Monarchs Have Hatched

The children found monarch butterflies on our windowsill when they arrived at school today. Two have hatched and one more looks ready to hatch on Tuesday. We put out sugared water for them, but haven't been able to get them to drink yet. We hope we will have a warm day soon, so we can put them in the garden!

Caterpillars, Caterpillars!

Scarves and balls in phys ed with Mrs. Taylor this week.


Look for the portraits in our classroom that BZ had the children make in art last week. They studied their faces carefully as they put together collage materials. They are very cute.



We've had a busy week in kindergarten. We had our first lesson on the Smart Board. Children listened to The Very Hungry Caterpillar and named foods, counted fruits and ordered the days of the week. All on Smart Board.

We drew pictures of caterpillars and also made our own caterpillars with plasticine clay. Some kids chose to make caterpillars and some made chrysalises.

We have also been working on simple rhyming stories about butterflies where children fill in a word on every other page to complete a rhyme.

We are conducting surveys in math to collect data that we can talk about and continuing our counting jar books. We will have our first visit from Polly, our math coach this week.

We are adding new letters and new sounds every day. We plan to start building simple words this week using some of the sounds we have learned. We also began reading our first story, a book with no words.

Children were delighted to check out their first book in library this week.

Photos

We have checked the photo permissions, so here are some photos of math.

We were very lucky last week to find some caterpillars in our backyard that we will watch turn into butterflies. By today, two of them were hanging from the glass jar in a J shape. We hope to see chrysalises in the morning! We drew pictures of our caterpillars, and cut and pasted the stages of a caterpillar's life.

We are learning so many things that we will use in our work all year. We have started our handwriting program and are practicing wet-dry-try every day as we build letters, and write them on small chalkboards. We started our first sound today, practicing the sound /s/ and learning a gesture to go with the sound.

We began exploring new materials in math; tiles, buttons and attribute blocks. We started the counting jar which we will do regularly throughout the year. Everyone counted how many cubes were in the jar and created an equivalent set of buttons. Tomorrow we will record our work in a booklet. We are laying a careful foundation in math, as we help children develop math ideas through discussions and through listening to what each other has to say about their work and their ideas.

We are reading books about friendship and about whether or not it's OK for boys or girls to be excluded from games. We are also reading about butterflies of course.

We are exploring lines and circles in art. Look for our exploration of shapes made from circles on display in the hallways. We are learning how to take care of library books and will check out our first book in a week or two. Ask your child about "No, no, no, never!" regarding things you should never do with a library book. Don't let your dog chew the book!!

Please send lunch orders and money to school with your kindergartner, rather than an older sibling. We need to see the slip or we will not order a lunch for your child. We would also appreciate a change of clothes that can stay in your child's cubby. Thank you for your help with these details.

We're Off and Running

Welcome to the start of new school year. The kindergartners are excited about school and more than ready for the challenge. We spend a lot of time at the beginning of the year learning routines that will make our year flow more smoothly.

We are concentrating on procedures like how to get our lunch in the cafeteria and how to clean it up. Not as easy as you'd think. The composting procedure alone is enough to confuse anyone! Luckily we have Mr. Mahler to help us.

In the classroom we are learning each other's names and are making new friends. We are learning how to use math materials and how to form a community of learners who can share math ideas. So far we have built lots of towers.

We played outside with the 6th graders on Friday and will soon be pairing up kindergartners and 6th graders as buddies for the year. This is an exciting friendship opportunity that benefits both children tremendously.

Beth McCoy is the paraprofessional in our classroom, whom we are delighted to welcome back to Shutesbury School, after the birth of her son who is now three, and the completion of her education degree. She is a warm and welcoming addition to our community.

We will be sending home a paper called Getting to Know Your Child in the next few days and would appreciate you taking the time to fill it out, as this will help us to understand your child better. I will also be calling you, as I enjoy letting you know how your child is adjusting to kindergarten.

Finally, I will be requesting permission to post pictures of children on the blog. As you can see from last year's blog, no children's names are used in captions, so your child will not be identified in photos. We have been practicing skills on pod casting and i movies this summer, so who knows what will happen on the blog this year!

Thank you very much for a supportive start to the school year. As always, our families arre what make Shutesbury such a wonderful place for children.

Last Day of School!!!

Wow! It's here! The last day. Today we had our last day of school assembly. The kindergarten gave journals to their 6th grade buddies, we said goodbye to some staff and learned about the summer reading program at the town library. And of course, we sang the 6th graders out with our congratulations.

We also had a visitor! Peter has been healing at home and he came to school today to participate in the assembly and to share about his accident last week. We were excited to see him and so glad that he is on the mend.

And a HUGE thank you goes out to Debbie Lee and Marcia Bernard, who put together our kindergarten DVD! It came out fabulous and we are so grateful that Ms. Lee and Mrs. Bernard took all the time to put it together! THANK YOU!!!!

Here are some shots from yesterday, when Julie came to help serve salad from our garden! Kids washed the lettuce, learned two ways to spin-dry salad, and got to try two kinds of dressing! Thanks Julie!

On a personal note, I, Katie, would like to say thank you for a fabulous year! It has touched my heart to work with such awesome kids, and great parents too! I will miss Shutesbury Elementary in a big way.

Well, that's all for the blog this year! We hope everyone has a great summer. See ya, first graders!