What's Happening in Our Classroom

Happy 2013! I hope everyone is staying healthy and that resolutions are in full swing. Your children came back from vacation eager and ready to learn. It may not seem that way at home but I have to say that all workshops (Reading, Writing, and Math) continue to run smoothly and every one of the kids surprised me with their personal best writing pieces last week. I was so proud! I keep telling them that they are beginning to dive into First Grade work. Of course that brings instant smiles to their cute little faces. We are beginning a new unit on sea creatures that will incorporate all subject areas for the next couple of months. I have been working closely with my Kindergarten colleagues at SCS and from around the district for the past five Teacher In-Service days studying the new Common Core State Standards. As Kindergarten teachers at SCS, we had the opportunity to develop a common unit about Sea Creatures that connects science and technology with math, reading, and writing standards from the new Common Core Standards. Your children will be reading and writing about creatures of the sea. They will be learning what it means to be a specialist about a creature topic of their choice and will be writing "Specialist" books about their topics. They will be working with the Art and Music teachers to help inspire them to create and sing about this exciting topic. Our Bridges in Mathematics Program already used sea creatures as the manipulative the children used to dive into higher number recognition, addition concepts, and other fun math games. Math is where the sea creature topic came from and we were able to creatively design a unit that the children are VERY EXCITED to dive into! We have a very fun end of unit celebration scheduled for the end of February for both our Journey and TreeHouse teams. Be on the lookout for some fun activities coming home in the upcoming days!