Welcome to Kindergarten in Room 1!

This is our classroom!

Click on the pictures below to see more.

Our Giving Tree   There are lots of little apples on our tree with things that we will be using in our classroom.  If you would like to contribute anything, please take an apple!  This is completely optional.

                                                                       Pictures from our Kindergarten Tea!

     Happpy 5th Birthday!!

We celebrated Mr S' birthday on Friday!  He chose a very special gift from the "Birthday Box!"  We loved the giant pencils, cupcakes and drinks.   Thank you so much for sharing the fun.

                                                               Happy faces on the first day of school!

        Mrs. Slegers helped us stamp our hands to make our puzzles.    

                      Miss Carol helped us make our schoolhouse pictures.    

  Brown Bear Tour

We read a fun story about Brown Bear.  All of the animals escaped from the book and we went looking for them.  We found Brown Bear at Mr. Everett's office.  Then we met a very hot Mr. Everett, our custodian, outside the Teacher's Room.

We found Red Bird in Miss Valla's office and Blue Horse in Miss Shelly's office!                                                                                                                                            

Yellow Duck was in Mr. Jetzer's office, and we met our new principal outside his office.

    After finding all of the animals, we made our own Brown Bear.  

  Mrs. Bergman helps us a lot!

                           YUMMMY SNACKS    ............  OOPS!

  Free Choice is one of everyone's favorites!

We read a Monster story and made our own Monster book to help us learn how to follow the rules at school.

        We are making a graph to count how many boys and girls are in our class. 

Fun Stories!

Let's Find Out Magazine  

Our first magazine talked about feelings.  We made all kinds of happy and sad faces! 

Chicka Chicka, Boom Boom

We read this book to help us learn all of the letters of the alphabet.  Ask your child to tell you what happened to all of the letters.  We really liked the "skinned knee d!"  We used the first letter of our name and decorated it with stickers and a Band-Aid.  Look at all of the letters!!    We will be using these to decorate our room.  We also sang the song to go along with the book.  We are also going to be making our own coconut tree this week.                          

We made Chester, the Raccoon puppet!  We used our puppets to retell the story of "The Kissing Hand."  Please ask your child to tell you what happened at the beginning of the story, the middle and the end of the story.  This will help your child later in learning to recall information for reading comprehension.

   Brown Bear Flannel Board Story  

Reading Buddies

Each Wednesday we go to visit our Reading Buddies in Mrs. Petersen's Second and Third Grade classroom.  The older children read stories to our Kindergarten students at this time of the year.  We will soon be reading to them!

Apples, Apples, Apples!

As part of our Social Studies and Science, we are talking about seasons of the year.  We learned that apples are picked in the fall and that it will soon be fall.  We have lots more fun things planned for our study of the seasons of the year.  If you have any fun things that you can think of to share with us, we would love to have your child share it.  Anything such as fall colored leaves, etc.

We're making apple blocks.

   We had a great time making giant apples to hang in our room. 

             We like to sing and dance, too.             

    Making new friends.                   

One of the new songs that we have learned is "Katalina Matalina"  This is one of Dr.Jean's songs from her CD of Silly Songs.  Ask your child if they can remember any of the words.  We have included the words for you to help them remember!

Fun Pictures

September 10-14

We are having a great time with our Apple Unit this week.

First, we read the words for our book.  We are learning to track the words with a pointer. 

Ask your child to tell you something he/she has learned about Johnny Appleseed.  We are working on a book about some important things that he did to make our world a better place.  We have some special things that are also planned to celebrate his birthday next week.  We'll keep your posted!

Then we made our own Apple Book and drew apples to match the words on each page.  Please practice reading and tracking (point to each word read) this little book with your child.  Also, please save the book for your child's special Treasure Box that we will soon be making. 

Our "Bite into an Apple" helped us to learn how we track words.  Everyone got a chance to "read" this fun, little book.  The children loved the ending!  Please save this little book and continue to practice reading and tracking with your child.  Help your child point to each word as you read it together.  He/She may use a pointer (pencil, finger, etc.) as each word is read.

We heard a special, flannel board story about a little boy looking for an unusual house.  Please ask your child to re-tell the story to you.  If you would like to read the whole story, please click on the apple! 

  Each day we like to retell the story.  This helps us with sequencing, building vocabulary, speaking in front of the group....and we have so much fun, too!

Everyone was very proud of the apple blocks we made for September.  Next month we will be making a pumpkin.  If you have any extra wood at home that you might be able to cut into 2x4x6" pieces, we would greatly appreciate it. 

Morning Message

Each morning we have a morning message that helps us learn many different skills.  Everyone loves to help us answer the question of the day.

Fun with Phonics

               We love singing the "Alpha Friends" song!   

Our Brown Bear Shape Book  helps us to learn all of the shapes!     

Making New Friends in Kindergarten--

Fun Stories

Ask your child to tell what this story was all about!  Mrs. Critchell told us a story using a piece of paper.  It was about two little mice.  Mr. H is holding one of the characters in the story!

Super Sack Sharing!

Everyone looks forward to taking the Super Sack and bringing something special from home to share with us.  Mr. S shared his crystals with us.  He demonstrated how to "grow" crystals and told us that it takes a LONG time to grow.  We are anxious to see what happens.

                We learned how to do the "Tooty-Ta!"     

Puzzle People

We are all fitting together, but are missing a few people.  If your child hasn't returned their puzzle person, please do as soon as possible to finish our puzzle!

Hi, Friend!!  Come on in!!

Ask your child to tell you about the fun game and the class book we made to help us learn everyone's name!

