Tuesday December 14th, 2010

Just a few mid-week reminders...
-  The Kindergarten and Preschool Christmas Pageant is this Friday, December 17th at 11:00 in the church.  We hope that you all will be able to join us!
-  Kindergarten will be going out for recess anytime the outdoor temperature is 25 degrees or higher, so please make sure that your child has his/her boots, snow pants, coat, gloves, hat, etc. everyday.
-  Please also make sure that your child packs regular shoes to wear during the school day.  Wet boots create quite a mess on our carpet.
-  Kindergarten will be going to the Museum of Science and Industry on Monday, December 20th.  Thank you to everyone who volunteered to join us.  The chaperones for this field trip will be:
      -  Arturo Barrera
      -  Dr. Taylor
      -  Romeo Vasquez
      -  Eonju Hwang
Please be at school at 9:00A.M. Thanks!
-  Also on Monday, the Kindergarten will be having a Christmas Around the World Feast when they return from the field trip.  Please do not send a lunch with your child on this day.
-  The last day of school before Christmas Break is next Wednesday, December 22nd.  Students will be allowed to dress in Christmas finery for Brunch With Santa.  Dismissal will be at 11:30A.M. and aftercare will not be offered.

Friday December 10th, 2010

Greetings from Mexico!  It's the latest stop on Room 7's trip around the world!  So far this week we have been to France to celebrate St. Nicholas Day, Italy to learn about their tradition of La Befana and Mexico to learn about Las Posadas.  Yesterday Mr. and Mrs. Rivera, the parents of Isabella from Room 8, came to speak to the Kindergarten classes about their Christmas traditions in Mexico.  The students reenacted Las Posadas and participated in the piñata tradition.  Today we will be finishing our tour of Mexico and learn about Poinsettia plants.

When we have not been busy traveling around the world this week; we have been very busy finishing Topic 7: Geometry in our math series.  On Thursday we started talking about geometric figures including cubes, spheres, cones, cylinders and rectangular prisms.  Next week we will start Topic 8: Fractions and Ordinals. 

Next Friday the Kindergarten classes and preschool classes will be putting on their Christmas Nativity Pageant.  All are invited to attend!  It will be at 11:00 A.M. in the church.

Miss Williams, the art teacher, demonstrating the latest Christmas project!

Hard at work during Art Class!



A video from Thanksgiving that we hope you will enjoy!



Thursday December 2nd, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving!  We hope that everyone had a wonderful and safe holiday!


This week in Kindergarten, we have been chasing a naughty Gingerbread Baby!  On Monday, we read the book, The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett.  We talked about the characters, setting, ending and refrain.  Then as a class, we measured and mixed our own gingerbread cookie.  When we went back to get him after recess, our gingerbread man was gone!  All week he has been spotted around school and we are working hard to catch him.  We have been reading all the literature available on gingerbread people in order to decide which tactic is the most effective.  On Tuesday we read The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth and took notes on the character, setting, ending and refrain.  On Wednesday we read The Sticky Cheese Man by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith and compared that story with The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett.  On Thursday we read The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst and started to make a plan to catch our own Gingerbread Baby.  On Friday we hope to catch him and finally get a taste of that ginger we have smelled all week!  We will also be taking a look at all the different story endings and writing our own.

This week in Math, we have started Topic 7: Geometry.  So far, we have discussed parallelograms, trapezoids, hexagons, triangles, squares, circles and rectangles.  There will be extra homework coming home next week involving each student bringing in a shape from home; please on the lookout for that extra assignment!

Next week we will start "traveling" around the world studying the different holiday celebrations in different countries.  This unit will take 2 weeks as we travel to France, Italy, Sweden, Israel, India, and Mexico and back to Chicago to sample the holiday traditions of each country.  If you have anything that you would like to add to this unit, please let me know.  As a culminating activity, we will be visiting the Museum of Science and Industry on Monday December 20th to visit their exhibit "Christmas Around the World and Holidays of Light".  A permission slip for this field trip will be going home today.  Please have it back to us by Friday December 10th.  Thanks!

Reminders
-  Family Mass is this Sunday December 5th at 8:30 A.M.  I hope to see everyone there!
-  The Christmas Pageant for Kindergarten and Preschool will be Friday December 17th at 11:00 in the church.  We will be talking more about this as it gets closer.
-  The last day of school before Christmas Break will be Wednesday December 22nd. 

Requests
-  We are in need of both gallon and sandwich sized baggies

Thanks so much!

Reminders!

