Chilly Week Ahead...

Hello Everyone,

Hopefully everyone was able to enjoy the sunny but chilly weekend!  I read a quote over the weekend, "There's no such thing as bad weather, just inadequate equipment and poor planning."  I read this after my poor planning and apparel for an extremely cold morning run...  With that in mind, please make sure your student is coming to school with the right “equipment” for the elements.  Students go out to recess each day for around 20 minutes and they can get very muddy and wet in that time.  When students forget their sneakers they end up wearing their wet boots for the remainder of the day after recess, when they forget their boots they end up wearing wet sneakers for the remainder of the day...And I’m sure you can imagine what a classroom of wet boots and shoes looks like after 18 kindergartners walk all over it:)  I welcome you to send a pair of sneakers to leave overnight in his/her cubby. 

This week in kindergarten we will be continuing our exploration of holidays around the world.  Last week students had so much fun making bread and beginning to learn about Hanukkah.  We will explore other holidays such as Ramadan, Dawali, Kwanza, Christmas, and more!

Thank you very much for all of your suggestions for our community service project.  We are still trying to finalize our options weighing time, resources, and need.  Our class will talk about it and decide this week.

During Fundations we will be starting Unit 2 which moves our focus from beginning phoneme awareness to more advanced phoneme awareness.  In this unit we will learn how to blend and read three-sound short vowel words.  These are often called CVC words.  You may see students independently “tapping” our words with their fingers.  Encourage it!!!  They should be starting with their pointer finger and “tapping” it on his/her thumb, then moving on to the middle finger to the thumb and so on until all of the sounds are “tapped.”   Each sounds gets its’ own finger tap.  

We will continue building on our previous knowledge for Bridges Math by building a number line to model the number sequence from 0-10.  We will continue to practice counting forward and backward between 0-50, starting with any number in the range.  Count up and down when timing something in the oven or microwave.  You can also play hopping games where you start and stop counting.

During Number Corner (calendar) are learning to use positional and directional language to assist us.  Our new vocabulary words consist of "behind, in front of, to the left, to the right, inside, outside, under and above."  Try using this vocabulary when giving directions to your student.  They can be directions such as, "Please put your jacket in front of my jacket." or "Can we read the book that is to the left of the Legos?"  Have fun being creative!  During our

In Writer's and Reader's Workshop will be focusing on Leo Lionni.  If this author is new to you, he is famous for the books Swimmy, Fredrick, Inch By Inch, Fish is Fish and many more!  We will be comparing his books for similarities and differences. We will take our observations and create a class matrix and Venn diagram.  Students will be encouraged to work in groups to explore the plot, setting, and characters. When you are reading at home, see if you can identify these text features together:)

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to our school food drive!  We built a structure out of the cans/boxes we have so far.  As we continue to receive more food items, we will continue building!

Thank you for being such an amazing community!