Welcome to Kindergarten
My name is Cheryl Kimm and I am the kindergarten teacher.
Starting a new school year is always a very exciting time for me; this will be my 24th year here at St. Peter's and I am as excited as if it were my first. I have spent the summer coming up with new ideas and fun activities to make this kindergarten year a learning rich experience.
I have two wonderful aides who will also be working with your children, Kim Farley who has been here at St. Peter's for ten years and Gail Briggs who is starting her third year. We are all really looking forward to getting to know your children and creating wonderful memories together.
April 24, 2013
Spring has arrived in kindergarten! It is hard to believe how fast the school year is coming to an end. We have a lot of exciting signs of spring happening here in our classroom.
We have been observing 10 tiny caterpillars eat and eat and grow bigger each day. Each one has now formed a chrysalis and we are waiting to see beautiful butterflies emerge.
We have been learning about pond life and all of the wonderful creatures that can be found there. In our sensory tub we have set up a pond for the children to explore. It is definitely one of kindergarten’s favorite spots to visit.
Our most exciting thing happening in kindergarten is we are trying to hatch 12 baby chicks!! They have been in the incubator for 7 days and should hatch on May 7th. Kindergarten can hardly wait for them to arrive, they all have big plans on how they are going to love and care for the chicks. Say a little prayer that we are successful I really want my students to have this wonderful experience.
March 1, 2013
On Friday, the entire school participated in Read Across America to celebrate the birthday of Dr. Seuss. Kindergarten worked with their 4th grade prayer partners to read books and take as many tests as they could in the hour long session in the media center. We had a great time and managed to read 117 books!!
February 12, 2013
Kindergarten had a lot of fun learning how to tell the difference between coniferous and deciduous trees. Here the children are working together placing the tree branches into the correct group.
The children really enjoyed all of the special activities that we did during Catholic School’s Week; one of their favorite days was Crazy Hat and Hair Day. Here is Jourdan sporting his crazy hat!
Later in the week it was pajama day, one of Mrs. Kimm’s favorite days! We also continued our unit on coniferous trees and painted with evergreen branches. The children loved this activity!
Community service is very important to our school and thanks to all of our very generous school parents we were able to collect an amazing amount of food for the St. Vincent de Paul Society’s food bank. Our school community also donated many articles of new clothing for the Sew Much Comfort organization; the clothing will be modified to help our wounded veterans. Here are Miyori and Ayla showing just a bit of the food we collected.
In religion we have been learning that God gives us the gift of friendship, we have been discussing ways to show how we can be a good and kind friend. One of the activities we did was to make a friendship web to show how we had to work together as a class to make a successful web, just as each of us must work to make a classroom of friends.
Kindergarten celebrated Groundhog Day by creating a groundhog habitat. We read many stories and watched a short film about groundhogs.
We worked with our 4thgrade prayer partners to make Valentine Craft Kits for the patients at Children’s Hospital; this was another community service project that we worked on during Catholic School’s Week.
Kindergarten loves snow!!!! Unfortunately we have only had a tiny bit this year but we can get excited about just a few flakes.
January 15, 2013
At the beginning of the month kindergarten celebrated the feast of the Epiphany in a big way. First Mrs. Kimm told us the story of the Three Kings arriving in Bethlehem to bring gifts to Baby Jesus. We used small peg people to act out the story and then got to touch and smell the frankincense, gold and myrrh. Next everyone got a piece of the special Three King’s cake and hidden in the cake was a special bean. The person who found the bean in his/her piece of cake got to be King for a Day!
Jack was the lucky one who found the bean so we called him King Jack for the rest of the day. As King, Jack degreed that we should have an extra-long recess which his classmates thought was a great idea.
