In need of Mugs!!

Hello Everyone,

I hope everyone is staying warm with this new extremely frigid weather.  Thank you for sending your students in with lots of layers!  Although the kindergarten classes stayed inside on Monday, it’s great to have the layers just in case we decide to go out to get some fresh air.  

This is what life looks like when you are trying to take a picture of 35 reindeer:)

Missing Reindeer...

Your students may tell you that I finally moved into my new house!  Sometimes during literacy this comes up as a non-fiction event for me to write about and they have been asking me for updates.

This week we will be focusing on uppercase letters and tapping out words in Fundations.  The uppercase letters this week will be A, B, C, D, E, F, G, & H.  Students should now be displaying a growing confidence in all of their lowercase letter formation and in the beginning stages of their uppercase.  The student packets coming home today will provide excellent practice over the winter break.  Try asking your student questions such as, “What says /a/ (like a in the beginning of “apple”)?” or “What says /g/?”   

In Bridges we are moving into Unit 4.  We will be extending our rote counting to 40 and counting objects will be extended to 20 (counting on, one-to-one correspondence, counting to answer, “How many?”).  Our hands on activities will continue to focus on representational addition with sums to 10 and subtraction with minuends to 10.

During theme this week we will be collaborating with the other kindergarten classrooms and watching the Polar Express and focusing on christmas and the chinese new year.  We recently read the Polar Express book and after each viewing we will be comparing and contrasting the book and movie.      

On Friday morning we will celebrate our winter break with a class breakfast.  I will bring in hot chocolate and strawberries.  If anyone else would like to bring in anything, please feel free to let me know what you would like to send in.  The breakfast will go from 9-9:30am.  In the afternoon we will have an assembly in the gym from 12:20-1:00pm..

Our community service project will be making dog and cat treats for a local animal shelter.  Animals in need appreciate love and kindness too:)

Many parents have asked me about the Brain Break video we have been watching in class.  It’s called “What I Am” and is part of a Sesame Street production.  You can google it on YouTube, the students love it and are starting to sing a long and understand what the song is saying.  We usually dance around to wake up our brains for our next learning adventure.   

I will be sending you more information before I leave about Lexia.  Some parents have been asking about it but some students are still not able to login.  If Lexia is new to you I will send you more information about this literacy program available to access at home.  

Students have been eagerly practicing their sight words in class and I have noticed a lot of students coming in to tell me they have been practicing at home.  Thank you for all of your hard work!  There has been a slight change in the sight word list for kindergarten and I was unaware of it.  If you would like to continue practicing at home here are some words you can add to your list:)  These will be the ones they will be expected to know leaving kindergarten.  

no

is

can

me

you

and

he

at

a

so

on

in

up

am

we

like

see

I

go

it

do

an

the

my

to

We will be making a craft tomorrow that will be coming home on Friday but WE NEED EACH CHILD TO BRING IN A MUG.  The mug will come back home on Friday and will not be glued or painted.  I just can’t tell you what they will be doing with it.  If you have an extra mug, please do not hesitate to send it in:)  

Thank you again and I am sorry you are receiving this so late!

-Jenn

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!

We are back from Thanksgiving!!!

Hi Everyone-

I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful and full of great food and wonderful moments with your family.  

This week, we started off with a field trip to the Flynn Theater to see a play series titled, “The Teacher From the Black Lagoon & Other Storybooks.”  This performance was a musical revue based on favorite books for young readers. The musical was made up of vignettes created by talented writers and performed by a cast of five actors. It featured seven picture books, The Ant and the Grasshopper, Dogzilla, Teacher From the Black Lagoon, I Want My Hat Back, Grumpy Bird, Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, & Love, Splat. Some of the musicals were funny, some were poignant, but all were told in a delightfully entertaining in an accessible way while emphasizing the joy and adventure of reading!  Ask your student which play was their favorite?  Or, which book would they like to read now that you have seen the play?

For the three weeks leading to our Holiday break, we will be studying "Holiday Traditions Around the World".  We will be looking specifically at Hanukkah, Christmas (in many countries), and Kwanzaa.  We will read stories, sing songs, play games, create works of art, and watch video clips supporting these special celebrations.  If you have any special project or information you would like to share with us around these Holidays, please let contact me to set up a time to join us!

As we kick off our holiday studies of celebrations from around the world, I would like our class to participate in a community service project.  I have a few ideas in mind but welcome any suggestions you may have. I would love any suggestions you have!! The project will take place during the last week before winter break.  Community service projects help students understand what it means to be part of a community.  Through these types of projects, they are able to experience two communities.  

The first one is the community they were introduced to the project from, usually the community in which students work and learn, our classroom, as they undertake the community service learning project. They are working with each other and as they work on the project, students build relationships, and become more of a cohesive unit gaining a sense of group identity.  

There is also the community that the students serve. As students begin to help their school, neighborhood, town or the natural world, they develop a relationship with that community and a feeling of membership in it. Students also begin to understand they are a member of many different communities.   

Focusing on other learning in our classroom, our Fundations learning will focus on our two remaining keyword letter sounds ‘qu’ and ‘z.’  I can’t believe we have learned all of our lower case letters and their sounds already!  The keyword for ‘qu’ as you may have guessed is queen and the keyword for ‘z’ is zebra.  A continuous review of all letters and sounds is very important for student growth and literacy development.  Try playing the game “I Spy” with letter sounds, such as, “I Spy something that starts with an ‘a’.”  Your student will then need to think of the letter sound and which objects start with that sound.

During Bridges we will start the week off by continuing and expanding our study of numbers to 10.  Some of our activities will include matching numerals and quantities, counting forward and backward, reading numerals, comparing quantities and numbers to determine more and less.  Emphasis is on ordering numbers, using ten frames, number cards, craft sticks and unifix cubes.  You can continue this learning at home by playing games by matching number cards, similar to the classic Memory game, putting number cards in order around the house, or something as simple as flash and show the numbers to each other.  

We will turn our attention to Laura Numeroff for our newest author study.  Students were so creative with Mo Willems, I can’t wait to see what they come up with for our new adventure!  If you are unfamiliar with Laura Numeroff, she is the author who has become famous for her If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, If You Give a Moose a Muffin, If You Give a Pig a Pancake, etc. books.

Our Reader’s Workshop focus will continue building on our prior knowledge and learning from the past 60 days we have been in school.  We will move our focus to tracking our reading by using our pointer finger to match the words we are reading on the page.  As we are continuing our growth as readers, we will also be learning more about developing our skills as writers during Writer’s Workshop.

We will continue to look back at our writing pieces of the past and begin to add more detail to our pictures and stories.  When students are telling you a story at home, try to encourage them to expand their stories by asking them specific questions or provide them prompts to detail their thinking.  

Winter is here!  Yippee!  How about that snow and slush?  Please remember hats, mittens, coats, snow pants, and extra shoes for inside time.  LABEL all items please...those black mittens look all the same to me.  If you and your family are in need of some of these items, please let me know and I will try use some local resources to help out!

I think that is all for now!  If I think of anything else I will keep you posted!  Thank you for being such an involved community of parents!

-Jenn