Children don’t always have an understanding of number concepts at this age therefore it’s important to work on skills continuously throughout the year. We also worked on symmetry, horizontal (I remind them this is like the letter “H” with the line across) and vertical (the “V” points up and down). We practiced this with their bodies at carpet, I called “horizontal”, they had to show me what that looked like; laying down, I called “vertical”, they had to show me with their bodies what this looked like, and everyone jumped up! Its great active learning and they love to be challenged.
We also touched on rotational symmetry; this was a real challenge for the kids. It was great, they were thinking so hard about the rotation, and turning it clockwise and counterclockwise. We did this many times during the week in different ways to reinforce the learning. We even did letter symmetry! The kids love the challenge of these concepts. I leave it very open-ended and allow any suggestions/answers, this let’s them drive the learning and I get to facilitate and they are the “thinkers”!
Writing:
We combined writing and math this week working on letter symmetry. Did it have horizontal, vertical, diagonal, rotational or no symmetry at all. This activity combined so many skills in varied areas. The students had to work on their letters, decide on their symmetry and then chart our findings. It was a wonderful way to combine learning. We also started working on numeral writing. We started by using the dry erase boards, the kids love using these. These boards can be found at most discount stores and I’ve seen them in the Wal-Mart school supply section with dry erase pens. It really encourages their writing by giving them a different experience.
I even carry them in my car for my own kids!

Reading groups are going very well! The kids love being called to my table to read daily.
I need your help getting the books back to school every day!!

Something fun on the weekend…
“Camp Chai Lite” at the JCC. The next one is November 10th, 7pm-10pm.
It’s babysitting and fun on Saturday evenings, swimming, games, and movies, the kids love seeing their friends there.
Call Laura Seymour for all the information.

Dear parents

Hebrew is coming along great. The kids are very enthusiastic about learning and all of them love to participate.
They love to sing in Hebrew and dance to Israeli music
We learned two new letters: “Hay” and “Vav”.
We also learn some new conversation words: Meh (from) Hoo ( he) Hee (she)
And Yofi (beautiful). The word “Yofi” is used in Hebrew as a praise word
The same as “great job” so you can try it on your kids if you wish.
The kids are able to have simple conversation now (like three-word sentence)
and they love to do it with pictures of the kids from Israel or with each other.
Vocabulary for “Hay” and “Vav”: Hagada ,Havdala , Har (mountain), Vered (rose)
Varod (pink) Vilon (curtain).
Have a great week
Leah

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 20:58:00 +0000

Dear parents
The last few weeks the children got more and more familiar with Hebrew phrases.
They know how to describe the weather in Hebrew and love to do it daily.
We use these words: Shemesh (sun), Ananim(clouds), Geshem(rain), Ruach(wind).
They can ask simple questions in Hebrew with the vocabulary they learned so far and they all love to participate as long as Bentzi (the turtle puppet) is listening and talking back to them.
We also learn these Hebrew letters: “Alef” “Bet” “Gimel” and “Daled”.
Ask them to sing you our “Alef Bet song” they just can’t get enough of it.
Vocabulary we learned so far: Shalom (Hello) Boker Tov (good morning) Ani(me)
Atah/Aht (you boy/girl) Naeim Meod (very pleasent) used for when you introduce people to each other. To help with introductions and review, I use favorite children’s characters. They hold the character and introduce themselves, the others answer that character with the Hebrew greeting.
Vocabulary we learned with our letters:
Aba (dad) Ima(mom) Balon(baloon) Banana Gezer(carrot) Glidah(ice cream)
Dag(fish) Delet(door).
Shabbat Shalom and have a great week!
Morah Leah

We have a new friend joining our class on Tuesday!! His name is Bennett Handler and he visited a couple of times this week. He is a wonderful addition to our classroom and will give us an even number of 16 kiddos! The kids were so loving and welcoming it was wonderful.

Lots of Strep throat going around…several students have been out with it, so be mindful of this if your kinder hints at throat pain. One student showed negative on the “fast” throat culture, but the test that is back the next day showed him positive for strep, just something to keep in mind. Also, we found out about a stomach bug that one of our students had. Ah, the season is upon us!!

