My goal is to blog twice a week, however the days keep going along so smoothly that the week flies by before I know it! Rest assured we are accomplishing a lot during our days and enjoying our learning together.

As I said at Open House, this group loves to be read to! We were lucky to have Cameron’s dad, Paul, come in this week to be our first guest reader of the year. What fun. If you’re reading this Paul, I think you have a second career in children’s audio books! If you’re interested in being a guest reader at anytime please email me at bpurdin@johnsonschool.org.

We have also begun to read ourselves. Children made books called “The Apple Story,” which they have been practicing reading to each other. These will come home today so they can read them to you! We have been reading charts and songs together as well. Baby Echo is a little owl we use to point to words and letters during our Fundations lesson. Yesterday children made their own baby echo pointers to keep in class and use to “read the room.” One child asked, “Can we make one to use at home too?” How could I say no to that? So those will be coming home soon too. 🙂

Today we will end our week by meeting our 6th grade buddies! This will be exciting for both the 6th graders, kindergartners, Mrs. Dunion and myself. I am looking forward to another fun year of learning buddies. This is a great experience for everyone involved.

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Farm Fashionistas

What a fantastic day we had on Thursday for our apple picking field trip! Thanks to all the moms and dads who came as chaperones. I loved that we had the place mostly to ourselves this year! The apples, cider and doughnuts were delicious and the animals were shall we say, quite “awake” this year. I don’t remember them being as friendly or as nosy for food before. Watch out for that llama!

Here’s some photos from our trip:

Class Photo in from of Brooksby Farms

Picking apples was so much fun! 5 in the bag and one in the belly!

Saying hi to Mr. Llama

When we got home we read the story “Edward the Emu.”

Yes, we come with our own paparazzi

PS: If anyone has a good one from this last shot, please send it my way. Thanks! 🙂

Have a great rest of your weekend.
Ms. Purdin 🙂

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Last week we completed our classroom rules and put them into practice. The rules are our “constitution” for our classroom. After brainstorming, categorizing and narrowing down, the children created four universal rules, which are written in positive language, to follow.

After creating our classroom rules, we needed to discuss what happens when someone forgets a rule or breaks a rule. We talked about logical consequences in three different forms:

Our Classroom Rules

1. You Break It, You Fix It
2. Loss of Priviledge
3. Time Out (Rest Stop)

The children took to these logical consequences well, and hopefully we won’t have to use them too often!

Last week, we also explored more areas and materials in the classroom. We opened up the Dramatic Play area on Friday, and also had some academic choice in the morning with alphabet materials. I have been impressed with the children’s care of materials during clean up time.

Looking forward to tomorrow’s apple picking trip!

Ms. Purdin

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Good Morning!

I will be posting this weekend some cute photos from things we have been doing in class. Over my scrambled eggs this morning, I happened to look at our 5/6 ELA teacher Mrs. Dunion’s webpage and saw she has been blogging all this week from Maine where she and our fifth and sixth graders are on an adventure at Ferry Beach Marine Science school. Take a look to read about this wonderful school tradition we have here on Mrs. Dunion’s Page. Great blogging Mrs. Dunion! See you guys this afternoon! 🙂

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So much is going on in Kindergarten! We are having fun each day (I say we, because I am very much enjoying my time with your children) getting to know each other and learning new things!

I have heard from some of you that your child is coming home singing new songs. This is music to my ears! We love to sing in Kindergarten! After being a camp counselor for 15 summers fun, silly songs are in my wheelhouse of tricks during transitions and different times of the day. Learning lyrics to songs is an early literacy skill that can help children when they are reading for fluency later in school. Encourage your child by singing with them or asking he or she to teach you the song!

We are continuing to establish expectations for routines and classroom behaviors. This week the children created their hopes and dreams for Kindergarten, brainstormed rules to help achieve those dreams and today, we categorized the very long list of rules into rules about “the classroom”, “others” or “ourself”. Tomorrow, we will condense the rules into 3-4 general rules in positive language and then sign the document to hang on our wall.

We are working on our morning routines and hallway routines as well. In the morning, children are expected to do a few “jobs,” which include putting away backpacks and coats, folders into their folder cubby, marking their attendance and putting their “egg” in the correct lunch bowl – home, school or milk. Once children have finished their morning jobs they have morning work at the tables. Each day of the week has an assigned task they must complete before morning meeting.

Hallway behavior is always hard one for young children. Five year olds talk as they think so staying quiet for even a walk to the gym can be really difficult! This year I have implemented a “marble jar” just for hallway behavior. When Mrs. Clark or I see great hallway behavior the class receives a marble. We have been having success with this and the children like to hear the “clink, clink” when a marble goes in the jar!

Starting next week we will begin our Person of the Day Project. This is an at home project you do with your child. Each child will have an assigned day where they can share some important things with us and present their family album page. Details can be found here: Person of the Day.

Have a great weekend!

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