The Kindergarten classes will be attending a field trip on Thursday morning to Strack & Van Til Supermarket in connection with our Healthy Eating Unit.  Students will be returning in time for lunch so please pack one as per usual.  Students are also asked to wear their uniforms as well.

Thank you to everyone who signed up to come with us.  Chaperones, please be at school by 9:00.  The chaperones for this field trip will be:
-  Sam Kelly
-  Jenny McGinn
-  Blaga Seng

Also, there is a mass this Wednesday at 9:15 to celebrate Barbara Smith, the founder of Old St. Mary's School.  Everyone is welcome to attend and we ask that each student bring in a nonperishable food item for the food pantry on this day.

Thanks!

Halloween in Room 7!

Kindergarten Room 7
Halloween 2010

Pippy Longstocking trying to win at Pin the Broom on the Witch!

Watch out for the Mummy Bride!

Spiderman playing pin the broom on the witch!

Luigi wrapping Spidergirl in the Mummy Race!

Friday November 5th, 2010

It's Friday!  The week started off a little shaky with everyone being a little tired after all the Halloween festivities.  We all must have gotten extra sleep Monday night because Tuesday everyone was raring to go.  Thank you to everyone who had a hand in our Halloween celebration last Friday, the students really enjoyed themselves.  Special thanks to Mrs. Broderick, our awesome room mom, and Mrs. McGinn for coming in and helping out.

We just finished up our first week of a two week unit on Autumn Changes.  We have spent time talking about the seasons; specifically what happens during the fall.  We read the book, "Fletcher and the Falling Leaves" and wrote about our favorite change of the fall.  Next week we will taking a closer look at specific trees and how and why their leaves change with the seasons.

Also this week we read a story from our Storytown basal series, "What Will Mommy Do When I'm at School" and talked about predictions.  Then the class predicted what their moms do when THEY are at school.  Some responses were very true to life, "I think that my mom will go be an accountant when I'm at school" while others were not, "I think that my mom will sit and eat Reese's peanut butter cups when I'm at school."  We will continue to focus on making predictions over the next few weeks.

In Writer's Workshop, we are getting ready to pick a piece to "Fix Up, Fancy Up" and publish.  The class is very excited about the multiple page stories they have been telling lately and I cannot wait to see what they pick as their final pieces.

Reminders
-  Parent- Teacher conferences are next Friday, November 12th.  A sign-up sheet is going home in the Brown Envelope today.  Please fill in your preference for a conference time and return on Monday.
-  Don't forget to order your pies from Market Day!  The last day to do so is next Friday, November 12th.  Old St. Mary's receives 45% of the cost of every pie sold and we are hoping to use that money to go towards new magazine subscriptions for our classrooms.  Also the classroom that sells the most pies will win a prize! 
-  Family Mass is this Sunday, November 7th at 8:30.  This Sunday is also the start of Daylight Savings, lucky us, so mass is really at 9:30 on Sunday morning!  I hope to see everyone there!
-  A permission slip is going home today for a short field trip to Strack & Van Til Supermarket as a part of our Healthy Eating unit in two weeks.  Please sign and return by Monday.

Requests
-  Thank you to all the families that have been sending in items as they are requested, we all appreciate it so much.  We are still in need of
      -  glue sticks
      -  disinfecting wipes

Coming soon...pictures from the Halloween party!

Wednesday October 27th, 2010

We finished our pumpkin unit this Monday with a Pumpkin Party!  We carved a pumpkin, scooped the seeds and counted them.  As a class, the students decided what type of face to carve into our Jack-O-Lantern and helped to sketch the model.  We also sampled baked pumpkin seeds and pumpkin muffins.  If you are interested in the recipe for these (completely nut-free!) muffins, I will be posting it as soon as I can find where I put it.

This week we will be doing a unit on bats and echolocation.  We will be including what bats eat, where they live and how they use echolocation in their everyday lives.  We read the book, Stella Luna by Janell Cannon, and talked about fiction versus non-fiction.  The students loved comparing bats with birds and talking animals with non-talking animals.  Also this week we are focusing on numbers 6,7, 8 and 9 in math and have started multiple page booklets in Writer's Workshop.  It has been challenging stretching our stories out, but so far we love writing books instead of summaries. 

On Friday, Kindergarten will be celebrating Halloween with a Halloween parade in the morning (please come, all parents are invited!) and a short party in the afternoon.  Students are invited to wear their costumes to school (please change at home) without masks or weapons.  I can't wait to see all the costumes!  So far Miss Cahill and Miss Danielle have both managed to keep their costumes a secret...