This week was a wonderful week of colors!! We sang songs about the colors, learned the words on our word wall, and used them in centers galore! You will notice your kinder cam home with lots of books this week, they are simple to read and “personalized” through their coloring. The kids loved wearing colors each day and it helped reinforce the learning. We also talked about punctuation this week; comma, period, exclamation point, and question mark.
We made so many patterns during math this week. We clapped, snapped, stomped, stood, sat, you name it, if it made a pattern we did it! It was so fun and an active way of learning all about patterns. To extend this the students then had to “name” their pattern, not just with a color but with a letter. This really helped them think in a different way about patterns and what they represent. We recreated pattern using fabric and wrapping paper, this was a tough concept. It involved understanding how to extend the pattern in more than one way. We’re adding to this particular piece and should finish it this week. We’ll be doing patterns several more weeks and I plan on extending this into finding things in nature that have pattern, I expect it to get very interesting.

The guided reading groups are set and will begin on Tuesday morning. A few important things about what to expect your child to bring home…
1. Your child will bring home a bag with a book and a reading log each night. It is imperative that they bring it to school everyday.
2. Monday through Thursday they will get a new book, if we complete it during our reading in class. Some may take two days, depending on the specific skill being taught.
3. On Friday, they will get to choose their favorite book to take for the weekend. They must bring it back on Monday.
4. An adult will need to initial daily after reading, and return the log with the book and bag.

On Friday, we had a pizza party to celebrate Sara’s birthday. We invited our friends in Chaverim to come make pizza with us, it was wonderful. We paired a Kinder with a Chaverim child and they helped the little guys make their pizza. It was great community building, and yummy too! The kids seemed to take their “jobs” seriously, being not only a host to our guests but a helper to our friends.
We started our class scarecrow this week, he’s awesome! If you can, come by and see him, he’s off to a great start.

***In honor of Veteran’s Day on Monday, November 12th, we’d like to take a field trip to the Veranda retirement community on Friday, November 9th. We plan to take flags and sing the National Anthem as well as the Pirate Song (this is the kid’s favorite). We could use parent drivers or the Veranda has a bus that is available. If you’d like to drive, please let me know. We would need enough drivers to transport 16 students with booster seats.

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:22:00 +0000

The highlight of the week was the Sukkah Hop to Ari’s house! What fun we had, riding a real school bus, eating yummy cupcakes and shaking the Lulav and Etrog in the sukkah. We had a discussion about the adorable bulletin board Miss Liz created and talked about what we could add to it…the class decided on a scarecrow! We talked about what a scarecrow’s job is and where you would see a scarecrow. They went to their seats to draw pictures of what they thought a scarecrow should look like. We then took the ideas and started the discussion of how we’re going to actually create a classroom scarecrow, what materials we need and the process of making it. The ideas were so creative; it’s amazing to hear what these children come up with!

Skills we are working on:
Color sight words-I sent these home, please cut them and make the cards to go over with your child. Let them label objects in the house with sticky’s with the words for reinforcement. You can even use crayons to write the words in that color!!
1. Beginning Sounds-listen for them in everything
2. Rhyming-make-up rhymes even if they’re made-up words
3. Punctuation marks- we started with comma (you pause to take a breath) and period (you stop to start a new thought)
Items volunteered for the scarecrow project:
1) Sofia- old shirt from dad
2) Madison-old pants/jeans from dad
3) Sam-old hat
4) Koby-old belt
5) Ari-old tie
6) Ariel-old shoes from dad
We need a couple of bales of hay if anyone could get them, one for display and one for filling the scarecrow.

