We learn the basic building blocks of reading in kindergarten.We learn about letter sounds and letter names. We use a kinesthetic approach and a program called Animated Literacy. Each sound has a motion that we act out. We practice these daily. We work on writing each letter/sound in our rainbow writing program. It's called rainbow writing because we write each letter with all the colors in our crayon boxes. Below you'll see students practicing letter formation. During the first trimester in kindergarten, we do not worry about seating our letters on lines yet, but we just try to stay on the "path" of each letter.
After we have learned the letter sounds (and names), we put our knowledge into practice! We use our mathematical skills and learn about drawing using basic lines and shapes, thereby employing our geometry skills. Then we use our knowledge to sound out and build words. In the pictures below, we have drawn "ox" and are painting it too. This is our draw and write program. We combine math, art and language!
We make little books in kindergarten. Children draw, cut, construct and read these books before taking them home. Each child is encouraged to have a reading box at home to keep their little books and word/picture cards. Then during their daily reading (10 minutes per day) after parents read to them, they can read to their parents!
If our classroom computers were able to connect to the internet, we would be accessing Starfall.com - a great resource for early readers. In our classroom, we are listening to and/or playing The Cat in the Hat and Arthur's Teacher Troubles and JumpStart Kindergarten.
We work and play together. We use interpersonal skills to communicate our preferences.
We use our linguistic and mathematical reasoning skills when working with puzzles. These blue and white puzzles are Insta-Learn self-correcting puzzles.
We solve problems using math manipulatives.
We love to build structures in kindergarten. The process of building engages us in learning cause and effect. Question: Is this math or science or play? Answer: It's math, science and play!
We start our kindergarten day with our classroom meeting. We start with a song. Then we keep track of how many days of school we've had, the calendar, and what we need to know about our day. We read our morning message count and graph how many students before we review our letter sounds and names.
We read Reading Makes You Feel Good. 
Then we brainstormed and listed how reading makes us feel.
After we read September's chapter of My Kindergarten, we generated a number of things that we want to learn in kindergarten.
Kindergarten Quilt: Thanks to parents who organized this project. Our kindergartners' cheery, wintry pictures were sewn into this quilt by Mrs. Knapp and auctioned off to raise money for our school.
