Spring in Kindergarten!

 Kindergarten is BLOOMING! 

The back of our classroom looks so lovely with the kids' tissue paper flowers 

blooming on our tree and along the back counter. 

PAPER ANIMAL FUN

In preparation for our Inventor's Workshop and in conjunction with our math unit on 2D and 3D shapes; we made 4 different animals out of paper. This is also a lesson on resilience, patience and independence. They work hard on these and feel proud of what they created in the end! 

Creating with marshmallows and toothpicks. Making cubes, pyramids and prisms to build a structure! 

WISH WEEK SPIRIT 

Gold Rush supported Legend's Wish Week by participating in dress up days and donating to Make A Wish Colorado. The spirit days were Superheroes, Disney Day, Western Wear, Sports Gear and School Spirit! Congrats to Legend on a successful week! 

DIGGER WINNERS! 

Each week a class is selected to have Digger the GRE mascot spend a week in their classroom. We had collected the most Golden Tickets one week in April and got to host Digger. 

MATHEMATICIANS

We have been working hard in math and building upon concepts. This group of kids has grasped the concepts of how to build teen numbers. They love numbers and explaining how they figured out a math problem. I have kids ask me all the time if they can fill out a 100 chart just for fun! Love that! Here are some kids hard at work on math games. 

100th Day of School 

We celebrated the 100th Day of school by sharing our 100 day projects, writing about what we would be like when we were 100 years old and what we would buy with $100, making 100th Day of School crowns, playing math games to 100 and making necklaces with 100 fruit loops! 

January 2021

 So happy to be back in the CLASSROOM FULL TIME! 

We had a great first month back to school. The amount of learning and growth that has happened just since we have been back has been so fun to witness. I love the lightbulbs that are clicking on in all their little minds!! Here are some fun pictures from our first month back! 

The kids LOVE when they show up TWINNING with a friend! 

"Can you take our picture??" 

Using Our New Addition and Subtraction Skills 

to play a Math Game 

Their Writing is REALLY taking off! 

They are excited about their HOW TO books. 

We spent some time sharing our books with friends. 

Celebrating an American Hero

Third Quarter

 Welcome to 2021

We made it to 2021! We survived hybrid, in person and remote learning during our first semester and we are ready to come back full time, in person this week! I know I have missed the kids and I am confident that they have missed their friends! So happy that we get to return to the classroom and ready to get our third quarter started. Let's do this! 

Super Readers

During our first semester we learned that we all have a lot of strategies to help us become better readers. We call these strategies Reading Superpowers. We will build onto those powers and continue to grow them stronger. Each student has a reading envelope full of books that they know how to read and ones that they chose from our classroom. They enjoy spending time in their reading spot; quietly reading and looking at their book choices. 

    We are Writers         

During the first semester we concentrated on learning how to phonetically sound out words, use spacing and punctuation and write what we wanted to express. In the second quarter we began writing Small Moment stories of memorable and meaningful events in our lives. In December we spent two weeks trying our hand at informational writing as we researched about the Earth and the Sun. We will continue with more Small Moment writing to start off the year and then learn about the HOW TO writing format. 

Mathematicians 

 < + - > = 

At Gold Rush we use the Envision math program. During the first semester we completed six topics and ended with the unit on Addition. The kids are all masters about the concepts of greater than, less than and equal too. The students are counting by 1s, 10s, 5s and some are even working on counting by 2s. We are learning our 2-D and 3-D shapes. We are writing our numbers up to and even past 100. We use games and hand on materials to enhance our understanding of mathematical concepts. We work independently, in pairs and in groups during math. We mix it up to keep it engaging and challenging! 

Working in a group of three, rotating around the room to work on Ten-Frame Math problems

Our line extends to the back of the classroom as we attempt to keep a distance between each other!

Thankful for our country on Veteran's Day 2020

Holiday crafts in December Remote Learning Style! Cute Santas!! 

    

Second Quarter

 Full Time FUN! 

Hope everyone had a wonderful fall break and that you are looking forward to our return as a FULL class of 24 friends!! There will be a lot of excitement and new friendships made this week as we return to school for the beginning of our second quarter! 

Since our parents have not been in our school building this year....here is a peek at the hallway outside our classroom. We have our cute faces project from the first day of school that line the top of our wall. We created Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Trees a few weeks ago. All of our name studies are complete as well. We learned about each of our classmates and how they got their unique name. We got to hear about all of their favorite things and we wrote in our journals about our cohort classmates. We will now use those journals to share with our new friends to teach them about their new classmates. We will also share our Family Journals that we wrote in at home during our remote days this first quarter. 

We have been learning about changing leaves and the fact that we are now into 
a new season called Fall or Autumn. The kids each had the opportunity to paint a 
fall leaf during centers and we made this pretty fall tree in the back corner of the 
classroom to remind us of this beautiful season. 

We can't MASK our excitement about being in school together! 

Two friends below had matching masks on the first days of school. They went home with each other's mask! I am happy to report that that only happened one time! The kids have been doing well wearing their masks even as it is not the easiest thing for little ones all day long, they are making the most of it. They love to compliment each other on their masks too! They remove them at lunch time and when they are outside for recess. They put them back on before entering the building. 

MATH in kindergarten:

We have completed the first two units in our Envision program and our whole Number Book. We have been working on concepts of different ways to show a specific number. We learned about number lines, ten frames, manipulatives, patterning, counting jars, subitizing, and concepts of greater than, less than and equal to. We play sorting games as a full class. We look for specific numbers on the 100s chart. We have been practicing the months of the year and learning what months our birthdays fall in. We have created a few graphs as a class. I am looking forward to having them everyday so we can learn some more of our independent math games which are hands on and engaging for the kindies! Below are two classmates working on a math game called Roll and Record where they roll a dice and make a graph depending on which numbers they roll. Which number will win and reach the top first? They have also enjoyed using our pattern blocks to build shape puzzles. 

Read, Read, READ!! 

We  began our small reading groups a few weeks ago and that has been going well. They love the smaller group dynamic and have been very independent working on their Alphabet readers while Mrs. Padrnos and Mrs. Widdison run the reading groups. The kids will continue to bring home their colored, leveled reading books nightly and a word sort every week. Those will now be their homework instead of remote work. 

We practice our alphabet sounds and symbols daily. We have been adding new sight words to our vocabulary every week. We are learning strategies and habits that good readers do. We made reading envelopes and filled them up with classroom books and are beginning a collection of books that we know how to read so that we can read independently during quiet reading time. We will begin that this second quarter. 

Dates to add to your calendars: 

October 19th- return to school full time

October 30th- Halloween parade at 8:45

November 3rd- No school: Furlough Day

Nov. 4/5- Parent-Teacher conferences

Nov 23-27- Thanksgiving Break