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:30:00 +0000

News for week of 9-24-07

Chag Sameach wishing you a wonderful Sukkot! We celebrated this week preparing for Sukkot, on Monday, during our class meeting the kids decided we needed to build our own sukkah…and we did. We went through the planning, moving, moving again, building and rebuilding; all of those details involved in a project. They knew immediately we needed “Bob the Builder” one of our campus maintenance personnel, and he was on the spot helping with the “structural engineering”, it was really such a wonderful thing to be a part of their collaboration and work. The outcome was a wonderful sukkah in the school courtyard. The kids added schach by finding branches and leaves around campus, and brought from home (as you know). It was also so great to see the pride they took in the finished product, we’re going to invite children from the preschool next week to come have snack with us, and of course you’re all welcome as well!
On Tuesday we combined Hebrew and Math time to make vegetable soup. The discussion started with Leah asking why we use fresh vegetables during Sukkot, through this they learned more about Sukkot and the harvest. We talked about using fresh foods and predicted some outcomes. They cleaned, cut, and yes they did EAT the vegetables, and we have the pictures to prove it. Some even asked for more! I know for some this must be an “away from home” phenomenon, but it was great. There was so much discussion that came from this process also, like discovering that white potatoes are easier to cut than sweet potatoes.
We did a lot of writing this week documenting our work and necessary steps. We used “First, then, next, last” to explain the steps in our projects. These are great to also use when reading to your child at home, have them recreate the story and tell you the order of events. It’s great comprehension work!
We worked on learning our home addresses to the “Muffin Man” tune, the kids liked the music and it helped them remember. We talked briefly about safety and the importance of knowing your home address. Ask them to sing you the tune and rehearse with them, we’ll continue singing the song in class also, so everyone will know their home address!
We had tribes again on Wednesday and it went wonderfully! The tribes all built paper chains for the school sukkah.

cmorris@akibaacademy.org (Christie Morris) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 17:56:00 +0000

News for week of 9-17-07

We started the week a little slow after having such a nice break, but quickly got to work! We read the Gingerbread Man and worked on activities all week to reinforce the story, it’s characters and the sequence of events. Ask your child to “sing” our funky version, they loved it! We’ve begun targeting story elements like the ones listed above, we also did Jonah and the Whale and included those in the retelling and our art work during center time. We use the words, “first, then, next, and last” when naming sequences in a story. We made gingerbread cookies Friday, we’ll decorate them Monday to send home, hopefully they will get home before they’re eaten. We learned a new dance “Macarena Math”; it’s a fun way to get the kids counting by ones, twos, fives, and tens, while they’re doing movements with the counting. Integrating the kinesthetic actions with the counting reinforces the learning…and it’s fun!
We did a lot of work preparing for Yom Kippur, we had great conversations about hurting someone and when you do say I’m sorry, you’re also saying “I won’t do it again”. That’s a huge part of any apology and the kids really got the meaning through our classroom meetings. We made slippers from felt and “I’m Sorry” cards during some of our writing time. This was a tough activity because not only was it following directions, it was learning how to cut a heart with a folded piece of paper as well as the writing that went with it. Right now our focus on writing is getting them confident in taking risks, we talk about the different types of writing: squiggles, symbols, single letters etc. We want the kids to understand the concept of written language and that there are different forms that all convey meaning. You may see writing that comes home with their pencil writing and adult writing in pen. They write their “kid writing” first, then we come along and do the adult writing with them. This protects the integrity of their work while demonstrating the writing that goes with it. We do not correct their work, or tell them to “sound it out”, they’re not able to do this yet, and it’s very defeating when they put so much work into the product. We’re focusing on process not outcome.
We talked this week about the kids at Vogel Alcove, I went into more depth about how those children are homeless and the alcove is the only school they have. It was amazing to see the looks on their faces when they realized how little those children have and how much we do. I’m in the process of contacting Vogel Alcove, the volunteer director has been out sick, I will call again next week. I’d like to plan a fieldtrip to visit the kids and come back to our class and reflect on how we can make a special birthday party for them. I think seeing the kids first will help our children get better ideas of what they would like to do for them. More on that when I speak with someone there.
Reminders:
· Please send a baby photo of your child for a class book we’re making
· Noon release on Wednesday, September 26th (no lunch)
· Early Childhood Parent Meeting is scheduled for October 10th at 7:30 pm in the boardroom. The topic is The Jewish Spiritual Connections of the New Early Childhood Curriculum: Growth in “Frumkeit”
· Annual PTA Sukkot Dinner, Tuesday, October 2nd, 6:00-8:00pm
· I have added some of our photos to Shutterfly but couldn’t add them all due to computer problems, please check back later this week for the rest
Just a note:
Kindergarten is a tough year in many ways. The kids are growing so fast not only physically but emotionally. If your child is experiencing any frustrations,
please let Leah or me know if we can help in any way. We want to not only grow their minds but their hearts while they’re with us!