Saturday, September 26, 2020

Weekly Newsletter - Friday, September 25

This week was our last week in music.  On Monday we will have art class for the next three-week rotation.                                   

(I hope you were able to see this video on your child's SeeSaw account.  If not, please let me know.)

Literacy - This week we practiced reading our own version of Brown Bear, Brown Bear titled Kindergartener, Kindergartener Who Do You See?  We hope you enjoyed reading this at home and thanks for returning it back to school!  We have included this book as well as other easy readers in our "book bags".  This week we practiced building our silent, independent reading stamina with these books and the kids have done such an awesome job!  They can do this for five whole minutes! 

                                        

A few of the stories we read this week included The Wheels on the Bike and The Recess Queen.  With these stories, we compared them to other stories or situations we have experienced, we made predictions, analyzed how the characters changed in a story, and we practiced retelling the main events. 

We learned the sight words "see" and "am".  We continued to practice identifying letters and the sounds they make.  We also learned a poem called "Families".

                            

Writing -  I'd like to introduce you to our class writing club called The Pencil Pack. :) 

This week we have learned  SO many different skills, that truly set the foundation for writing, and students are doing such a wonderful job with it all!  Students have learned that the first things writers do is come up with an idea.  That idea is something they want to share with others or teach others about.   Then they put their idea on paper with pictures, labels, and words.  Afterwards, writers look at their work each day and re-tell their story.  This is a great time for them to add more details, also known as revising.  And students are learning that "when they think they're done... they've only just begun"!  

Not only were the The Pencil Pack authors with week, but they were also problem solvers!  We learned that writers work during work time and if they get stuck they can't just sit there!  Check out all the problems we thought of and the solutions we came up with!

                 

                        

Math - This week our focus was on numbers 0-5.  We learned poems that taught us how to write these numbers and practiced writing them with the correct formation.  We have also been working on identifying a given amount on a five-frame, explaining how we know it's that many, and then identifying how many are not given.  For example, if there are 4 dots on the five frame, they know its 4 because our frame has five but this one shows 1 less which is 4.  Then they can also identify that 4 and 1 are factors of 5.  

Your child will soon be bringing home, on yellow paper, a math homework sheet.  Please have him/her practice these skills that we have been working on in the classroom and return it to school.  

Science - The weather was so nice this week, we decided to do some work in our school's outdoor classroom!                          

We also began to learn about day and night.  

Social Skills - We started our Second Step Curriculum that focuses on social/emotional learning.  Each week you will see a parent connection sheet come home, please talk about the skills on this sheet with your child.  We also had a school psychologist come into our classroom to teach us a little bit about Zones of Regulation.  This is a program that is used school-wide to help teach students how to self regulate and teach them strategies that they can use to help control their emotions.   

           

      


NEXT WEEK  - We are looking forward to learning about Johnny Appleseed, making some fun projects, tasting apples and making an apple treat!  If you were able to sign up for any of the apple related items (on the SignUp Genius that our classroom room parents sent out), THANK YOU!! 

  

Friday, September 18, 2020

Literacy:


Our Weekly News - Friday, September 18th

Dear Families, 

Even though these first two weeks of school have been a lot about routines and procedures, we have had such a great time in kindergarten so far!  Each child in this class brings such joy to our room!  It has been so much fun building our classroom community and getting to know each other! Plus... each child posted a picture and a drawing to his/her SeeSaw account today... and they are starting to enter their lunch orders independently....HUGE SUCCESS!                                   (ordering lunch)

Literacy

So far we have focused on the letters Tt, Aa, Bb, Hh, Nn, Mm, Rr, Ll, and Ii.  We have also been using hand signals to help us remember the sounds those letters make. We also learned to read the sight words "I" and "can".                                                                                                 (working in our phonics notebooks)

Each week we will be learning a new poem.  Throughout the week we will be practicing it and creating actions that go with it.  We will be gluing the poem in our poetry notebook as well as reading them in books.  If your child brings home one of these books, see if he/she can point to each word as he/she recalls and reads the poem.

A few of our read alouds have been Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Chrysanthemum.  With these stories we focused on making predictions,  retelling the story, and understanding what we read.  We were also able to make connections with these stories and tie them to our own names.  

      

Writing

We are learning how to write our names starting with an uppercase letter followed by all lowercase letters.  This can tricky, but we will get better with more practice!  We've also spent each day learning how to draw pictures using shapes and lines as well as how to fill an entire area with the details of one scene.  

    

Math

We have focused on counting 1-10 forwards and backwards and using a ten frame, identifying numbers, and identifying shapes along with their attributes.  Plus we have been doing math with our shoes!  Who knew we could learn to describe, sort, count, graph and identify data from the graph (most, fewest, equal) with our shoes?! 

This week we started Student of the Week with Mrs. Fry and got to know a little more about her.  Please see this tab at the top of this blog so you can see when it will be your child's turn!  If there's a conflict with the week your child has, just let me know, it can be changed.