Monday Happenings!

Hickory, dickory, my name is Doc!  

Today we began a new Super Kid, Doc! She loves to fix broken toys, as well as create new inventions.  We have learned lowercase and capital Dd, as well as the /d/ sound.  We are continuing our work with rhyming words, as well as finding the initial sounds in words.

Something new this unit is blending.  This is the beginning of our journey to becoming readers!    The students will do a lot of work with blending two sounds together.

Have your child try to blend these nonsense words with the sounds we have already learned:  

da     oc     ac     co     ga     od     og

Math:  In math lately, we have worked with patterns.  We also learned a few counting games.  We created a class number board to help reinforce our numbers.  We learned our numbers 11-19 and have named them our ‘Tricky Teen’ numbers.  We learned the word ‘digits’ and talked about what digits we need to make different numbers.


Walk-a-Thon:  Don't forget that all Walk-a-Thon money is due on Wednesday.  The Walk-a-Thon will be on Friday from 1:00-1:30 for all of Kindergarten!

Have a great afternoon!

Kalimera, from Greece!

Hello from sunny Greece!  Today we ventured a little further south in Europe to the coast of the Mediterranean.  We saw the Parthenon and Government Building, along with the soldiers who stand guard outside.  We also saw some of the beautiful Greek islands and noticed how the houses are all painted white with blue shutters and doors.  We discovered that Greece was home to the original Olympics, and saw a picture of where the first Grecian Games were held!  Be sure to ask about my personal experience riding a donkey on one of the islands.  The kids really got a kick out of it!  Here are some of the pics we enjoyed:

The Parthenon, in Athens.

Soldiers outside the Government Building in Athens.

Site of first Grecian Games in Delphi.

Beautiful white-washed homes on the Isle of Santorini.

Evidence of my donkey riding experience!

Enjoy your weekend!

Random Wednesday Hi-Lights

With this week being a special week, I wanted to post some pictures of our career outfits today.  The kids were super cute!  I loved getting to hear about their dreams and future professional choices for when they get older!

Police Officer, Sheriff, K-9 Unit, and 3 Doctors

Foreman, Business Executive, Zookeeper, Military, and Chef

These last 2 pictures are from a new game we learned today during our Superkids time.  The kids had to work with a partner to match uppercase letters to the lowercase letters.

The GRIZ

This whole week we are celebrating College Go! Week!  We want each student at Creekside to start thinking about where they WILL go to college!  Yesterday was college t-shirt today.  Today, we had a special visitor..... Griz, from Franklin College, along with 2 cheerleaders!  The kids were so excited all day waiting for him to come and visit us.  The cheerleaders also led us in a few Franklin College cheers.  

Tomorrow is "Career Glam" day.  Each child is encouraged to dress up like what they want to be when they get older.  I can't wait to see what walks through my door!

It's Friday!

Happy Friday!  We had a busy day today!  We finished up our NWEA testing.  Hooray for us!  Those results will be coming home in a few weeks.  Below are the hi-lights of our week:

Super Kids:  We started learning about our new friend Alf!  Short for Alfalfa, he loves to take adventures!  We have been working on learning the /a/ sound like in "alligator."  We have also been working to identify words that begin with or have /a/ in the middle.

Ask your child to identify where these words have the /a/ sound:

apple       astronaut       cat       bag       ant       glad

**Our Super Kids Website has been updated, so be sure to check out the new items that are available.

Math:  This week in math we worked with the shapes triangle, square, circle, and rectangle.  We talked about the number of sides and corners each shape has.  We looked at pictures of different objects and decided what shape the object was.  Ex:  A slice of pizza is a triangle.  We played a game where we had to guess a shape by only being able to feel it.  We learned a new game called Spin a Number.  This game helps us learn to read numbers and count that many spaces.

Around the World:  We finished up our trip to the Netherlands today.  The kids enjoyed getting to make their own personal windmill!

Skyler, Ethan, and Logan work hard to finish up their passports.

Madison shows off her passport entry.

Austin hard at work on his windmill.

Annie, Grant, Cooper, and Delilah ready to put their windmills together.

Caleb, Jason, Taylor, and Crystal working on theirs.

Some of the finished windmills!

Field Trip:  We will be taking a field trip on Friday, October 11 to the Indianapolis Zoo!  Permission slips will be coming home at the end of next week.  I need LOTS of parents for this trip, so check your calendars and I hope you will be able to join us!

Remember, Monday is the start of College Go! Week!  Students are encouraged to wear shirts to support their favorite college!

Enjoy your weekend!

Info Overload!

I have lots of information to share with you today!  Please be sure to read through it carefully!

College Go Week:  This is next week!  Here at Creekside we want all students to begin thinking about where they WILL go to college!  Yesterday a paper came home in your child's green folder explaining a great opportunity s/he has to earn some money for college.  Next week, students are encouraged to wear t-shirts supporting their favorite college.  I will be too... GO HOOSIERS!

