It's Coming, It's Coming...

We have a playground coming!  It has been so much fun to watch our new playground begin to take shape.  The predictions have been precious as our Explorers imagine what it could look like when it is all done.  We've even gotten a chance to use the outdoor music equipment that could be purchased in the future.  Wow...are they fun!

What a wonderful journal entry that was
written as the students reflected on their trip.

Mrs. Taylor's and Mrs. Humphrey's classes enjoyed a beautiful day at the zoo earlier in the week.  What an amazing day!  As we have taken a close look into Form (A Key Concept that takes a deeper look into what something is like), the students were able to apply those lessons and look thoughtfully into the attributes of the animals and their habitats.

The signs were filled with information that answered
so many of our "I wonders..."

Elephant skin is so interesting!

**Mrs. Snyder's and Mrs. Wightman's classes will be enjoying their zoo trip on Monday, October 22.  More information will follow (as will a request for a few amazing volunteers).

Basketball Jones came for a visit on Wednesday afternoon.  He spreads a fantastic message of responsibility, good decision making and never giving up as he entertains us with exciting tricks and energizing music!  

We are continuing to study numbers, (creating sets and number formation) and have even jumped into graphing. We can sure learn a lot about our classmates through a graph.  We love singing our Counting Rhymes too.  

Here two students share their journals as they responded to the prompt of making equal sets.

Aliza applied what she has learned in Mandarin and connected it to our math lessons. 

Sounds create words!

We are spending a great deal of our day breaking apart words and listening carefully to their sounds.  Not only does this help us read better but improves our writing as well.  Beginning sounds are often difficult to isolate, thank you for reviewing this skill at home too.

THANK YOU FOR HELPING MAKE OUR CURRICULUM NIGHT SUCH A HUGE SUCCESS!

The parental support that you show our school and your child is absolutely amazing.  We had such a great time sharing our curriculum with you answering your questions.  Thank you also for taking the time to sign up for conferences and for being a Mystery Reader.  We will send home a letter next week with your exact date and time as our Mystery Reader.  If you were not able to sign up, and would like to, please let your child's teacher know.

Things to Remember:

1) Our OneWorld! Fundraiser is Saturday, October 29. (It's finally here!!)

2) ADM Week is next week.  To make it exciting our school has given each day a theme:

Monday: Mismatched socks

Tuesday: Musical t-shirt in honor of our concert by Tracy Silverman

Wednesday-Accessory Day 

Thursday-Extra Recess 

Friday-Hat Day

Hello Fall!

Fall is here and the excitement with the weather changes has filled the air.  Ali, in Mrs. Snyder's class, noticed these pine cones and wants us to follow them as they make their changes.  What a great idea! Our Explorers are fantastic observers and such amazing inquirers.  

We dove deeply into our Unit of Inquiry this week.  We began by looking at the Key Concept Form (What is it like?  What does it do?).  Looking at our self closely was a lot of fun!  We have read books and have done quite a few activities to help us with this process.  As we learn about ourselves, our intent is to foster an appreciation of the similarities and differences between people around us and in the world.  

We read the Crayon Box That discussed what it means to
be UNIQUE and why it is important.

Understanding the beginning, middle and end of a story is important for our comprehension.  Here a student demonstrated his understanding by illustrating the three parts of The Crayon Box That Talked:

SELF PORTRAITS

What creativity and awesome representation of their unique selves!  WOW! We are excited for you to take a closer look at Curriculum Night on Thursday.  

We created a pencil that reflects what we like best about school.  In adding our details based on what we like, (a glyph) we found out a lot about our friends too!

Even our fingerprints are unique!   

In math we continue to work on numbers 1-10 (understanding the relationship between numbers and counting, as well as correct formation).  

Here a student demonstrates on the iPad how to correctly
write the number 2 using the app Letter School.

Race to Trace has become a favorite as we practice counting a set  and writing our numbers with a friend.  Taking turns and playing fairly is a great way to practice the Learner Profile attribute Principled too.

Read to Someone (Daily 5) is coming along beautifully.  It is so much fun to hear the Explorers read to one another.  The details they include in their stories are so interesting and exciting!

THANK YOU!

A huge thank you to all the family members that joined us for the Fathers' Walk this week.  What a fun morning!

Things to Remember:

Curriculum Night is Thursday is 6:30-8:00.  The students will dismiss at 11:20.

iPad Favorites...

Here are some of the favorite iPad apps we use in Kindergarten:

-Letter School (Focus-letter and number formation)
-Montessori Words (Focus-word building)
-Memory Train (Focus-patterns)
-My First Puzzles the Alphabet (Focus-alphabet puzzles)
-Bob Books (Focus-reading CVC words and word building)
-Pocket Phonics (Focus-world building and letter formation)
-Little Reader-(Focus-reading and matching words)
-Little Speller (Focus-spelling words to match pictures)
-Picture D2D (Focus-letter or number order)

Take a Look at All We Do...

 Jack said, "Principled is being outstanding with

 your choices.  Principled is not yelling in our school."

Lana said, "Principled looks like walking in line.                      

Not being Principled is when you leave your                              

group."

We began this week with taking a deeper look into what it means to be Principled (a Learner Profile).  Through this inquiry, we found many examples of what it looks like, what it sounds like and what is feels like.  We were able to find lots of examples throughout our school of Explorers being Principled, share stories from home and the community and had a great time connecting this Learner Profile back to the text of stories we have been reading.

