Ms. Kenney's Web Page
Weekly Reminders:
Don't forget your red bag and a snack/lunch everyday!
| Day | Reminder |
|---|---|
| Monday | Wear your P.E. shoes |
| Tuesday |
|
| Wednesday | Early Day! Don't forget your library book |
| Thursday | Music with Mrs. Walker |
| Friday |
Room 1 Upcoming Events!
Wow! Our year is almost over and we have so many special events happening in our classroom and at our school! Here is a brief description of each. I hope you find it helpful! PLease don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any questions!
May 11th-Spa Day! Moms...I hope you received the invitation from your child. Inside you will find the time, place and things you need to bring to our Spa Day! Please be here at 10:30am sharp! If you are not able to make it, please let me know as soon as possible. I want to make sure each child has someone to pamper! Just in case, Mrs. Adona and the secretaries are “penciled in” and would love a little relaxation time! We can’t wait to show you all of our love and gratitude for all the things you do! EARLY DAY FOR ALL KINDERS!
May 11th-Family Movie Night @7:30am! This is such a fun night! Bring your pillows, sleeping bags, lawn chairs, picnic dinner etc. and enjoy a movie under the stars! It takes place out on the large field. I believe they will be showing Zookeeper! It’s a community event...all are welcome!
May 16th-Bulldog Stampede! Another great fundraiser! Here is a link to learn more! http://www.bulldogstampede.com/Bulldogstampede.com/Welcome.html
Here’s what you’ll need to do for Wednesday:
*Wear comfy clothes and running/walking shoes
*Eat a big/healthy breakfast
*Be at school at 8:10am sharp!
*Help your child change into their K Bulldog T-shirts
*Check in at the volunteer booth if you’d like to volunteer
We’ll start warm-ups with the other kinders and 1st graders and begin our “race” at 8:30am! The children will be running/walking for 1 hour total! Each time your child completes one lap, a volunteer will mark it on their t-shirts. During the race, there are many water stations and misters/spray bottles to keep the kids cool! At the end of the hour, another volunteer will record how many laps each child completed! You are more than welcome to come cheer us on....bring your cameras!
May 18th-Volunteer Tea! You all have done much to make our year successful! Whether you have helped in our classroom, drove on a field trip, donated time or supplies to our class parties, volunteered in the library/Wednesday envelopes/Project Cornerstone etc...please join us in the cafeteria on Wednesday, the 18th at 10:00am! It’s a regular day (early birds/late birds)!
May 18th-Snail Day! We have been busy with our last science unit-Animals 2x2. We’ve been studying worms, goldfish and guppies and lastly...snails! We’ll are planning our own Snail Day! Children will rotate through 4 (very fun!) stations to learn more about snails! If you like to come and join us-please let me know! You’ll be in charge of facilitating a station-no worries, I’ll have direction cards at each station! It’s such a fun day, let me know if you’d like to join us! More information on exact times to come!
MAY 31ST-JUNE 7 ARE ALL EARLY DAYS
May 31st-Van Meter Variety Show! Children in the 3-5th grade will be putting on a variety show! Acts include singing, dancing, skits, stand up comedy etc. It’s such a fun way to see the many talents of the children at our school! Our variety show will take place at the Calvary Church auditorium. EARLY DAY OF ALL KINDERS!
June 1st-Fun and Field Day! A long time tradition at Van Meter and a great way to celebrate the end of another fabulous year! Each child will be placed on a team. Kinders are buddied up with their big buddies as well as other 1st-5th graders. Each team will rotate through 20 activities out of the field. The activities include sack races, limbo, frisbee toss, soccer dribbling, rest stops and more! Again, be sure to wear comfy clothes and appropriate shoes. Don’t forget your sunscreen before you come to school. The kinders will all be wearing their field trip t-shirts(with their name on it) and a pin indicating what team they are on...just in case! Please look for information on the VM website and in your child’s Wednesday envelope for ways you can get involved! Or...just come and hang out! EARLY DAY FOR ALL KINDERS!
June 6th-Beach Day! We’ll be having our very own kinder fun in the sun day! The plan is to join the others VM kinders out on the field and enjoy some water play! If you have a fun sprinkler toy or something the kinders might enjoy, let me know! Students should wear their bath suits under their clothes and bring a towel! Don’t forget to sunscreen up before you come to school!
