Dear Parents and Friends,
Last week was our first week checking out books from our school library. The children were very excited about picking out a book to bring home. Please enjoy those books with your family. We highly encourage you to remind your child what day they have library. If they bring their book back they get a chance to take out a new book each week. As a reminder Mrs. McCants has library on Thursdays and Mrs. Rawling has library on Fridays. In Math, we are continuing to focus on counting, as well as sorting various materials. We are making equal sets and the children are really enjoying these activities a great deal. We are also beginning to record different data. This will be a difficult concept at first, but with continued support and encouragement, we are positive this will become easier and easier! We will continue with our theme, I am Amazing, I Feel Fine! This weeks focus is on feelings. We will explore how we feel in different situations and how many feelings we have in a week. What a Fantastic First week with KinderRoo!! The kids were shocked at the antics that KinderRoo displayed in our hallway. Earlier in the week KinderRoo made a mess with markers and macaroni. Later on in the week there were apples everywhere! We just LOVED it!! This week our letter focus is Ss and Dd. Please continue to reinforce the letters Mm and Aa at home. Make sure to check in with your child and ask what KinderRoo was up to on Tuesday and Thursday. We will also continue with homework this week. We will be reading Look At Me Know! Please read this story each night with your child. You can read it with them or read a page and then have your child read it after you. The importance about this “homework”, is simply having them point to each word as they say it - read the word with their finger under it then moving it to the next word. This should NOT be stressful or take very long. Please let us know if you are having any problems with the homework. Keep in mind that we are building confidence in their reading abilities and memorizing is fine at this point. We are trying to encourage and make them believe that they are truly readers…because THEY ARE! We will also continue to reinforce what the job of the author is and the illustrator is. We wanted to ask for your help with our morning drop off and breakfast routine. We have a lot of children coming into the classroom hungry and not getting their breakfast. If your child does not eat breakfast at home and you would like for them to eat breakfast at school PLEASE make sure you send them in the building for breakfast. Do not have them go outside to the playground. Once they get on the playground they do not want to go in and have their breakfast. The cafeteria does offer a breakfast bag to go but this should be for students that come into school after 7:50. PLEASE do not drop your child off on the playground if they need breakfast-scoot them inside. Thank you for your support. Have a Great Week! Amy and Ashley
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Dear Parents and Friends,
Happy Monday!! I hope everyone is ready for our first FIVE day school week! We have had a great start to our school year. We are settling in nicely to our rules and routines. Our drop off routine is getting better and better as well as our pick up at the end of the day. Please be sure to let a teacher know when you are leaving with your child. Again, we thank all of you for your continued support! In Math, we have done lots of counting - friends, manipulatives, items at school, etc. We have spent a good amount of time exploring our kindergarten math materials. Becoming familiar with our math materials will be very important in the future. This week we will be looking at different attributes of buttons and other items. We will also sort items into different categories. We will be beginning our new theme this week, I am Amazing, I Feel Fine!, which this week focuses on how we are all different, no one looks the same and we are ALL special because all of us are good at different things. This is a great Unit of study for this time of year. It really builds the confidence in our students. We are beginning our letter recognition in reading this week, focusing on the letters Mm and Aa. Our special helper, KinderRoo and her baby Joey will be doing antics when a new letter arrives. We never know what KinderRoo will be messing up our hallway with. KinderRoo’s antics are definitely a highlight of our Kindergartners day and they SO help the children learn their letters and sounds. These letters are a secret each week, so please do not tell your child what the letters of the week are. Thank you in advance for playing along with us. You will enjoy your child’s stories each evening…PROMISE!! We will also begin homework this week. We will be reading The Party Please read this story each night with your child. You can read it with them or read a page and then have your child read it after you. The importance about this “homework”, is simply having them point to each word as they say it - read the word with their finger under it then moving it to the next word. This should NOT be stressful or take very long. Reading it once through is fine! For the first half of the year we are building confidence in their reading abilities. We are trying to encourage and make them believe that they are truly readers! We will also continue to reinforce what the job of the author is and the illustrator is. That is all of the new NEWS that we have in Kindergarten this week!! If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us. Have a Great week! Amy and Ashley Dear Parents and Friends,
