Tuesday...

I decided not to call it a terrific Tuesday, because it was an odd kind of day in Kindergarten today. Maybe there is a change in weather coming, but we were extra noisy, some of the children were bothering other children, and then we had a frustrating Amazing Word for the week. The Amazing words are: dud, fascinating, pirates, perfect, proper and signals. The teacher's manual gives me definitions to discuss with the children related to how they are applied in the story for the week. The definition for 'dud' was someone that doesn't want to play along. The picture to help them understand was two friends outside a window with a soccer ball and one boy inside playing blocks. We talked about how that word is one of our Amazing Words, but that I do not like it for two reasons."

1. Because some people like to play or do things alone and if they are polite about saying 'No Thank you" when someone asks them to play, then it's OK to do something different. There also might be a good reason he couldn't play or didn't want to play

2. Because calling someone a 'dud' is namecalling and is not respectful. In fact, one of our Manners of the week is to make sure we do not put down other people or ourselves. Another manner reminds us to treat others the way you want to be treated and none of the children wanted to be called a 'dud' after they learned what it meant. One student raised his hand at the end of this discussion and politely asked, "Then why do you have to teach it to us, teacher?" Good question! I explained that it was in the story we were reading and they might hear it in other places or other ways. Plus it's always good to learn what words mean so we can choose to use or not use them appropriately. The reason for these challenging AMAZING WORDS in this reading series is that they increase each student's background knowledge and speaking/listening vocabularies. And research shows that good readers have larger vocabularies and extensive background experiences to apply to what they read.

Anyway, the big book this week is a wonderful story about two trucks that are having fun smashing and crashing and keep running away from a scary shadow of a huge vehicle. As they encounter different friends like a cement truck, they encourage the friends to help them smash and crash. When one of them doesn't want to they call him a 'dud." We reiterated the earlier discussion which reinforced that we should not call people 'duds'. It ends up that the scary vehicle is a wrecking ball truck that wants them to come help him smash and crash a building down!

Other things we did today are practice writing both upper and lower case Mm's, starting the capital one at the top line and going down, and starting the lower case 'm' in the middle going down, up and making two humps and then a monkey tail! We had great show-n-tells and one involved taped on mustaches! Elias, Ella, Emma, Ethyn and Erica get to bring an "m" show and tell on Wednesday! In Math we reviewed patterns by having each child draw a simple pattern in their journal. Some drew shapes, others flowers, some letters, and others did patterning with color. It's a fun activity you can do with your child and you will know after the first few pictures if they understand the concept of patterns. We still need to work on how a pattern REPEATS itself with a few of our students.

Thanks for reading all of this. I really felt the need to explain ''dud" as I did not want you to think I am teaching the children to be disrespectful!

Hopefully tomorrow will be a Wonderful Wednesday and that everyone will remember to bring their LIBRARY BOOK so they can check out a new one!

Sincerely, Mrs. Carol Clapper