We read a story called “The Tomten” by Astrid Lindgren which the children absolutely loved. It is about a small gnome who takes care of all the animals in the forest during the long cold winter. Often we take the children to what they refer to as “the forest” which in reality is the small woods behind the church. After reading this story the children were sure that they found evidence that indeed the Tomten had visited our forest. Not long after this visit we returned again to the forest to find that the Tomten had left a picture of himself and candy canes hanging from all of the branches. You can imagine the children’s delight at finding such a wonderful surprise. Imaginations were running wild and there were some great discussions after this fun excursion!
December 12, 2012
Kindergarten did a wonderful job singing a song at the Christmas play; they sounded like a choir of angels.
On December 6th we celebrated the feast of St. Nicholas; the children listened to a story, made a St. Nicholas and then we baked FIVE honey cakes to celebrate this special day! While the cakes were baking the children placed their shoes on their chairs and we went for a sock walk. We were very surprised to find our shoes filled with treats when we returned, we each had a clementine, gold chocolate coins, a candy cane and a St. Nicholas prayer card. Kindergarten was very excited to receive such nice treats; we decided that we would try very hard to be kind and loving like St. Nicholas.
November 26, 2012
At the end of October we took a trip to Montpelier Pumpkin farm; it was a beautiful sunny and warm day.
Here we are listening to the story of Spookly the Square Pumpkin.
We really enjoyed seeing the ducks take a bath!
Jumping off the bales of straw was a favorite activity for kindergarten.
The Halloween parade was great fun, we really enjoyed trying to figure out who each classmate was pretending to be.
We had great fun at our party making spooky crafts.
November 11this the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, also known as Martinmas. Ask your children to tell you the story of how St. Martin shared his cloak with a poor man. We also made lanterns to remind us to share the light of Christ as St. Martin did.
These are the props we used to tell the story of St. Martin, the children really loved retelling the story and acting out each part.
In kindergarten we work hard, we play hard and we even rest hard! The children love to take turns sleeping on the very soft sheep skin.
November 7, 2012
We have been having a lot of fun in kindergarten. It is hard to believe that it is already November.
Several of our kindergarten friends really enjoy spending time on the computer; the children are very kind to each other and always help each other find their favorite websites.
Tyler, Aubrey and Grace are having fun playing with the gnome home, they are pretending that the blue silk is a river and they have made a boat for the gnomes to sail on. We have great imaginations in kindergarten!
Jack, Dylan, Zachary and Grace are practicing cooperative learning as they help each other construct a big tower.
Julian, Stoan and Tyler are having a great time playing with play-dough that was made by one of our play-dough Moms. They were pretending to make cookies and pizza!
A group of kindergarten friends spent their entire recess time constructing a fairy garden. They were so proud of the results of their hard work that they wanted me to take a picture of their very sweet garden.
On October 8th we had our annual Race for Education. Kindergarten worked hard and walked many laps around the field. Our school managed to raise $24,000!!!! GO Storm! Thank you to all of our families and friends that sponsored our kindergarten participants.
October 3, 2012
It is hard to believe that it is October already! Kindergarten has gotten off to a great start. We spent the last month getting to know one another and getting to know our kindergarten routine. We are doing our best to be good members of the “kindergarten club” by being kind to each other and making sure that all of our friends are included in our kindergarten games.
We have met four of our friends from the Superkids, which is the reading program that will be helping each of us to become great readers. We have spent time learning about AB patterns, number recognition, shapes, and sorting objects using three attributes. We have been learning many new words in Spanish; ask your child how to say autumn in Spanish. In religion we just learned about Michael the Archangel; the boys in the class were particularly interested in St. Michael, I think the fact that he carries a sword was a bonus!
Below are just a few pictures of the boys and girls learning to be great kindergartners.
1. Our first rainy day recess brought great joy to kindergarten, there were smiles and shouts of joy as the
children discovered the delights of a puddle.
2. Kindergarten Friends!
3. Gaby and Sophia wearing their crowns made of beautiful fall leaves. Our autumn princesses!
4. This is the Ned Show that we watched; one day maybe we can do those special tricks with a yo-yo.
5. Kindergarten enjoying the show.