Our Day in Kindergarten

Thank you for the fantastic showing at Explore Kindergarten Night! It was a joy to see the kindergartners confidently showing you our classroom. Below is the slideshow that was playing on the SMARTboard. Enjoy a glimpse into our kindergarten day. 

What a View

When playing outside, we love to watch the building progress of the new school. We can't wait for the new Elementary to open! Monday we had some extra excitement as the workers were placing a pole literally right outside our window. We had an amazingly close view and learned a lot from watching the process. Be sure to ask your kindergartner about our experience and check out the pole next time you drive past our window!

The Seasons of our Apple Tree

Last week we read The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree and learned how apple trees change and grow with the seasons. In small groups, we created an apple tree for each season. With strong cooperation and teamwork, we created detailed trees that are hanging in our classroom. 

Skyping Strong Readers

Thursday was a special day in kindergarten! We were able to have our first Skype session of the year. Gavin's mom read us a story all the way from her school in a different town. It was definitely a highlight of our week! The story Curious Garden helped us understand the importance of hard work, patience, and sharing with others. After our Skype session we realized Gavin's mom is a strong reader since she reads and thinks about books. We made a list of other strong readers we know...many of you made the list! It is obvious you are showing your children the importance of reading. Thank you for that! Let me know if anyone else is interested in Skyping us --we would love it!

First Day of K

A new Kindergarten year is upon us! Welcome class of 2012-2013 Beach Buddies. What a fantastic first week of school for us. As I have shared with many, I believe this is one of the very best first weeks of school I have ever had! Your hard working, independent kindergartners are doing a stand up job getting into the routine of all day Kindergarten. Our first day went so great, we even had a chance to gather these first day pictures...with a bit of help from our special high school helper, Anne. She snapped away during snack time and I came up with this little video to introduce you to our new friends. How many names can your kindergartner remember?

 
First Day of K from Katie Zuehlke on Vimeo.

Summer!

Hard to believe we have been out of school for a week already! Below are some pictures from our last days together. The first picture is from our visit to a first grade classroom. We read a book and compared how our room was the same and different from this first grade one. The other pictures are from our fun game of "Drip, Drip, Splash" (ask you child to teach it to you!) and our ice cream floats on Tuesday afternoon. Happy Summer!

Library Visit

Earlier in the month we walked to the public library to learn more about all the great opportunities the library has to offer. Thank you to Carla, the librarian, who shared stories, poems, and jokes with us. We also learned about the summer reading program at the library. Hopefully many of us will join...fun prizes can be earned! We loved checking out the awesome fiction and nonfiction books...I know many of us look forward to visiting the library again soon. Here is a link to the library's programming and hours. Enjoy some pictures of the day too!
http://www.griver.org/locations-and-hours/great-river-regional-library-annandale