thank you, omu!

This week we talked about the word thankful, what it means and how it feels to be thankful. We connected our conversations to the feelings of love that we share with our families and friends. In the book, We Are Grateful, we learned how people celebrate and share gratitude in many different and beautiful ways. For example, in the Cherokee Nation there is a deep connection to the seasons and gratitude is expressed for the little things; strawberries, lullabies, and the sharing of stories.

On Wednesday we read the storybook THANK YOU, OMU by Oge Mora. 

Throughout the story Omu gives to her community and at the end of the story her community gives back to her, sharing love and a warm meal. Her community members are thankful for Omu, because of her kindness and generosity.

Who are you thankful for?

First we thought of someone we are thankful for and practiced saying the sentence, I am thankful for my . . .

On Thursday the Kindergarteners wrote who they are thankful for. We said the word or name and felt how many parts. We used white pieces of paper to show how many parts and tiles to show the sounds in each part. Finally we used an alphabet chart to write a letter for every sound we heard.

Oge Mora uses paper collage in her work. We were inspired by the detail and movement in her paper collage and used her as our mentor. The Kindergarteners represented their ideas using colorful paper, shapes, and lines!

On Friday we were inspired by Lucy's work; I am thankful for my community. During morning meeting the children represented community using pictures and beginning sound labels. Our day before a little break from school began with feelings of love and we carried those feelings with us throughout our play and learning!

a little look at literacy

How many parts?

You can feel how many parts or syllables in a word by putting your hand under your chin. We have been feeling and clapping how many parts in our names and in different words. We have been showing and counting how many parts using tiles and then blending the parts together to say the whole word.

Letter Names/Sounds

This week we reinforced letter formation, name, and sound by tracing the vowel o in the sand at the waterfall! As children traced we named the letter and practiced stretching the /o/ sound.

Pointer Power/Partner Power

We can use words we know to guide our pointing.
We noticed that our Leaves poem and our leaf sentence from last week have repeating words;

I
see
a

We began building our collection of words by practicing I, see, a, and is with a partner!

We have Picture Power!

We learned about a new power readers use, picture power. We have been using picture power since the beginning of school. We read the pictures on name cards, labels, and the daily schedule. We read pictures all around us. We reinforced picture power with a familiar text, In the Forest.

This text then inspired our own In the Forest book to practice using pointer power and picture power together!

Academic Choice

Listening for letter sounds and adding labels to our buildings and play!