Welcome Back to School!

Welcome to the class of 2031! I am so excited to start the school year with a new group of students and families! 

We're going to have such a FUN and EXCITING year! 

Happy First Day of School, everyone!

<3 Mrs. I

When It Rains Writing

I love this time of year in kindergarten. The students are really putting together all of the skills we've been working on all year - letter sounds, tapping words, sight words, punctuation, spaces between words! It's really amazing to see them bloom.

One of the biggest indicators of growth is their writing. This past week, we made a little project about what they like to do when it rains. Here they all are in our hallway on display for the school to see!

What do you do when it rains projects hanging proudly in the hallway!

The students had to write about their opinion a few weeks ago, and this writing prompt is similar to those. I am looking to see if they can tell me what they REALLY like to do when it rains - some of them don't like to play in the rain, and if that's true what DO they like? Here are a few examples of our projects and writing.

When it rains, I dance.

When it rains I like to have fun.

When it rains I like to play in the muddy puddles.

When it rains I like to play inside.

The kids LOVE this project. I also love their creativity once they've created the rain gear with our tracers. The background and their faces are amazing!

Subtraction SMASH!

For the past several weeks, we have been working on learning more about subtraction. We start off with the concept of "breaking apart" - that one large number can be broken into two smaller numbers. Then we begin using the term "take away" so that the students understand that the smaller number is taken away from the larger one, leaving another small number. 

To illustrate the idea of "take away," we played a little game I like to call SUBTRACTION SMASH!

We took a small amount of Play-Doh, made five small balls, and "smashed" the number to take it away from five. 

Here we are, getting ready to SMASH!

We smashed, or took away, two from our five.... 

Five SMASH Two leaves me with?!

 Working together, we discovered that there is a pattern when taking away numbers from larger ones. We also used this strategy when we were learning addition to be sure we found ALL of the ways to make a larger number. This time, we used smaller numbers to take away from five to find the pattern (although, Mrs. I didn't quite get the pattern in order today....!).

Ask your student about Subtraction SMASH! I'm sure they'd love to practice subtraction at home if you let them smash some things!

Mindfulness in Kindergarten

This year in kindergarten, we are working with Mrs. Howard and learning about Mindfulness. What is it? What does it mean? How do we do it?

Over the past few weeks, Mrs. Howard has joined our class to teach us about deep breathing and how to use our breath to focus and to calm our bodies. We are learning to try and focus JUST on our breathing and to help clear our minds of the clutter and noise that is ever-present in our lives. 

We are also an Open Circle school and we have learned about calm breathing where we fill our balloons and deflate the balloon OR flower breathing where we breathe in the flower and breathe it out. 

Flower breathing with movements!
Breathe in the flower, breathe it out!

Today, Mrs. Howard joined us to teach us a few more breathing techniques by using our bodies to also calm down our breathing and be more mindful of our breathing.

Practicing our breathing with Mrs. Howard

Using our bodies also helps us focus on our breathing
and being more mindful of where our bodies are in space.

So, the next time your student or maybe even yourself needs to take a few deep, mindful breathes, they can practice using their bodies and our breathing techniques!