Kindergarten 2016-2017

Friday: Celebrating Faculty, Staff and Volunteer

We Can Pray Anywhere!

This week we learned more about prayer. Jesus wants us to know that we can pray anywhere and about anything. We learned that Jesus taught us a special prayer to talk to God with called The Lord's Prayer. We also made an ABC book about different places we can pray. Enjoy our book!

Catholic Schools Week

"Since 1974, National Catholic Schools Week is the annual celebration of Catholic education in the United States. It starts the last Sunday in January and runs all week, which in 2017 is January 29 - February 4. The theme for the National Catholic Schools Week 2017 is “Catholic Schools: Communities of Faith, Knowledge and Service.” Schools typically observe the annual celebration week with Masses, open houses and other activities for students, families, parishioners and community members. Through these events, schools focus on the value Catholic education provides to young people and its contributions to our church, our communities and our nation." (www.ncea.com)

St. Charles celebrated this week with lots of fun activities. Our students, staff, and families had a great time participating in the events that our committee planned. Scroll through the pictures to see all the great activities we did!

Monday - In Our Community

Today students brought in can of soup in exchange for wearing their favorite sports jersey. The can of soup were used to stock the pantry in the church food pantry that supports our local community. We kicked off Catholic Schools Week with a morning assembly.

Tuesday: Celebrating Your Students

Today we celebrated our wonderful students by having reading outside time. Students brought in beach towels and sunglasses so they could spread out to read on the grass. Our 8th grade buddies came over to read with us. After we were done reading, Mrs. Benning and Mr. Stutz served us a pizza lunch that we with our buddies.

Wednesday: Celebrating the Nation

Today we had 2 different guest speakers. The Border Patrol came and talked about how they help our nation. They answered lots of questions we had!

Mrs. Dunlap came and talked about working as a news reporter. She showed us videos of all the fun events that she has covered and even taught us how to be news reporters. Mrs. Dunlap is a St. Charles alumni so she shared how St. Charles prepared her for her future job.

We ended our day with a Rosary Walk around campus. Each group of ASC members helped us pray parts of the rosary.

Thursday: Celebrating Vocations

Today Father Emilio came and talked about vocations with us. We learned that Father Emilio was a police officer before answering his call to be a priest. He showed us different items that he uses in Mass and explained the significance of them. We also learned how to baptize people in emergencies!

Miss Mimi came after lunch to do a school-wide dance class for us. We loved learning the routine and exercising together. Check out our moves!

Today we started our morning off by celebrating our volunteer grandma, Grandma Grace. Grandma Grace comes in every morning and helps our class out. We love Grandma Grace because she reads with us, helps us tie our shoes, helps us write sentences, and most importantly, gives us hugs whenever we need them!

We also went to the chapel and learned about St. Blaise. Deacon Mick told us the story of the little boy that had a fish bone stuck in his throat. The boys mom took him to St. Blaise and after praying over the little boy, the bone was no longer in his throat. Deacon Mick blessed all our throats to helps us stay healthy.

100 Days Smarter!

Can you believe that we have been in school 100 day? We started our celebration by first thing in the morning when Mrs. Granberg opened the door for us to see our special decoration. Mrs. Granberg had lots of fun activities planned for us even though it was a short day! We rotated through centers where we made hats with 100 stickers, we made necklaces with 100 Fruit Loops, we counted out ten different snacks in groups of tens to create a 100 day snack mix, and we worked on counting by 5's and 10's to 100.

We all created projects at home with our families using 100 items. It is fun to see what everyone used to count to 100!

All our fun 100 day activities!

Happy Valentine's Day

We had fun making bags to hold all our Valentines Day treats!

January Presentations

Our January Presentation theme was "My Favorite Toy". It was fun to hear about all of our friends favorite toys and to have some time playing with them afterwards. Everyone did a great job! We can't wait to do our February Presentations on a famous American.

STEM Fun!

We worked in the STEM Lab to create tin foil boats with our partners. After learning about things that float and sink, Mrs. Granberg challenged us to build a boat of of aluminium foil that would hold the most pennies. First we planned out boats by discussing and drawing out our ideas. Then. Mrs. Granberg gave each group a piece of foil and we built our boat. Finally, we testing out our boats by filling them with pennies. We had to count as we filled them so we knew how many pennies they would hold. After our first try, we were able to go back with our partner and redesign our boat to make it better. We had a lot fun thinking about what made the strongest boat!

