Mrs. Vetter's Kindergarten : First 13 Days of Kinder

Welcome to our Kindergarten classroom!

My goal is to share photos of our day-to-day activities with you at home. It's fun to see your Kinders in action and these may even jog your children's memories about what we do all day! ;) Some weeks lend themselves to more photographs while others, I barely take three because I'm running around like a "long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs!"

We have had a VERY busy first 13 days of Kindergarten. These first pictures are of the first three days when the Kinders came in small groups. We practiced using the Promethean board, used the Word Wall, read The Line Up Book and then practiced using some of our math manipulatives, made play-dough to think about precision in measuring, drew pictures about a story to practice re-telling, cut shapes and glued them onto papers to practice scissor use and glue use (!), learned how to use our table materials including putting them away after use, talked about proper pencil grip, talked about classroom jobs and practiced nearly every one of them, practiced using some of our Application Centers (Reading Corner and Block Center), tried out of Kindergarten playground for recess and met all of our Specials' teachers. Quite a big day!

And then... Friday came and we were ALL together. The morning went by in a blur (for me!) but I managed a few pictures in the afternoon.

We have so fortunate to have so many different manipulatives in our classroom. Exploring their uses is a great strengthen exercise for those Kinders' fine motor skills. We also tie in math or language arts much of the time... spelling and/or creating numbers or number sets.

Another important tool that we use frequently is the white board. The kids learned the routine for collecting their materials as well as putting them away at the end of use. We also discussed expectations for using the dry erase markers. We practiced writing on the boards together.

Oh, these monkey bars! I am sure that you have seen the blisters and calluses!

We had our first trip to the computer lab and it was a success. Everyone was able to use Pixie! We practiced drawing and painting with a mouse (no touch screens in here!). We were so appreciative to have Mrs. Sell, our school IT, in the lab with us.

Another important skill that we have begun practicing is Reading to Self. The Kinders will build their stamina in order to do this "independently." I check out about 30 books from the public library every other week or so to keep this going ;) They did a great job with their first four or five readings.

One of the first benchmarks for our Kinder Mathematicians is to build a set given a specific number. We had great fun with this using connecting cubes and showing our sets on our head, balanced on our nose, stuck on our thumbs, teetering on our knees, behind our ears...

Our Student of the Day routine in the mornings is a great way for the Kinders to get to know one another and learn about our new friends. I am proud of the kids in regard to their patience and understanding that we have 21 kids and therefore 21 days of SOTD... someone gets to be first and someone gets to be last ;)