Important Date
October 29th:  OSM Halloween/ End of the First Quarter
November 1st:  All Saints' Day Liturgy 9:30AM
November 7th:  Family Mass 8:30AM
November 12th:  11:30 Dismissal for all, Parent-Teacher Conferences

Requests
We are in need of the following items...
- glue sticks
- disinfecting wipes

Friday October 15th, 2010

REMINDER

This year in Kindergarten we are fortunate enough to have both a snacktime and a lunchtime.  Different from preschool, in Kindergarten students are responsible for providing his or her own snack.  As much as we all would love to have cookies and fruit snacks each day for snack, unfortunately those are not part of the school recommended snacks.  Here is a list (taken from the handbook) of healthy snack examples:

Fruit
Graham crackers
Pretzels
Raisins
Cheese and Crackers
Celery and Peanut Butter/Cheese
Goldfish
Yogurt

Thanks for all your help in this matter!

Thursday October 14th, 2010

Happy Pumpkin Week!  This week and next we will be using our Pumpkin Unit to talk about fall, seasons, measurement, poetry, counting, color mixing and the growing cycle.  We have also been busy learning about syllables.  This is a difficult concept so feel free to practice at home with your child.  In Math we have been working with the numbers zero through five.  This may sound simple, but it's the foundation for counting.  As a part of this topic we also spend time making the different numbers.  This is very imporant for knowing that if you have 3 apples and then finding 2 more gives you 5 apples all together is the very beginning stages of addition and subtraction.

Requests
-  We are in need of a few items, if you can help us out we would really appreciate it:
    -  Old Magazines (we use these a lot to search for words and letters)
    -  Disinfecting wipes

Important Dates
October 15th:  Scholastic Orders Due
October 20th:  Picture Day
October 29th:  School Halloween Celebration

Monday October 4th, 2010

It's a brand new month...and BRRRR it's getting cold out there.  Make sure that you send your child to school each day with appropriate outdoor gear.  We use our outdoor space at every opportunity and I'd hate for anyone to be cold.

We finished up our Apple Unit last week with an apple-tastic Friday!  We had an apple taste test and we made our very own applesauce!  Our apple taste test helped us get started on the very important concept of graphing; which we will continue using throughout the year.  In case you're wondering, yellow apples won!

This week we started talking about our Five Senses.  Monday afternoon we came up with a set of questions that we would like to answer by the end of the week.  An example of a question we asked is: "How do I taste things?"  By Friday, students will learn the answers to these questions through different science centers and exploratory activities.

We are also continuing our study of rhyming this week.  Our biggest obstacle so far is distinguishing words that rhyme with each other from words that have the same beginning sound.  Looking at the middle and ending sounds is new for Kindergarteners, but we will continue practicing!  Feel free to practice rhyming with your child at home as well.

Celebrity Reader Schedule:

October 8th:  Celia Madera
October 15th:  Sam Kelly
October 22nd:  Jennifer Murphy
November 5th:  Lori Fanning
November 19th:  Jenny McGinn
December 10th:  Matt Broderick

Monday September 27th, 2010

Happy Johnny Appleseed Day!  The Kindergarten took the afternoon to celebrate the legendary John Chapman, best known as Johnny Appleseed, on the day after his birthday.  We thought it fit quite nicely into our Apple Unit.

The Kindergarten classes had a wonderful time at County Line Apple Orchard last week.  Thank you so much to all of the chaperones who were able to join us!

 

We hope that your family enjoyed all the apples that we picked!


Request
  As a part of our Apple Unit, each student needs to bring in an apple by Friday for our apple graph.  In order to ensure that each color of apple is represented in our taste test, we're asking that each student bring in only the type of apple that is assigned to them.  Thanks!

Ang- Fanning: Red Apple
Gollias- Murphy: Green Apple
Santibanez- Wenthen

Wednesday September 15th, 2010

What a week it's been so far!  So many exciting things have been happening!

Tuesday was Kindergarten's first day of gym class!  Coach Fogarty and Miss Morris said that Room 7 was very well behaved on the bus on the way to UIC.  Some of you may have noticed that your child came home with an out of uniform slip on Tuesday afternoon.  The sweatpants that the students wore in preschool are NOT a part of the gym uniform.  The gym uniform pants, shorts and t-shirts (with OSM logo) can be found through Land's End.  Also, students should come to school each Tuesday wearing their gym uniform.  They will continue to wear it all day.  Proper gym shoes are a MUST on Tuesdays.

Field Trip
Both Kindergarten classes will be visiting County Line Orchard next Thursday!  Students will need to bring their lunch in disposable containers and will be allowed to wear play clothes.  Don't forget to check the weather!  Rain or shine we'll be on our way!

