Our First Week of Kindergarten

After you enjoyed your Boo Hoo Breakfast, our day started with a WOW assembly held in the dining room, featuring The KTG Musical Entertainment group. It was awesome and we all totally enjoyed it.
Most of Monday was spent teaching rituals and routines, practicing a Fire Drill, Tornado Drill and touring the school. On Tuesday, we started our day with our Skills Block. During this time all the children practice reading and sounding out each other’s name along with a Letter Name and Sound song. During Reader's Workshop we heard and "read" Nursery Rhymes and other poems.
During our Writer’s Workshop Mrs. Meissner read the story The Night before Kindergarten by Natasha Wing. The students were asked to think about what they did the night before Kindergarten. After turning and talking with each other, the students were asked to go to the tables and draw and write about what they did the night before Kindergarten. The children were also introduced to our “Star Books”, Caps for Sale, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and Where the Wild Things Are. The children will hear these books several times this month.
After reading these books the children were asked to retell their favorite part with pictures and words. The students shared their work front and center in the “Share Chair”
In Math Workshop the children were able to explore with our manipulatives.
Each child used interlocking cubes to count out the letters in their name. We discussed and created patterns with our colored shapes. Calendar Math was also introduced. We could hardly wait to see what next week will be like. Thank you for entrusting your children to us.

Awesome Orientation!

Welcome to Kindergarten!
It was such a pleasure to meet so many of you at Orientation on Friday! We are looking forward to getting to know your child very well in the coming months. We will be communicating often in these first few days and weeks, as there is so much new business to take care of. Please make sure you have filled out and returned ALL forms that were sent home with your orientation packet. It is very important for us to have the information for our classroom records and for the school’s records.
If you have any questions please email or jot us a note in your child’s Home-School Folder. We look forward to an exciting year! :)

Kindergarten Supply List 2009-2010

Each Kindergartner should bring the following items to school:
Every student needs a backpack (No rolling backpacks - space limitations)
• Please purchase plain-colored materials (no designs)
• Please do NOT label individual items with your child’s name (except art shirt)
Supplies
• 2 plain (solid colored) spiral notebooks (1 subject; wide ruled)
• 4 plain (solid colored) duotang folders with prongs and pockets on each side
• 1 pack of Crayola markers
• 1 pack of Crayola colored pencils
• 1 box of 24 Crayola crayons
• 3 glue sticks – boys
• 1 large liquid glue - girls
• 1 package of gallon-sized Ziploc bags – girls
• 1 package sandwich-sized Ziploc baggies – boys
• 1 package of copy paper
• 2 packages of baby wipes
• 1 oversized shirt for art (old shirt from Mom or Dad will work)
• 1 bottle of liquid soap
• 1 box of tissues
• 1 bottle of waterless hand sanitizer
• 2 PRIMARY composition journals by Mead

Welcome to Kindergarten

Welcome to Mrs. Lankford and Mrs. Meissner’s new Kindergarten classroom blog. Our school theme this year is "Orchestrating a Symphony of Student Success." The year will be about experiencing life through the moves of music. Kindergarten will keep it simple as our little ones boot scoot and boogie into school on a Country beat.
We look forward to sharing with ya’ll our weekly experiences!


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Field Day at Chets Creek Elementary

Reminders/Important Information:
• Our Wii Field Day for the 2nd Grade team will be on Tuesday, June 2nd from 9:30 – 11:30. Please apply sunscreen BEFORE your child gets to school, and have him/her wear sneakers. We will be wearing our red field day t-shirts.
• At 11:45, lunch will be provided in the pavilion. Hotdogs, chips, cookies, and juice/water will be served. Please have your child bring a bagged lunch if they do not wish to eat what is on the menu.
If you would be able to volunteer for Field Day, we would greatly appreciate it! But please be reminded, siblings are not able to attend due to our school policy. Please email, call, or write a note in your child’s planner if you are able to join us. 
• Our last Awards Ceremony will also be on Tuesday, June 2nd @ 2:15 in our classroom.
• Thank you for all your help and support this year. Have a great summer. 