Picture Day:  Order forms for pictures came home yesterday.  Picture day is on Thursday, September 26.  You can return the order form anytime between now and picture day.  You are also able to order online.  Directions for that are included on the order form.

Scholastic Book Orders:  The deadline for this has been extended to next Wednesday, September 25.  If you would like to order books, you can send in the order form and check to the classroom, or follow the instructions to order online.  Every parent order that is done online earns a FREE book for our classroom!

Walk-a-Thon:  Our annual Walk-A-Thon Fundraiser has begun!  Students learned yesterday about this exciting chance to earn some money for our school.  Your child will be coming home today with a letter explaining this fundraiser, as well as his/her collection envelope.  Important points are below:

• The deadline for collecting and turning in money is October 2.
• EVERY student will get a prize for participating
• Each student who collects $10 will get to wear a hat to school one day
• Each student who collects $15 will get a special Walk-A-Thon t-shirt
• Each student who collects $20 will get to wear pj's to school one day
• The top class in each grade level wins an ice cream party
• The top 3 sellers for the whole school win a prize (Top seller- ipad mini, 2nd Place- electric scooter, 3rd Place- $50 Walmart gift card)
• The Walk-A-Thon will take place on Friday, October 4th from 8-8:30am.

Creekside Cafe:  We welcome visitors to come join the students for lunch.  Should you choose to do so, please call 317-348-8800 to let the Cafeteria know if you plan to purchase a lunch.  We need to make sure we have enough food prepared for the day.

Celebrate Good Times!

Today we celebrated our Box Tops win!  To finish out our day we enjoyed some ice cream and a Dinosaur Train episode from PBS Kids.

Enjoying some chocolate or vanilla ice cream!

Time for a video!

Winner, Winner!

Yeah for us!  Our class brought in the most Box Tops for the month of August!  We had over 800 collected as a class.  The school collected over 11,000!!  Because we were the top collectors, we have earned an ice cream party!  We will get to celebrate later this week with this sweet treat.  Thanks for keeping an eye out for these little gems and sending them in.  Keep them coming!  You can also ask family and friends to help us collect them, too.  The more we collect, the more money we earn for our school!

Hallo, Goededag!

Hello, Good day!  Our travels this week took us to the Netherlands (Holland).  This is where my family is from!  We saw pictures of windmills and tulips.  We talked about how they travel around in boats and on bicycles.  We learned about how wooden shoes are made.  We even learned about a very unique way that they move their furniture into their tall, narrow houses!  Enjoy some of the places we saw today...

Tall, narrow houses built on the canals.

Canals of Amsterdam.

Windmills that cover the country side.

Hooks at the tops of the houses, used to lift and swing furniture in through the windows.

Handmade wooden shoes.

Alphabet Soup

As the year progresses, you will have a lot of abbreviations thrown your way.  Some of those are coming home today!  To help you decipher this alphabet soup of letters, let me do some explaining!

DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Learning Skills), is an assessment both you and your child will become very familiar with.  This is a series of tests that we administer 3 times a year (fall, winter, spring), from Kindergarten through 2nd grade.  Most of these tests are a timed test requiring your child to complete as many tasks as they can in 1 minute.    Kindergarten took 3 tests:

• LNF:  (Letter Naming Fluency)  When given letters in a mixed up order, the number of letters they name in 1 minute
• FSF:  (First-Sound Fluency)  When given a word, the number of times they correctly state the first sound in 1 minute
• TRC:  (Text Reading Comprehension)  This is a non-timed test that has your child read books to show their ability to use, maneuver, and read books.

Your child is coming home today with a sheet that shows you their scores for these 3 tests.  Each test shows you what your child scored, and where they should have scored.  Our goal is for your child's "running man" icon to be somewhere in the GREEN range.  

As you look over these scores and data, feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns!

Welcome!

Hello Parents and welcome to my new blog!  This will be the place to check-in on all that is happening in our room.  I'm very excited to get this up and running, and to be able to use it as a way to communicate with you more often.  This blog has links to anything and everything Kindergarten!  Be sure to look around and become familiar with the site.

This week has been a busy one!  Here are the quick run downs of what we have done in Language and Math!

Super Kids Character:  Golly (the dog!)

Skills We Have Worked On:

*Reviewing Lowercase and Capital C and O

*Identifying Lowercase and Capital G

*Reviewing the sound for C  /k/and O /o/

*The sound for G /g/

*Identifying the first two sounds of words (Ex. Concert and gobble)

*Listening for and identifying words that end with /g/

*Handwriting for Lowercase and Capital C, O, and G

*Segmenting words into sounds they are made of (Ex. Pan = /p/  /a/  /n/)

Math:  This week we worked on directional words (above, below, beside, next to, over, under) and used those words to create and complete and obstacle course on the playground.  We used pattern blocks to create different pictures and to try and fill in puzzles using the correct pattern blocks.  We also learned about Ten Frames.  We noticed they have 10 boxes, with 5 on top and 5 on bottom.