Thank you to everyone who volunteered to come with us to the Apple Orchard!  The chaperones for this field trip will be:

Romeo Vasquez
Blaga Seng
Lori Fanning
Sara Broderick
Renee Barrera

Please be at school no later than 9:00 on Thursday and don't forget your lunch!

Announcements
-  This week Miss Danielle and I have been testing the class on their phone number and address.  We were surprised to find that not a single member of the class knew both their home phone number and address.  This is a very important skill for the safety of your child.  Please review this information with him or her at home.
-  Scholastic Book Orders are available both online and in paper form.  The paper forms will not be coming home until October 1st, but online ordering is available any time.  Online Ordering Information:

Web address: scholastic.com/bookclubs
Class Activation Code: H2YDJ


Room 7 Class List 2010-2011

Cole Ang
Ryan Barrera
Charlie Broderick
David Broderick
Allie Fanning
Holly Jo Gollias
Logan Hoang
Cal Kelly
Frank McGinn
Maddy Murphy
Yuki Santibanez
Nori Seng
Elissa Taylor
Emilie Taylor
Mia Vasquez
Grace Wenthen

Week of September 7th to September 10th

What a week!  We had so much to do in such a short amount of time!  Our theme this week was the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.  We used this book as the starting point for many activities; letter sorts, uppercase and lowercase matching games and coconut counting.  We also used Chicka Chicka Boom boom to start our poetry unit.  Each week we will use a different theme poem as a tool for studying rhyming and sight words.  Look for your child's Poetry Binder to come home on Fridays.  Please read that week's poem, then just sign and return!

Our letter of the week this week was "S".  We talked about how it hisses and read special "S" poems.  Ask your child if they can name any words that begin with the "S" sound!

We started using our toolboxes during Writer's Workshop this week!  

We are getting much more used to writing on our own now...

Announcements
-  Gym begins on Tuesday, September 14th!  Please make sure that your child is properly attired in a gym uniform and sneakers.  Any student that is not dressed for gym will not attend gym that day.
-  A sign-up list for Celebrity Reader will be coming home next week.  Please sign-up for a day that is most convenient for you.  Celebrity Reader is on Fridays at 2:15.
-  Math games are coming home on Monday.  Please play the game, sign the sheet and return to school!
-  There are a few peanut and tree nut allergies in our class this year.  Please keep that in mind when you are preparing birthday treats.  Thank you.
-  Thank you so much to everyone who sent in extra supplies!  We are always in need of paper towels and disinfecting wipes.  So if you're ever buying extra, please send them in to us!

The Week of August 30th - September 3rd

We had a wonderful first full week in Kindergarten!  Our letter of the week this week was M.  We did lots of hunting for M's and practiced writing them with our pencils.  We also started Writer's Workshop this week and learned that it's best to write about things that we know.  We would LOVE to write about being princesses, but we don't know anything about princesses.  So it's best to write about us.

We also read the book Do Unto Otters and wrote our Room 7 Classroon Rules.  We wrote them together so that we are all responsible for them.

Our Math chapter this week focused on Sorting.  We did lots of sorting this week, both as a class and in our homework.  You may have noticed that a Math Game went home on Monday.  These games will go home at the start of every chapter.  Just play them with your child, sign it and return to school.  This way we know that you are enjoying our Math chapter as much as we are!

Reminder
-  All homework needs to be done in pencil!  This is what we use to write in school so it's good to practice with it at home too. 

Announcements
-  The Celebrity Reader sheet was lost after Meet and Greet Day.  I apologize for the inconvenience.  Please email me if you remember what day you signed up.  This way I can get an accurate list out to fill up any remaining slots.  Thanks!
-  The class hamster, Hamilton, is available for pet-sitting during breaks and long weekends.  Please let me know if you are at all interested in giving him a temporary home!

Requests
-  We are in need of a few items.  If you could please send any of them in, we would really appreciate it!
      -  disinfecting wipes
      -  paper towels
      -  thin dry erase markers

Thank you so much for making this school year get off to a fantastic start!

Enjoy the long weekend!  See you on Tuesday!

Pictures from the First Week of School

Welcome to Kindergarten!

We have had a very exciting first days of Kindergarten!  It was tough getting used to the all-day schedule without a nap, but in the end we decided that we don't even need one!  We have very much enjoyed exploring our new classroom and getting to know each other and Hamilton, the class hamster.  In addition to all of our getting to know you activities; we also met with our Third Grade reading buddies on Friday.  We will be meeting once a week to read and write together.  It's been a great start to the year and both Miss Daniell and I hope it continues.

Happy Friday!  We can't wait for next week!