Happy Second week of school! What a great three days of Kindergarten we have had. We are all adjusting well to all of the new rules and routines of Kindergarten. We are pleased with all of our students efforts and accomplishments. This week, we will continue with our Welcome To School theme focusing on the importance of listening and following directions. Our themes change every two weeks. Be sure to send your child’s yellow folder back to school each day so you will receive our notices. In Math, we will continue to focus on counting and free exploration with manipulatives. The children seem to really enjoy exploring and becoming familiar with the materials we will be using frequently. It has been fun interacting with all the kids watching them show us what they know. In Reading, we are focusing on upper and lower case letters. We will also start talking about how each letter makes a different sound. This may be a difficult concept at first, but with continued exposure and practice, these concepts will become easier and easier. We are concentrating on name activities as well. Any extra practice or exposure at home would be of great benefit. Thank you for your support!! Thank you SO very much for sending in a snack each day with your child!! We have only had 4 snack times together and they already know where to get their snack from...No one has eaten their lunch for snack yet so we are doing GREAT. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are SO looking forward to a Wonderful year in Kindergarten!! Thank you all for all of your support! As a reminder, morning drop off is no earlier than 7:40 and afternoon pick up is 2:35-2:40. Have a Great week! Amy and Ashley Dear Family and Friends, What an absolutely fabulous weekend it was in our area! It was great to see the kids with a little sun on their cheeks and happiness in their hearts. Since we have a short week this week we decided that we would combine this week and next week in our weekly update. We have reached our final theme, Earth Day is Every Day. This final theme pauses to appreciate the variety, beauty, and wonder of the natural world before exploring the concept of stewardship for our delicate planet Earth. We will learn the importance of recycling, reusing and reducing our waste. We will even look for ways to take care of our own community! Our KinderRoots book this week will be, Too Busy to Sleep, which focuses on the sound that /ng/ makes when they are found together. We tweak this concept slightly in our classes and we discuss /ing/…It really is easier for us to teach! Our last KinderRoots book will be sent home next week and it will be Shep the Sheep and it will focus on the sound that /sh/ produces. Let’s make these last two books our best yet! For the remainder of the year in math we are going to be reviewing back to previously taught concepts. We will reintroduce some of our favorite math games and introduce some fun new ones! We will continue to talk about geometry, number sense, patterns, puzzles and more. We will finish our Opinion writing unit next week! This really has been an enjoyable unit. The kids are seeing problems not just with our small community (home and school)! They really are seeing the world differently. They are beginning to see that problems exists in our world like littering, and wasting materials. Not only do they see problems in the world, they are suggesting solutions to improve the problems. We have a lot of work ahead of us to get ready for kindergarten graduation so we will be very busy! Summer is right around the corner and the kids are getting excited. We have had a wonderful year and can’t wait to celebrate the end of the year with all of you! LOOKING AHEAD… -Last Day of School June 13th: Kindergarten Graduation! More Information to follow. Have a great Day!! Mrs. McCants & Mrs. Rawling Dear Family and Friends,
What a great weekend! As the weather begins to warm up we encourage families to enjoy being outside as much as possible. It has been a rainy spring and we could all use a little vitamin D! This week we will continue with our theme, Water Wonders. This week we will learn the importance of water to all living things. Together we will also identify different purposes of water. We will learn about water in our environment as it recycles from Earth’s surface to the atmosphere and back again. By the end of the week we will understand the importance of caring for our Earth’s most wondrous natural element! Our new KinderRoots book will be, A Day at the Farm, which focuses on the sounds that /ee/ and /ea/ make when they are found together. The books are going to continue to get more challenging as we get closer to the end of the school year. Just think…There are only two more books after this one! Please continue to practice reading with your child. In math we will finish our official lessons on the teen numbers however, we will continue practicing games to gain mastery in teen number compositions. We will begin our last small unit in math which involves measuring and comparing weights. Measuring and comparing weight is always a fun concept to teach! We are still in our Opinion writing unit and we love this unit! Everyone is beginning to write wth a solid purpose. We are starting to include reasons why problems exists and give helpful suggestions or solutions. We will continue to encourage independence while writing because they CAN do it! *We could really use extra snacks in the classroom to help us get through the remainder of the year. If you are out and about and thinking of us we would appreciate it! Ideas: Goldfish, granola bars, graham crackers, popcorn etc… LOOKING AHEAD… -No School Monday, May 27th: Memorial Day -Last Day of School June 13th: Kindergarten Graduation! More Information to follow. Have a great Day!! Mrs. McCants & Mrs. Rawling Dear Family and Friends,