June 7th-Last Day of School! Let’s celebrate at the park! Please come to school at 9:00am to check in with me and grab your t-shirt! You can then head straight Oak Meadow park-the airplane park! At the park, we will enjoy play time on the play structure, snacks and beverages and games! After the games, we’ll say goodbye! Parents...we hope you can all join us! If you are not able to make it, please let me know and I’ll arrange for a ride to and from the park for your child. MEET AT SCHOOL AT 9:00AM!
April 25th This week in Room 1...
Wow! There are only 30 days of school left! I cannot believe it! And it's a very busy 30 days. Our shool organizes some very fun all school activities to celebrate the end of the year. It can be a lot to keep track of so be sure to check our website about upcoming events and schedule changes! I thought I'd give you a heads up about upcoming events so you can get them on your calendars at home!
May 3rd--Open House 7:00pm EARLY DAY FOR ALL KINDERS
May 7th--Field trip to LG History Museum EARLY DAY!
May 11th--Spa Day! EARLY DAY! Moms...see you at 10:30am!
May 16th--Bulldog Stampede
May 18th--Volunteer Tea 10-10:30am in the cafe. Regular E/L day!
May 28th--Memorial Day NO SCHOOL!
May 31st--Variety Show! EARLY DAY!
June 1st--Fun and Field Day! EARLY DAY!
June 6th--Kindergarten Beach Day! EARLY DAY!
June 7th--Last Day of School! Field Trip to Vasona Park:)
I'll be sending more information with details of some of these days!
***** MAY 30TH-JUNE 7TH are early days! Thank you so much for you flexibility on the schedule changes. There are so many exciting all school activities and we'd hate for the late birds to miss the fun! Clubhouse is always a great backup option if you need it:)
April 13th This week in Room 1...
What a fun day we had today! We came decked out in our Giants gear to celebrate the first home game! We've got spirit! Due to the rain, we will have to postpone our wiffel ball game with our big buddies:( Despite the weather, we had a great day making our own smoothies! Children each had a turn to create their own tasty blend! What fun!
Our current math unit focuses on addition, subtraction and the number system. This unit develops ideas about counting and quantity, comparison, composition of number and operations of addition and subtraction. This unit also asks children to begin decomposing numbers. One way we are exploring this skills is using the score of the Giants game. For example, last night the Giants played the Rockies and there was a combined score of 6 runs. The children use their fingers, mental math skills and unifix cubes to come up with all the possible scores of the game as I record them. Was the score 4+2, 2+4, 5+1,1+5 etc. We have so much fun not only developeing these mathematical skills but cheering on the Giants as well. In addition, we are tallying the Giants wins and loses!
Our language arts and writing time are focused on complete sentences, descriptive language and basic story telling! I encourage you to allow your child to explore the writing process at home as well! Write a lettter to a pen pal or the grocery list or practice sight words outside with chalk!
Twice a week we are doing literacy centers! During this time, students are completing daily word work and then choosing an independent activity (Raz-Kids or Starfall on the computers, playdough spelling, handwriting practice, silent reading etc.) As the children are working indpendently, I am pulling a small group to work with me on reading skills!
We have also begun our last science unit-Animals 2x2! Through observation we'll be learning about worms, sow bugs, goldfish and guppies and snails!
I hope you all have a wonderful spring break! I'm heading to Chico and Folsom for the beginning of the week to see my niece and then off to Aptos for a little relaxation on the beach! Hope you all are finding a way or some time to catch your breath this week as well! Enjoy and see you on April 23rd!
We've got spirit! Go Giants
March 25th This week in Room 1...
Thank you all so much for the birthday wishes and celebration! The cards, the gifts, the hugs, the cupcakes and excitement...have filled my heart to the brim! Thank you!
This week we:
- continued our focus on vowels and teen numbers through games as well as pencil and paper work
- practiced our sight words! Ask your child about some of the fun ways we've been practicing!
- explored addition and subtraction
- finished our first chapter book, Charlie and Chocolate Factory. We are now reading Charolette's Web! I hope you are finding some great books to read at home too!
- focused on writing more complex sentences in Writer's Workshop. We've also be working hard to write MORE sentences during writing time.
We attended a science fair assembly! It really got our science experimentation juices flowing! It's certainly not mandatory, but if you would like to do a science project with your child at home, the deadline to sign up is March 28th. The science fair is April 25-27th.
Here are a couple of websites that might help you
http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/experiments.htmle Kids
http://www.education.com/activity/kindergarten/science/
Our school is having a fundraiser this Wednesday called Jump for the Los Gatos Library. This is a fundraiser where children get pledges and collect money based on how long they can jump rope. This really isn't a skill that many kindergarteners have mastered and in the years passed we have found it creates far more tears of frusturation than anything else....so kindergarteners will be sitting this out. If you would like to donate to the Los Gatos Library check out our school website.