Being a Missionary

To learn more about the Mission Childhood Association and Sr. Eva, click on the picture.

Sister Eva from the Missionary Childhood Association visited the school this week. She shared with the students where the money they donate to the missions goes and how it helps others in need. We learned about her mission trip to Jamaica where she took care of kids. We saw pictures and videos of kids that were the same age as us playing and singing. Sr. Eva taught us about the Mission Rosary and what countries the different color beads represent when we are praying. We learned that we can help out others in need by not only donating money but by also praying for them. This makes us all Missionaries! She gave us each a box to take home and fill up with money we earn by doing chores or sacrifices treats. We ❤ learning about how we can help others!!

Snowball Number Fight

What is more fun that a snowball fight??? A snowball fight and practing writing our numbers! We raced to open snowballs and count how many objects were on each one. After counting the pictures, we wrote down the number on a pile of snowballs. It was fun to race to finish in our groups.

December Presentations

Every month, our kindergartners and their parents work hard at home on an oral presentation. This month our presentation was "What I want to be when I grow up". Each child told us what they wanted to be when they were older and why. They dressed up and brought in items about their future jobs. We had fun learning about all our kindergarten friends!

Creating our own Nativities

Advent is a time of preparing for the Lord's birth. We spent time in class learning the story of Jesus' birth. After hearing the Nativity Story, we had fun recreating the story with stickers and the decorating the background. We were able to use this to retell the story of the night Jesus was born.

Celebrating the Epiphany

The Friday after we returned from Christmas Break, we celebrated the Epiphany at school. We learned that this is the day the three kings or wise men came to visit Jesus. We learned the Epiphany is also called Three Kings Day or Dia de los Reyes in Spanish. Children in Mexico leave their shoes out on the eve of Three Kings day and they wake up to find three presents. They all gather as a family that night and enjoy Rosca de Reyes and hot chocolate. Inside the Rosca de Reyes are plastic babies. If you get the baby in your piece, then you have to throw a party in February. Mrs. Garcia brought Rosca de Reyes for our class to enjoy. Nikko, Adriana, and Dayanara found babies in their bread! All the other kids were sad they didn't get one!

We made crowns to help us celebrate and remember the Three Kings!

We also got to go outside and hit piñatas. Everyone enjoy hitting the piñatas and running for the treats that fell from it.

Hands On Math!

Learning is always better when we can have fun! This activity was a super fun way to count and play at the dame time. We used paperclip spinners and play dough to fill a tens frame with a certain number of balls. Then we cleared it and played again. Everyone had a fun time playing!

Previously in Kindergarten

Labeling the teacher and the room

This week in writing, we began working on labeling. We started by learning what it meant to label a picture. We played some SMARTboard games that let us label pictures. Mrs. Granberg even let us label her! Finally, we each got sticky notes to go around and label our room! We sounded out the words for different items the best we could and we stuck them everywhere! It was so much fun!!

Celebrating the feast day of St. Nicholas

St. Nicholas helped out poor people by leaving money, toys, and other items for them. He usually snuck them in through open windows. The feast day of St. Nicholas is on December 6th. On the eve of his feast day, we made shoes to leave out for him. When we came in the next morning, we found oranges, candy canes, and gold candy in our shoes! We spent the day learning all about St. Nicholas in class. we learned he wore a red hat(a miter) and carried a staff because he was a bishop. We made red miter hats during class. We also made sight word books for the word HERE to help us read about St. Nicholas. We made a St. Nicholas statue that we could dispay at home so we could teach others about St. Nicholas. Mrs. Granberg read us books all about how St. Nicholas helped all people and became a saint. We watch a movie about his life that showed us how he became known as Santa Claus! We enjoyed learning all about him!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a fun week finishing up our Superkid Doc and completing some Thanksgiving activities. We brainstormed and made a web of what we knew about Thanksgiving, then we read some books and watched videos to learn more about why we celebrate Thanksgiving. We even sang a song about all the yummy food we get to eat on Thursday! We made bracelets using different color beads to help us remember the story of the Pilgrams and Indians First Thanksgiving. We made crowns to show the things we are thankful for. We enjoyed counting different Thanksgiving items when we counted the room. We ended by making some cute turkey hats to wear when when we celebrate Thanksgiving with our family and friends! Happy Thanksgiving from the Kindergarten class.