Hopefully everyone enjoyed their weekend. For those of you that are moms we hope that you all had a fantastic Mother’s Day. Being a mom is a tough job, but it’s also one of the best jobs around! This week we will begin a new theme, Water Wonders. This week we will expand our knowledge of animals by exploring creatures that inhabit the water, particularly fish! We will discover how these creatures are similar to and different from people and other animals that we studied previously. We will also learn about fish as pets and fish in the wild. Our new KinderRoots book will be, Big Bob’s Bad Day, which focuses on the letter Rr. Again, this book is challenging! Continue practicing each night with your child. If they need a break from reading you can always have fun with buddy reading. Take turns reading sentences or pages. In math we are really looking closely at teen numbers. We will be learning that teen numbers are 10+some more. We will be doing a lot of work with ten frames and number identification. The teen numbers are still tricky for some however, it is getting easier with practice! Our opinion writing unit is well underway. We will be learning that it is important to get our readers attention by giving specific examples why our problems exist. We will also learn that we need to make sure we get our pieces to people that can help fix our problems. This unit has already been so much fun because they kids have really taken ownership of their problems and writing! LOOKING AHEAD… -No School May 27th: Memorial Day -Last Day of School June 13th: Kindergarten Graduation! More Information to follow. Have a great Day!! Mrs. McCants & Mrs. Rawling Dear Family and Friends,
We send our apologies for being a day late for our family update. Meeting our future kindergarteners set us off a day for our planning. We hope that you all enjoyed your extended weekend! We finally have a normal week and typical schedule in kindergarten. This week we will continue our theme, Fur and Feathers. We will introduce characteristics of mammals and birds this week. We are going to build on information that we learned during previous units. We will be classifying animals by their characteristics, discussing the human body and bringing back some information about farm animals. Our new KinderRoots book will be, Hot Muffins!, which focuses on the letter Hh. This book is a challenging book! All that we ask is that you continue to read with you child every night. If the text seems too difficult for your child you may wish to read the text along with them. Have your child practice by pointing to each word as they read. We continue to work on math fluency activities. We have been playing games that help us practice this new skill. As we move forward we will be working on our combinations of ten and ways to make ten. Investigating and understanding numbers and how they work is critical in setting up a strong foundation for math skills! We are officially in our opinion writing unit. During this unit we ask the children to look for problems all around them. They have been thinking about problems at home and school. Not only are they going to identify problems but they are going to be learning why their problems exist and how the problems can be fixed. LOOKING AHEAD… -No School May 27th, Memorial Day -Last Day of School June 13th: Kindergarten Graduation! More Information to follow. Have a great Day!! Mrs. McCants & Mrs. Rawling Dear Family and Friends,
We have made it to another Monday. This week is going to be very busy in kindergarten. We have a lot to do to get ready for our spring concert! This week we will begin a new theme, Fur and Feathers which will focus on which animals make good pets and how to care for them. We will also discuss what animals would not make good pets and why they may be a problem. Our new KinderRoots book will be, Lost!, which focuses on the letter Ll. Students worked so hard reading our last book, even when the writing was smaller and there were more words on the page. Some of the green words this week are very challenging but, with continued practice the words will seem to get easier! We talked about how even long words can be sounded out. In math we are putting emphasis on subtraction fluency within 5. We will continue playing games that allow us to practice our addition and subtraction facts. We will be checking in with students this week to see how they are coming along with their math fact fluency. This week is an exciting week in writing. We are entering our final unit on persuasive writing. This week we will be giving the kids an unassisted writing prompt. These writing prompts allow us to see what we can work on in our writing. We will also have time to begin our first writing lesson in this new unit. LOOKING AHEAD…… Our Spring Concert will be held on Wednesday, May 1, 2019 @ 6:30p.m. and doors will open at 6:00p.m. On Friday, May 3rd, there will be NO school for Kindergarten. All other grades WILL have school. Have a great Day!! Mrs. McCants & Mrs. Rawling Math: Following our Investigations Math curriculum allows us to have a lot of fun with math. After a 10-15 minute whole group lesson we spend the rest of our math time in math workshop. During our math workshop we learn math games that help us learn new concepts and skills.Reading: We follow the Success For All (SFA) reading program. This program is extremely successful! We focus on phonemic awareness skills such as beginning sounds, segmenting sounds, rhyming and syllables. We introduce and teach all letter names and sounds. Once students master the foundational skills we move on to reading words and sentences.Writing: In Kindergarten we follow a writing workshop model by Lucy Calkins. This model allows for students to write independently. By the end of the school year our students truly believe that they are authors and illustrators because THEY ARE!
Our Spring Field Trip to East Hill FarmHandwriting CAN be fun!Food and Science Go Together Nicely! |