March 21st This week in Room 1...
Thank you all SO MUCH for coming to our conference last week. I am so proud of all the children and their academic, as well as their social and emotional development. I hope you are too!
We had a blast on St. Patricks Day! Mrs. Adona loves to share her Irish spirit! Here are some of the activities from our day...
Write the Room!
Lucky Charm Sort!
We receive a note from a leprachuan about a missing hat. We made new ones for him and left them out so he could pick a new one for his journey back to Ireland! When we got to school...He had performed a bit of magic on our hats! They shrunk!
We even bumped into Mrs. Adona while she was on a leprachaun hunt!
March 7th This week in Room 1....
We had so much fun on Friday celebrating Dr. Suess’ birthday and Community Read-In! Our reader was Scott Savage from the Los Gatos Police Dept.! “ A real police officer and hero!” Mr. Savage discussed his love of reading and how he uses reading at his job. I wish I could have captured the excitement and awe on the kid’s face when he introduced himself. Priceless!
As I continue to meet with each child one on one for assessments, the students are working independently on literacy stations, writers workshop and math! We’ve also be enjoying art lesson by Ms. Joanna and Mrs. Kotchian this week as well.
Conference week is next week! March 12-16th! IT’S AN EARLY DAY FOR ALL KINDERS ALL WEEK! I will also be emailing you today to confirm our conference time. Please let me know as soon as possible if that time does not work! I’m looking forward to sharing with you all the progress your children are making!
Click this link to view our March calendar
Feb. 29th This week in Room 1....
I hope you all had a wonderful week off! I loved seeing all the smiling faces Monday morning!
This week, our math focused on exploring and learning new vocabulary with 3-D shapes! Mrs. Archer joined us on Wednesday for a very fun science lesson! In science, we discovered that wood floats! After reading Curious George Rides a Bike, we wondered if a boat made of paper would float. We made our own predictions here in class and tried it out-fortunately Curious George can swim! Today, your child brought home the directions to make another boat at home! Have fun!
On Tuesday, we met Ms. Joanna from the San Jose Museum of Art! The students studied a San Franciscan sculpture by Joan Brown and created their own using crayons and stickers.
This week I introduced our new literacy centers. The children will have time to explore each one this week and the following week. The students will be rotating through these stations, as well as a guided reading station with me, weekly!
Here are a few pictures:
Handwriting
Practicing our sight words with magnetic letters
Stamping sight words with playdough
ABC puzzles
www.starfall on computers
Writers Workshop
Reminders
Parent Conferences! EARLY DAY FOR ALL KINDERS ALL WEEK!
I'm gearing for parent conferences! During the next two weeks I'll be assessing your child in order to give you the most update to information! Our conference should last about 15 minutes and they will take place here in Room 1. A yellow piece of paper came home with your child today about our conference time preferences. Please fill it out and return it to me as soon as possible. I have also uploaded a copy under Files to Download on the sidebar.
Residency Forms!
You should all be receiving residency forms in the mail.I have created an envelope on the small bulletin board just inside the door-please turn them in there!
Feb. 15th
We could feel the love! Valentines Day was a total hit! We celebrated with a waffle bar(delicious!), played a game called Steal My Heart with conversation hearts and chopsticks, made bookmarks and necklaces and passed out our valentines! Truly, the best part was watching the excitement of the children as they tucked their valentines into classmates' bags! We also wrote a darling book about love! Please come in and read it-so sweet!
We continue to focus on shapes in math. Our study will shift from 2-D to 3-D shapes after our break. We finished our frist art masterpiece with Mrs. Kotchian! We learned about different types of lines and used liquid watercolors to paint! They turned about beautiful!
REMINDERS FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK!
Thursday(16th) Field Trip to CTC Play Cinderella! LATE DAY(9:30-1:30) FOR ALL KINDERS. Please don't forget your booster seats and a lunch.
Presidents Holiday Week (20-24th) NO SCHOOL! Have fun!
Feb. 8th This week in Room 1...
The children created the most beautiful art using oil pastels and liquidwater colors. They are hanging in our windows...come take a peek!
In language arts, our focus has been on vowel letter sounds. We been practining the long vowel sounds, the correct lowercase letter formation and building CVC words with vowels.
We've been enjoying creating 2-D shapes with geoboards and rubberbands as well as playdough. Our discussions are centered around comparing the number of sides a shape has as well as other attributes. We'll be exploring 3-D shapes next week.
