Mrs. Irby :)
I can't believe that we made it through the year! Every school year seems to go by faster than the last. Thank you so much for sharing your children with me. Each one of them holds a special place in my heart, and it was such a privilege to teach them and watch them grow. Thank you for all of the support you've given me in the classroom this year. The partnership between family and school is what truly makes a child successful. I hope everyone has a wonderful summer vacation!
Mrs. Irby :)
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We had such a fun day today! This morning we had our Good News party for students who have had exceptional behavior and we were so excited to welcome Silly Chris to Whiteside Elementary! His comedic magic show was so awesome! We laughed so hard, and were amazed by all of his awesome tricks! So many of us got to volunteer to be part of his show, which was a special treat. Check out his website: http://www.sillychris.com/ In the afternoon we had a special outdoor assembly to wrap up many of the year's activities including 1School 1 Book, Character Education Awards, and our Shoeman Water Project shoe drive. Congratulation to our own Layton for being nominated for the end of year character award!
Hello families! Yesterday was our big Mayfest and Carnival day! Even though the weather didn't cooperate, we still had a fun time! Thank you to Mrs. Brush and all of our Specials teachers for putting on our Mayfest program! So much work goes into that day and our students had been practicing for months to learn all of those songs and dances. We especially liked our carnival time, and thought that yesterday was the best day we've ever had in kindergarten! Today we talked about all of the things that we will be learning in first grade, and we used our discussion to write down something that we hoped to learn next year. We also did some addition review with some story problems. In the afternoon we learned to play a fun new game to practice addition skills called Kindergarten Yatzee. We really enjoyed this game and played a few rounds with our partners. Please continue to send book bags through Friday! We will be starting to clean out our desks and send our belongings home on Friday.
I hope everyone enjoyed the weekend! I can't believe it's our last week of school! We are starting to get excited about summer vacation and all of the other fun activities we will be enjoying this week. Tomorrow we will have our Mayfest and Carnival! It looks like the weather isn't going to cooperate with us, so our Mayfest show will be held in the gym. It'll be crowded, but we are excited to show off the singing and dancing we've been working on for the past couple of months. The carnival will also be held inside. We will have games and some fun inflatables in the gym and multipurpose room. Our lunch will be from 11:00-11:15 tomorrow and we will have a picnic in our classroom. You're welcomed to join us. Our carnival time will be from 11:15-12:45. The BOGO book fair will also be open if you'd like to shop! Thursday we will be having our last good news party for the year, and Friday will be our end of the year party!
Happy Friday! Today we read a book called Here Comes the Net. We read this book all by ourselves! I have just loved watching our reading abilities grow this year. GREAT progress has been made! Practice reading this book with your child over the weekend. It is great practice for fluency and confidence. We have almost finished up our final popcorn word test of the year. Only about 5 more students to go! We'll finish up on Monday and then I'll send these assessment papers home. It is a good idea to practice any words that were missed on this assessment to be prepared for first grade! We worked on sorting shapes today in our math book, and we are really loving that we get to tear out our own pages. Our first grade teachers will love that also! :) In the afternoon we shared our AMAZING timeline projects! This is my absolute favorite project of the year, and we really love to see all of our classmates as babies and enjoy all of the family pictures. If you didn't send a timeline in today, you can send it in on Monday. We'd love to share it! I will send all of these projects home on Monday after I post some pictures! Stay tuned for some pictures of our great projects! Have a great weekend!
*If it happens to be raining on Tuesday the May festival will be held in the gym. Today we had some fun with real and nonsense words. Our fluency with CVC words has improved so much this year! Blending sounds together to make words has become a very handy skill, especially as we have moved on to reading books and other texts. We did some assessments today on sight words and CVC words. We also have been working through the rest of our math book, and are currently exploring how to sort objects by different attributes. We've even learned to tear the pages out ourselves! In the afternoon we continued to talk about the parts of a plant, and made a flower diagram. We labeled all of the important parts like roots, stem, leaves, flower, and seeds.
Today we reviewed what we've been learning about blends and digraphs in words. We focused on the /sh/ sound today, and made an awesome word list with words that have this sound in it. We sorted some pictures and found this sound in some books we read too. We've started to take our final popcorn word test, and hopefully we will be finished by the end of the week. We've worked so hard on these words all year, and I can see that all of our hard work has paid off! Knowing these words will really help us move on to first grade. Today we also said goodbye to our butterflies named Jerry. It was time to set them free so they could go on to lay more eggs and start their life cycle all over again. We went out to the garden and watched all five of our friends fly away. It was so fun to watch them grow and change into beautiful butterflies! In the afternoon we continued to talk about plants. In our school garden we looked at all of the different parts of the plant (flower, stem, leaves, and roots) and talked about what role each plays in helping plants grow and thrive.
Don't forget that we've having a shoe drive for new or gently used shoes of all sizes! This is a great excuse to clean out those closets at home! The donated shoes help fund the Shoeman Water Project http://www.shoemanwater.org/, which provides clean water to underdeveloped countries. Hello families! Sorry for missing yesterday's post! Last Friday we went to the amazing Rainbow Ranch in Nashville, IL for our field trip. WE HAD SO MUCH FUN! We met Farmer Al, who showed us all around his ranch and introduced us to all of his animals. He even has a macaw that can say hello! Goats and lambs followed us all around the farm and we even got to see a zebra! We loved the baby pigs and especially liked bottle feeding the baby zebus. It was a wonderful day with beautiful weather. It was such a neat experience and a wonderful kindergarten memory that we will never forget. A BIG thank you to all of the chaperones who came with us. You were such a great help to me!
This week we will be learning about how plants grow. Today, we discussed what plants need to stay healthy and grow strong, and we started the process of sprouting bean seeds in our classroom. We wet some paper towels and put it into plastic bags to give our seeds a nice place to sprout. Hanging them on the window will help the seeds stay nice and warm. We are so excited about our field trip tomorrow! We talked about all of the animals that we will get to see, and are so excited that we will get to touch and interact with them! We will be going to the park first to play and then have a picnic lunch, afterwards we will head to the Rainbow Ranch to meet Farmer Al! Please remember to have your child wear old clothes and a red shirt, if possible. Tennis shoes and socks MUST be worn also. No open toed shoes/sandals are allowed on the ranch for safety reasons. Also remember to pack a lunch and drink in a disposable bag for our picnic in the park.
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AuthorAriana Irby Archives
May 2016
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