Everyone seemed to have a great time at the park!  Thanks to everyone who made it so much fun for all.  If you took pictures of the kids and would like to share them, I would love to have them for my files.  I will be keeping a picture folder for each child this year.  You will receive a copy of these photos at the end of the school year!  We will also have a slide show presentation in June.

September 17-21

Constitution Day  was celebrated in our classroom with  a story about Bubbleland.  This was a story about a land without any rules and what happened without rules.  We discussed why we have laws and rules.  This was a great time to talk about our own laws and why we have our Constitution.  We learned about the words and what they mean in our Pledge of Allegiance.  We  also learned about the words in the patriotic song of the month, "America, the Beautiful."  

Glyphs are a fun way of gathering information and comparing!  We found out how many:  boys and girls, age and how many children are in each family!    

  It was fun to see if parents could find their child from the "dolls" we made in class! 

Wednesday is our library day!  Mrs. Edwards, our librarian, read us a story and helped us to learn how we check out our books each week.  Our library books will stay at school!

   We made a little book to learn how an apple tree grows and changes through the different seasons of the year.  Our reading buddies helped us put our books together. 

We used our flannel board to tell the very funny story of Silly Sally.  This is a great story to help us learn rhyming words.   This is a great pre-reading skill to work on with your child.  We liked the book so much and decided to make a Silly Children book.  Ask your child to tell you about Silly Sally and how she got to town.          

We are making a book about Johnny Appleseed and his life. 

Learning how to make a square into a circle for Johnny's eyes!

We like making puppets!  They help us in learning about the parts of  a story, the characters and using vocabulary to retell the story.

     Mrs. Bergman helped us in learning how to make patterns! 

Sammy Seal sailed the sea!  We are concentrating on learning about the "S" sound and how to correctly make the letter S.  We appreciate your help in reinforcing how to make the letters correctly at home.   

Johnny Appleseed Day

We celebrated Johnny Appleseed Day with finishing our puppets and seeing a special movie about his life.  We will be using all of this information to make our own stories next week.  We made a graph to see what colors of apples everyone brought.  This was a great time to talk about more and less in comparing numbers.  We are also planning on using our apples to make applesauce.  YUM! 

September 24-28

We started our VIP of the week this week.  Each child will have a week to be our STAR! Click on the VIP trophy to see detailed directions for being our VIP of the week.

Mr. B is our very first VIP.  We learned so many interesting things about him while working on his very special VIP book.  We found out that he likes baseball, his favorite color is red, he loves chicken nuggets and his favorite book is Sam and the Dinosaur.  Everyone enjoyed seeing his pictures of him and his family.  We are looking forward to him sharing more throughout the week.

            We all had fun making his book for him. 

         Morning message is a time for Mrs. Critchell to share the pen!

       First, we made the applesauce with Miss Tonja.

         Then, we ate the applesauce---YUM!!      

Mr. Jetzer came to visit us and he loved our applesauce, too!    

The last thing we did was make a graph to find out how many people liked the applesauce!  We found out that there were more students who liked the applesauce than didn't like it.  Ask you child if he/she can remember how many students liked applesauce.  Also, ask your child if he/she liked our applesauce.

                                                    Treasure Boxes

Everyone did a terrific job decorating the Reading Treasure boxes!  Mrs. Critchell thought they were the BEST ever!!!  Please continue to save all of the little books that we make throughout the year in the treasure box.  These little books are great for reading practice and don't forget to record the time on the RAH log!

                                       We loved the keys, too!!   

Fun pictures this week!

Click on the ABCs (left) to see a picture of our Alpha Friends.  We work on the alphabet sounds each day in class.  We love to sing our Alpha Friends song.  Ask your child if he/she can remember how it goes?  A for Andy..../a/ /a/ /a/.  The song is sung to the tune of "Jeopardy!"  This helps us to learn the letter names and sounds.  Please continue to practice and reinforce these sounds and motions at home. 

Great quote--

"All children need a laptop.  Not a computer, but a human laptop.  Moms, dads, grannies and grandpas, aunts and uncles--someone to hold them, read to them, teach them.  Loved ones who will embrace them and pass on the experience, rituals and knowledge of a hundred previous generations.  Loved ones who will pass to the next generation their expectations of them, their hopes, and their dreams."                                                                                    by General Colin L. Powell

To read the complete article, click on the gold medal above. 

                               It's going to be a great year!  

Nitty Gritty Things

1.  If you haven't returned your Parent Conference form,  please do so as soon as possible.  Conferences are scheduled in the afternoon during the week of October 15.  If you have other conferences already scheduled, please let her know those times.  If you don't have this form, just let Mrs. Critchell know what day of the week and time is best for you by email or note

2.  We would like to encourage everyone to join the PTA.  We have a wonderful group of parents who work very hard to bring all kinds of great things to our students.  All of our field trips, Smart Boards and many, many extra things are funded by the PTA.  Please join!

3.  Treasure Boxes---  If you did not pick up your cardboard box to make the treasure box with your child, please see Mrs. Critchell.  The boxes should be decorated and returned to school on Friday, September 28.  Everyone is very excited about the magic "Key to Reading Success!"  Each child will receive the key when the box is decorated and returned to school to share. 

 4.  The Kindergarten classes are planning a field trip to the Westminster High School pumpkin patch for Friday, October 12.  This will be our first field trip and we will be taking the school bus.  This is very exciting for those children who have never gone on the BUS!  Westminster High School has a real pumpkin patch with pumpkins growing in the field.  They also have a small FFA farm with animals for us to see.  If you are interested in going along on this field trip, please let Mrs. Critchell know.  We will be at the pumpkin patch between  10-11 a.m. (approximately)  Parents will be able to meet us there.  More details will be provided as we finalize the plans.   Sorry, no younger siblings will be permitted to attend.