On Monday, the students took their second wrtiting assessment. I'm so proud of them! I'll be sharing these with you at conferences in March. I'll also be using these assessments to create mini lessons for each child.
On Wednesday, we welcomed Mrs. Kotchian! She is a visiting artist (funded by LGEF) and we are so lucky to have her! She'll be with us for an hour every Wednesday( for 4 weeks). Our art lesson today was about differnent types of lines. We'll be water coloring next week. Ask your kindergartner about the different types of lines they learned today! We love to practice these lines on each other's backs...and it feels good too!
We are looking forward to our field trip on Friday to the LG Museum! EARLY DAY FOR ALL KINDERS! Please don't forget your booster
seats!
Making shapes with Geoboards!
Making the "world's biggest triangle ever" with playdough!
Feb. 1st This week in Room 1...
We had so much fun celebrating the 100th day of school today! We stamped 100 stamps, drew pictures of what we'll look like at 100 years(yikes!) and made 100 piece trail mix-delicious!
We also attended a preview of the Van Meter school play-Pinnochio! The play will be running Feb. 10-12th. Get your tickets in the school office our check the Van Meter website! Looks like another fabulous production! Don't miss out!
We have begun a new math unit-Geometry! This unit develops ideas about 2-D and 3-D shapes-their characteristics and attributes and the relationship between them, as well as ways to describe and name them and to compose and decompose them. Our focus in language arts, continues to be identifying different parts of a story (beginning, middle and end) setting, character development and conflict and resolution. We've also been identifying non fiction and fiction stories. During Writers Workshop, children continue to work on creating a sentence with a capital at the beginning, stretching out tricky words, correctly spell sight words using the word wall, remembering to put spaces between each word and punctuation! We LOVE when Mrs. Archer comes to join us for science! Today, we explored paper and water! The children are LOVING reading our chapter book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! Charlie just found the golden ticket!
Click this link for our class February calendar!
We needs lots of volunteers for the month of February! Please email me if you are available to help out!
| February | Events and Times |
| 10th | We need drivers for our LG Museum field trip! We'll leave VM at 8:30am and return about 10:30am. EARLY DAY FOR ALL KINDERS |
| 14th | Valentines Day party! We need a few volunteers for our party from 8:10-9:30ish. EARLY DAY FOR ALL KINDERS |
| 16th | We need drivers for our CTC play field trip! We'll leave VM at 10:30 am and return about 12:30pm. LATE DAY FOR ALL KINDERS |
January 25th This week in Room 1...
We had so much fun celebrating Chinese New Year! The rain held out and we were able to parade through the halls of the school with our dragon puppets and make as much noise with musical instruments as possible! So fun!...and my ears are still ringing! Gung Hay Fat Choy!
We are wrapping up our Unit 4 in math and I will be spending the next few days assessing students. This unit focused on: 1. measuring and counting 2. Counting some, Counting more 3. Changing Quantities and 4. Ways to Make Numbers. As always, many of our math lessons are very hands on. Many students are struggling with number formation. I hope you will find the link (on the left hand side) helpful for at home practice-on a chalkboard board/white board, sidewalk chalk, markers, stick in the dirt or pencil and paper are all fun ways to practice!
We had so much fun this week reading The Mitten by Jan Brett and putting on our own play! Have your child perform it for you!
I have been so impressed with the students' progress in Writers Workshop lately! We will be doing a mid year assessment in the next few weeks that I will be sharing with you at spring conferences. I'm noticing a lot of students working hard to remember spaces between all of their words and great progress with stretching out their words! Way to go Room !:)
Mrs. Archer, our science mentor, joined us on Wendesday to help us with our next science investigation-paper! We discussed different types of paper and compared them by using pencil, markers and crayons to try to write on them! Have your kindergarten tell you more! They brought home with paper pieces today!
Next Wednesday, Feb. 1st is the 100th Day of School!
We'll be doing some fun activities to celebrate! There will be four stations. If you would like to help run a station (9am-10am)... please let me know!
Contact Taira Kenny
Room 1
Email: tkenney@lgusd.k12.ca.us
Phone:408-335-2251
Files to Download
Everything you need to know about Room 1!
Curriculum Links
teacher passcode: tkenneya
Handwriting Without Tears letter formation-capitals
Handwriting Without Tears letter formation-lowercase
Handwriting Without Tears number formation
Kinder Podcasts
Handwriting Without Tears Demonstration
Proper Pencil Grip Demonstration