God Gave Us Our 5 Senses!

We learned that God gave us our 5 senses to explore the wonderful world he made for us. We talked about how we use our senses everyday. The best part was going on a nature walk to discover God's world with our senses. We smelled all the wonderful flowers and lemon peel, we heard the kids play and the construction happening, we saw the wonderful colors around us, we felt the different plant textures and the heat from the sun, and we tasted the sour lemons from the garden. It was fun to go outside and learn!

Election Day Fun!

What a fun week in kindergarten! We learned all about the election process and how our moms and dads voted in out Presedential Election. We read lots of fun books about the election. Our favorite book was Duck for President!

Duck didn't like how Farmer Brown was running the farm, so he decided to run against Farmer Brown! Duck campaigned, registered voters, and then help the election. He won by a landslide! Pretty soon Duck was running for Governor and then President! But he missed the farm.

After reading the book, we had out own election on who we thought would be a better leader of the farm. We went into the polling place to cast our vote. After filling out our ballot we placed it in the Ballot Box. We even got I VOTED! stickers! Duck won in our class by a landslide too! Farmer Brown only had 1 vote! We ended by doing an art activity about the book.

10-31-16 Halloween

Happy All Hallows Eve! We had a great day today celebrating Halloween. We drew pictures and wrote what we are going to be for Halloween. We guessed what Mrs. Granberg is going to be for Halloween and drew her as it. Then we estimated, counted, sorted, and ate Halloween Gummy Treats using a fun book. We ended our day with our all school Halloween Party. What a fun day!

Red Ribbon Week Fun!

"Red Ribbon Week is the Nation’s oldest and largest drug prevention program, reaching millions of Americans during the last week of October every year. Red Ribbon Week is celebrated annually October 23-31. By wearing red ribbons and participating in community anti-drug events, young people pledge to live a drug-free lifestyle and pay tribute to DEA Special Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena."- DEA website

In Kindergarten, we focus on being healthy and only putting good things in our bodies. We participated in lots of fun activities throughout the week to help us to always remember to take care of our bodies and minds. We made books in class that helped us remember that the best us is drug-free! We can do this by saying no to drugs, making the right choices, only putting good things in our bodies, and being kind and showing love to others. We wear red show others that we are drug free. Staying drug free will help us to be all we can be in this life!

Red Ribbon Week Activities:

Poster Contest- All the classes drew poster to promote being drug free!

Arianna

Parker

Kindergarten Winners!

Picnic Lunch- Students brought in blankets and we all sat on the field to enjoy lunch.

Field and Jersey Day- Outside activities to keep our bodies healthy.

Officer Visit- Maribelle's dad visited us to help us remember to make good choices.

School Liaison Officer visit during Field Day- He even hula-hooped with us!

Wear Red Day- We all wore red to school. We were marching around to When the Saints Come Marching In with Mrs. Garcia.

Apples Apples Everywhere!

This week we learned about apples in our Scholastic News. Our new Superkid is Alf so apples went right along with that also! We had fun learning the parts of an apple, how apples grow, and painting pictures of apples using Qtips!

Learning our ABCs

In kindergarten, we are always looking for fun ways to practice identifying and writing our ABCs. This week we practiced using wipe board pouches. We found comfortable places around the room to trace and write our capital and lower case ABC's. We also love to learn and practice the sounds all of the letters make. We do this every morning during calendar time with different videos and movements. This week learned a new song called Alphabet Sounds. After learning the song, we used finger laser pointers to sing the song with partners and then review it as class. Learning the sounds to all our letters is important so the we all can become readers soon! It is always fun to use new and fun tools when we learn!