Chets Creek PTA

ANNOUNCNG A NEW WEBSITE!!
Chets Creek PTA has sponsored 'supportchetscreek.com' for parents, friends and neighbors to use when shopping on the internet. Businesses under this website, a branch of 'shoptoearn', will donate a percentage of your sale back to the school. Many popular businesses are connected with this on-line shopping mall, so please remember to use 'supportchetscreek.com' when looking for on-line merchandise! If you have any question how to use the site, please contact Pam Witt @ 821-8172.

Are You Ready For 3rd Grade?

Things that your child should know before entering 3rd grade:
1. Combinations of 10 (The student should fluently know the entire fact family for each combination such as… 3+7=10 7+3=10 10-7=3 10-3=7)

2. Combinations of 20 (The student should fluently know the entire fact family for each combination such as… 12+8=20 8+12=20 20-8=12 20-12=8)

3. Combinations of 100 (The student should fluently know the entire fact family for each combination such as… 40+60=100 60+40=100 100-40=60 100-60=40)

4. Skip counting by 2s, 5s, 10s, 25s (up to 100)

5. Time to the hour, half-hour, quarter-hour, 5 minutes

6. Elapsed Time (ex: Emily started baking cookies at 2:30. She finished baking cookies at 4:15. How long did she bake cookies for?)

7. Knows the value of coins and knows how to add coins

8. Finding change for items purchased (Ex: If Bob bought a game for $3.20 and he gave the cashier $5.00 how much change would he get?)

Extra things that you could help your child work on before entering 3rd grade:
1. Skip counting by 3s, 4s, 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s, 15s (up to 100) (also known as “multiples”)

2. Strategies for adding 9 quickly (ex: 45+9 is like 45 +10=55(-1)=54 )

Finding Doubles

Miss. Sasso’s first grade class shared some of their strategies with us for finding doubles during our afternoon Math workshop. We played a game called Finding Doubles. The object of the game was to find doubles, doubles plus one and doubles minus one. Every first grader was paired with a second grader. I’m sad to report that Miss. Sasso’s first graders beat some of my second graders. I’m sure the rain all week affected their thinking skills.  It was a fun learning experience for all the students. Thank you Miss Sasso for sharing!

Guest Readers

Thank you to our BUDs Club Readers. Mr. Duncan, Mr. Swanson and Mr. Robinson who stopped by to read to our students. The children loved it!
Enjoy our artwork and our May bulletin board showcasing our “Work Over Time.”
Our field trip to MOCA was also a hit! Thanks again to all our chaperones. We appreciate all you do.

Happy Measuring

For the past couple of weeks our classes have been working in the Math Investigations unit How Long? How Far? In this unit we have been learning about measuring the lengths of different objects and finding the lengths of paths. The students used a variety of materials, such as chairs, cubes, pencils, their bodies and crayons, as measuring tools to measure and compare lengths. The students applied their knowledge of numbers to problems about combining and comparing as they solved activities about measurements.
In How Far Can You Jump? The students used several strategies to find the difference between their longest and shortest jumps. The students did three jumps. A frog jump, a rabbit jump and a kid jump. Most of the kid jumps was the longest and the frog jumps were the shortest.
In the activity Measuring our Classroom, some of their strategies were cleaver yet hilarious! We had lots of laughs while learning about measurements.
Please involve your child in measuring activities~ hobbies like sewing or carpentry are great ways. Have a scavenger hunt at home. Ask your child to find things that are about as long as different objects. Compare the heights of family members. Establish a place where heights can be marked off and compared. Make it fun!
In Science our caterpillars have arrived! With the help of Ms. Ossi we have secured all of them in containers to hopefully grow into beautiful butterflies.
We observed soil samples to find similarities and differences. We ended the week with a Mud pie Mystery. Our hypothesis: which soil sample will retain (hold) the most water?
Enjoy these pictures from our activities and our artwork in our hallway.