Apple Day

A big thanks to all of our wonderful kinder parents who made Apple Day such a success! We had such a fun day and loved all of the apple centers and our yummy apple snack.

Mr. Kueny ran our apple patterning center. The kinders really had a great time making, reading, and extending different apple patterns. Then, they had a chance to stamp their own patterns using apples. Earlier in the week, we learned that the seeds inside apples make a star shape. Kinders were really excited when they could see the star shape in their apple prints!

At our snack center, kinders got to taste yummy apple cupcakes that Mrs. Wurst sent in for us to enjoy. As they ate snack, Mrs. Lenzi read a book that taught us all about Johnny Appleseed.

Mrs. Gasparovic helped out at our 10 Apples Up On Top center. Kinders practicd tracing/writing their numbers 1-10 and arranging them in order--on top of their heads!!

Ethan practicing writing his numbers.

Brady's 10 Apples Up On Top!

When they finished, Mrs. Gasparovic read Ten Apples Up On Top. We really love listening to that book!

At our graphing center, Mrs. Galanti helped kinders taste test red delicious, golden delicious, and granny smith apples. After trying each kind, kinders graphed their favorite and worked on our classbook.

We also got to celebrate Aubrey's 5th birthday! Happy birthday to you, CHA CHA CHA!!

Busy Being Bucketfillers!

On Monday, we had a very special visitor, Mrs. Hansbury! Mrs. Hansbury is the guidance counselor at our school. Once a month, she will come into our room and teach us a lesson about being a good friend and making good choices. This month, she shared a story called Have You Filled A Bucket Today? We learned that everyone carries an invisible bucket that holds our thoughts and feelings. When you say or do nice things for others, you fill their bucket and your bucket too. When you are a bucket filler, you make yourself and others around you happy. However, when you say or do mean things, you dip not only your own bucket, but someone else's as well. Mrs. Hansbury encouraged all of us to be bucket fillers. After the story, kinders shared ways they could be bucket fillers.

We spent this week learning/reviewing our colors. We read A LOT of color books including Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes and Elmer (two of our favorites).


During shared reading, we practiced one-to-one correspondence while reading our color mini books.

Check out Abigail pointing to each words as she reads.

Kayleigh coloring each circle to match the color word.

Aubrey working at our fine motor center lacing her letters!


Last year during circle time, I decided to try out calendar journals to make my kinders accountable for their own learning. I really liked using them and so did the kids, so I decided to bring them back this year. So far, so good :)

We use our calendar journals everyday to practice:
1. Number formation/writing
2. Identifying numbers
3. Tally marks
4. Graphing

Ryan practicing writing his numbers.

4th grade buddies, centers, and more!

On Monday, we had a chance to meet our 4th grade buddies from Ms. Lyon's class! They joined us along with Miss Minardi's kinders to read the story Pete the Cat: Rocking In My New School Shoes. After our story, Pete left us a special message in the back of our book that took us on a tour of our school. Our buddies did an awesome job reading the clues Pete left us and showing our kinders all important rooms in Green-Fields. We can't wait to spend more time with our buddies :)

We continued to focus on our classroom rules, routines, and procedures this week to make sure our classroom runs as smoothly as possible. On Monday, kinders were introduced to centers. We talked about center expectations, and we had a chance to work at our writing center, listening center, library center, math center, and library center.

At the writing center, we practiced writing our names with Mrs. Harverson. We traced our names, stamped our names, rainbow wrote our names, and then printed our names. Remember when practicing at home, make sure your child uses a capital letter at the beginning of their name.

Students listened to the story Lola at the Library at our listening center. When we finished our story, we talked about and illustrated our favorite part.

At the library center, students practiced handling books and got a chance to use whisper phones while reading.

We practiced making patterns and pictures with pattern blocks at our math center.




In math, we worked on number formation. We focused on numbers 0 and 1. We learned Dr. Jean's number songs to help us remember how to write each number.

0: Number zero is where it all begins, curve down, around, and up again.
1: Number one is so much fun, pull straight down and you have a one.

Mrs. Harverson practicing number formation on white boards with a small group of kinders.

Anthony and Abigail practicing forming the number 0.

Leilani practicing writing the number 1 in our new number books.

Kindergarten RULES!

Can you believe it is the weekend already?! Our first two days of Kindergarten flew by!! We spent a lot of time this week learning our rules and practicing our classroom routines. We will continue to focus on our classroom rules, routines, and procedures throughout the school year.


In our classroom, we have five rules:
1. Raise your hand to speak
2. Follow directions quickly
3. Listen when someone is speaking
4. Be a caring friend
5. Always do your best


On Thursday, we read David Gets In Trouble! Throughout this silly book, David makes bad choices like eating dog food, yelling across the table, breaking windows, and our favorite, not wearing pants to school! When David gets in trouble, he always says, 'NO! It's not my fault! I didn't mean to! It was an accident!'" This was the perfect opportunity to discuss good vs. poor choices. Our kinders did a great job deciding what were good choices and which ones were not.

On Friday, we read Mom, It’s My First Day of Kindergarten! We talked about and charted how we felt on the first day of Kindergarten. Here's what your kinder said..

How precious is Leilani's response?!

After charting, we worked on turning our thoughts and feelings into illustrations that we will use to make our first class book. Take a look!

Common Core Standards:
LA.K.SL.K.1.a Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., listening to others and taking turns speaking about the topics and texts under discussion).

LA.K.RL.K.10 Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding

LA.K.SL.K.1 Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.

LA.K.W.K.3 Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened.

LA.K.RI.K.5 Identify the front cover, back cover, and title page of a book.

MA.K.K.MD.3 Classify objects into given categories; count the numbers of objects in each category and sort the categories by count

Welcome Kinders!

I would like to welcome all of you to our classroom blog. Last year, Mrs. Corino, one of our A.M. Kinder teachers, created a wonderful blog to share their day-to-day classroom happenings. After following her blog for a few weeks, I thought it would be a wonderful idea to start our own(thanks for the inspiration Mrs. Corino!) ...and what a hit it was! It proved to be a excellent way to keep parents in the loop with everything going on in our classroom. So, I decided to continue blogging for the 2012-2013 school year :) I update our blog once a week, hope you take sometime out of your busy schedules to check it out! Due to technical difficulties, I had to create a new blog address for this year. If you would like to check out last years blog to see what it's all about, visit cnfarrell.blogspot.com!