Welcome Back!

Even though it was a short week, the days after a vacation always seem to be VERY productive.  We hit the ground running with new work in both literacy and math. 


This week, we learned the importance of being able to "retell" a story that we've read.  We should start at the beginning, tell what happened in order, and include all of the details that we remember.  In order to practice this skill, we now have some little stuffed friends to help.  After all, it's a little strange to retell a story to YOURSELF!  Our retell buddies come out during Readers' Workshop time.  They are very good listeners and they give us plenty of opportunity to practice this important skill. 

So glad I hung onto my son's old Beanie Baby collection!  (Shhhhh...)

In math this week, we started working with numbers that are "ten and some more."  The teen numbers tend to be very tricky for kindergarteners, primarily because their names do not have a pattern like numbers in the other decades.   We are working on counting and writing teen numbers as well as making different combinations to ten.  Next week, some VERY special visitors will be in room 3 to help us learn more about teen numbers. 

On Wednesday, we started our morning with some movement!  Sarah Cover from Urban Dance Company (and Curtis, Quincy, and Viv's mom...) did some movement activities with ALL of the kindergarteners!  We enjoyed it so much that we've asked her to come back!  We will have some movement time with Sarah for the next five or six weeks.  Thanks Sarah!

QUOTE of the WEEK: 

"I can dance.  I don't even have to tell my body what to do. 

It just DOES it."