Principled: 

Doing the right thing when no one is looking

Being fair

Being honest

As we continue with our literacy skills our focus has been on letter identification, formation, sounds and rhyming.  Has your child shared Phonics in Motion with you yet?  They have picked this up remarkably fast! 

Side note-We would love it if you would please continue to encourage your child to write their name using capital and lowercase letters.  

The Daily 5 is taking off so well in our Kindergarten classes.  Above, two children are modeling Read to Someone while the other Explorer is enjoying Read to Self.

Here are the 5 components of Daily 5-

Read to Self

Read to Someone

Work on Writing 

Word Work

Listen to Reading

Math is so Fun!

This week we focused on number formation (1-5) and creating sets.  Understanding that the last number counted is the number in the group is a fundamental skill that we will build on with more complexity as the year progresses.  

After reading 10 Black Dots by Donald Crews, we decided to create class books based on the same concept.  Here two students share what they used their dots to create.  Such creativity!

WHO WE ARE

We will be officially begin our first Unit of Inquiry, Who We Are,  next week.  Our central idea is that children learn about themselves by examining stories and activities that connect to their lives.  In this unit, we will explore the nature of self and who we are through participating in discussions, presentations, exploration and self-study.  Our Explorers will be encouraged to express tolerance, acceptance, caring and being open-minded.  Through the study of this unit, we hope to foster appreciation of similarities and differences between people around us and in the world.  

Things to Remember:

9/20-Father's Walk 

9/27-Curriculum Night  **EARLY RELEASE DAY-11:20

9/29-One World! Fundraiser-Wait until you see the amazing projects each grade level is creating for auction with Ms. Lipka.  Wow!!

Dress Down Day

As we are sure you've been told excitedly by your son or daughter, a Dress Down Day is scheduled for tomorrow as a thank you to those who helped with the PCO Fundraiser Baskets.  

THANK YOU!!

Woking Hard...

Ms. Lipka captured our Learner Profile.  We love it!

We are anxious to share with you the excitement that has been brewing in our Kindergarten classes.  We have been in school for 14 days and already we are READING!  We have spent a great deal of time learning the ways to read a book:

1-Look at the Pictures

2-Read the Words

3-Retell 

With this in mind, one way we are reading is that we are working hard to build our STAMINA as we Read to Self (a component of the Daily 5).  Our students are working toward a goal of Reading to Self for 15 minutes (as of Friday most classes had accomplished 6 minutes).  The students understand this takes time and practice, but we are on our way and the excitement is being felt everywhere!  The ability to read is so very powerful and our Explorers are ready!

We are amazing writers too!  Here a student is sharing his journal entry about how he shows Caring (Learner Profile). 

Making connections between what we are learning and the world around us is a large part of our day.  Here students are showing us that the letters we were learning about are written around our room.

Oh the fun of putting our names, or our friends' names, into a poem!  

Here a student is using the Brighlink to complete a rhyming puzzle.  These "magic" boards have been so fun to explore and wonder about all week!

Our math lessons have been focusing on number formation and quantity.  We really enjoyed our Counting Rhyme Moo! and using our new Problem Solving Journals.

A favorite game in class is called Finger Flash. Ask your child to play this with you at home. *Take turns flashing fingers to show a number.  It is simple enough with fantastic concepts embedded (5 and 3 more make 8, etc.).

THINGS TO REMEMBER:

-The OneWorld! Fundraiser is on September 29.  We hope to see   

  everyone there.  What a fantastic evening this will be and so very

  powerful for our school.

-Curriculum Night is scheduled for September 27.  This will

 be an Early Release Day.  More information will

 follow.

Getting into the Routine...

We are Bucket Fillers each and Every Day!

It is absolutely remarkable how quickly our Explorers have figured out the routines here at Campus International.  It was very evident at our CIS Morning Meeting, which is held first thing Monday mornings.  Everyone joined right in as though they had been attending for years. What Risk-Takers and Thinkers (2 attributes of the Learner Profile)

This week we enjoyed lots of fabulous books, continued working on our names, journaling and explored various ways to create numbers.  

Pete the Cat is becoming a fast new favorite as we enjoy his various books! 

We cannot forget that we also learned our THRID language of speaking Giraffe.  We use the giraffe as a symbol to remind us to use our "I Messages" when we need to express ourselves.  Ask your Explorer if they remember why we picked the giraffe to help us remember this.

1. The long neck reminds us to stick our neck out for our friends.

2. Giraffes have the largest heart.

An example of using giraffe is, "I feel upset when you get in front of me in line. Would you please go to the end?"  Getting our students to express themselves in this way takes practice and patience, but they are already using without much teacher prompting.  Such Communicators (another attribute of the Learner Profile)!

We were entertained throughly with the Blue Angels.  CIS is lucky to have a fantastic view of their practice flights.  We had lots of wonders about how they did those amazing tricks! 

We journal in so many ways.  Here a student completed the Calendar Journal for the class.

 We are learning to use our school's technology!

THANK YOU for sending in their special bags!  It has been so much fun for us all to get to know each other better.  The excitement when someone else plays the same sport, likes the same book, food, etc is precious!

REMINDER:

PCO is selling Learner Profile t-shirts and CIS sweatshirts if you are interested.