October 7, 2016 Celebrating the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi

The Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi on October 4th. The feast day is the day St. Francis died and joined Jesus in heaven. We learned all about St. Francis this week in kindergarten. Last week, we had learned that God created all the animals in the world. We learned that we needed to take care of them and our world to show God that we were grateful. This week, we learned about a saint that took care of all of God's creatures- both human and animal. We started our week off by reading a book all about St. Francis. We learned that St. Francis grew up wealthy but always knew God wanted him to help those that needed it. Even though people made fun of him and his dad told him not to do any of it, Francis still listen to God and continued helping others. Francis took care of the animals, the poor, and the sick. God spoke to St. Francis and told him to rebuild his church. St. Francis rebuilt the church of San Damiano in Assisi, Italy, stone by stone. At first people didn't want to help Francis but soon he had many followers. Francis spoke to the people about Jesus and taught them how to be more like him. We wrapped up our week with a School-wide Prayer Service honoring St. Francis. We all brought our favorite stuffed animals to show St. Francis' love of God's creatures. We then walked around the field with our 8th grade buddies to complete a decade of the rosary. When we went back to class, we built our own churches stone by stone. We even went outside to find sticks to make crosses for the top. We learned a lot about St. Francis and how to be more like Jesus. Someday we all hope to be saints just like St. Francis!

October 7, 2016 St. Francis Prayer Service and Rosary Walk

October 7, 2016 8th grade Buddies

On the first day of school, our 8th graders helped the kindergartners walk to church. Every kindergartner had an 8th grade buddy that sat with them during the Mass. This continues through out the whole school year. Our 8th grade buddies help us in church by modeling good Mass behavior and helping us respond and sing. We also get to meet up with our buddies at different times through the year for fun activities. This week we had reading time with them. We picked out the books and they helped us read them. They asked us questions and talked about the books with us. We love our 8th grade buddies!

October 7, 2016 Patterns in Kindergarten!

We had lots of fun this week using manipulatives to learn about and create patterns.

September 30, 2016 God Made All the Animals

Our focus this unit in religion is God Made Everything! God gave us everything as a gift because he loves us. We learned that God made the sun, the moon, and the stars. Then he made water. He made land and all the plants we find on it. This week we learned that God made all the animals. We always start out our lessons thinking of all the ways we use the gift we are learning abut. This week the kids helped by decorating different animals with their table groups. Then we added them to our poster and came up with ways animals help us. Throughout each lesson, we discuss how we show God we are thankful for all the wonderful gift he gives us. We know that we can praise God and we need to take care of these gifts. The kids talked about how we take care of animals, both wild and pets. We learned a song called God Made all The Animals and we danced around the classroom like we were those animals. We finished the week off by illustrating a book with some of the animals God made. We each drew their favorite animal that wasn't in the book on the last page. Mrs. Granberg and Grandma Grade helped to write what each was so it fit in our book.

September 30, 2016 Hands On Learning in Kindergarten

The best learning happens when you let kids explore on their own! Here are a couple ways we learned through play this week. We used ABC macaroni to practice our ABC's and spelling. We played with shapes to make new ones.

September 23, 2016 Kindergarten's Odd Animals

This week we continued to focus on the letter O and our Superkid, Oswald. Oswald loves odd animals such as ostriches, ocelots, and otters but he also loves to make up animals and give them new names. We began by making a book that took real animals and turned them into odd make-believe animals. Then we made odd animals only using the letter O. All of the kids presented those animals and their O names to us using the document camera and SMARTboard. We ended our odd animal time by making our own made-up odd animal. We could name them anything we wanted and then we told Mrs. Granberg a sentence about our animal. She helped us write our sentences using capital letter to start and period to end so we could see what good writers do. We have some really odd animals in our class!

September 23, 2016 Using iPads in Kindergarten

This week was an exciting one in Kindergarten with the introduction of iPads! Before being allowed to use the iPads, we had to go over the rules and expectations for them. Each kindergartner received their headphones in a bag and practiced opening it up carefully. Then Mrs. Granberg showed us the iPad cart and all the iPads that we had. We each used two hands to take them to the carpet. Mrs. Granberg went over the different parts on the iPad so we would know where the Home button was, where to plug in out headphones and control the sound, and how to leave an app when we were done. We then used two hands to carry our iPads to our desk. We all plugged in our own headphones and began to use the Starfall and EPIC Apps. We also took our first STAR Early Literacy Test of the year to help Mrs. Granberg plan how to teach us. We had a great time using a new tool to helps us learn!

September 16, 2016 Constitution Day

This week learned about the Constitution and why it is important. We learned that rules keep us safe and help our country work better. We also learned about the men that came together during the summer of 1787 to write the Constitution. After reading a book and watching a video, we read and colored our own books about Constitution Day. We know that September 17, 1787 is when the constitution was signed. We made tricorn hats just like George Washington wore back then!