Week 9- Costumes

Our theme this week is Costumes. We will have several read alouds as we explore this topic:

Froggy’s Halloween,Hoot Owl-Master of Disguise, and 10 Trick-or-Treaters- a Halloween Counting Book. We will be practicing our comprehension skills of making connections and predicting.

We will be learning about asking and answering questions, including the use of a question mark. Differentiating between asking a question and making a comment can be a bit tricky for Kinders.

We will continue to work on identifying and generating rhyming words.

This week we begin work in writing that will be part of a PBL (Project Based Learning). Students will be asking and answering questions to get to know each other better. This writing work is likely to span several weeks. 

In math, we continue our work with numbers up to 10.

Monday is a busy day with a class trip to the Book Fair and a visit from the Police Department.

Our class will have PE the afternoon of our costume day so please be sure that your child has appropriate shoes for active play.

Our costume parade will take place at 10:45 on Tuesday. Parents are welcome to come to the lunchroom to watch.  This makes it so our parade can move smoothly through the classrooms and halls. We do need a parent or two to walk with our class to help make sure we are all moving through the rooms together in our group.  These parents will need to be here a few minutes before the parade starts. First two to email me get the gig.

A few notes on costumes: Our principals have asked for no scary masks and have reminded us that costumes must cover us up the same as our uniforms. When using face paint, please be mindful of how much and how long the child will be wearing it, as some children may have a reaction if it is left on for extended amounts of time- you may want to save the paint for evening festivities.

HOMEWORK

Reading:
10 minutes each night. Reading can include reading stories, the poems in the binder, sight words, and working on alphabet sounds and letter names. Please make sure sight words are a small portion of your child's homework each night.

Math:
Remember, math should be done for 10 minutes.
Monday- C.5 Count using stickers - up to 10

Tuesday -No homework tonight! We hope your family is able to enjoy some seasonal memory making!

Wednesday- C.6 Count on ten frames - up to 10

Thursday- C.7 Show numbers on ten frames - up to 10

Skills can be revisited and repeated to increase your child's automaticity.

Our First STEM Challenge

We had our first STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and math) building challenge this week and I was really surprised with how well the students did.

We learned about sun and shade and their challenge was to build a tent to cover an ice cube to slow down the melting of it outside in the sun.

The creativity was flowing, the determination and focus was astounding and the cooperation and compromise of working with partners was so impressive!

I cannot wait to introduce more STEM challenges and have our little problem solvers become even stronger with this skill!

Week 8- Sun and Shade

This week we will be learning about sun and shade/shadows. We will be reading the books Moonbear's Shadow and Guess Whose Shadow as well as some excerpts from some nonfiction texts.

We have the delightful book Frog on a Log? to help us firm up our rhyming skill this week. 

We will be thinking about and connecting to our character's feelings. This involves identifying feelings and thinking about the different experiences we have had with these feelings. We will be carrying over this focus to our writing.

We will also be learning about how different punctuation marks mean that sentences should be read in different ways. A period means that we read with a regular voice, but an exclamation point means that we read with a strong feeling.

We are starting a new unit in math, in which we will be focusing on reading writing, and understanding numbers up to 10.

Students will be participating in their first STEM building challenge this week! This challenge is to create a shady spot for their ice cube and to observe and record the effects of sun and shade.

In hopes of reaching our end of the year goal for mastering sight words, it is ideal for your child to be passing their list every week or two. To pass their list they need to be able to identify the words rather quickly and out of order. I am sharing this goal, not to stress you out, but to let you know that a strong sight word base help builds confident readers and that you can help your child build this foundational skill by visiting these sight words as part of your child's homework routine. Sight word practice lends itself well to various games as well as on-the-go practice. Now that many of us have mastered our letter names and sounds (and the rest of us are closing in on them fast), now is the perfect time to include some quick sight word practice as part of our reading homework time. This need only be 2 or 3 minutes. I recommend making simple index card style flash cards with/for your child as they can be used in so many fun ways. 

 

A few fun things to do with flash cards: 

* Use them as passwords for specific places - say to get out of the car or on the fridge to get a snack, etc.

* Play Slap It: Lay out 3 sight words, say a word or spell it out, and the child slaps the correct card.  It helps to have the child say and spell the words too. You can switch roles and have them identify words for you or another family member to slap as well.

 

* Play Move It: Place cards around the room. Give a physical direction and state a sightworde. Some examples- skip over to  the word "he", monster stomp to the word "they", tip toe to the word "we". 

* Make a double set of cards to play Memory and Go Fish.

HOMEWORK

Reading:
10 minutes each night. Reading can include reading stories, the poems in the binder, sight words, and working on alphabet sounds and letter names.

Math:
Remember, math should be done for 10 minutes.
Monday- C.1 Learn to count to 10

Tuesday -C.2 Count to 10

Wednesday- C.3  Count dots - up to 10

Thursday- C.4 Count blocks - up to 10

Skills can be revisited and repeated to increase your child's automaticity. 

Week 7 - Seasons (Fall)

This week, much of our learning will center around the changing of the seasons. We will be examining fall leaves and using them as a topic for writing and to sort during math. Thank you for the plethora of leaves that have been provided! Our comparisons shall be rich indeed.

We will be working to produce rhyming words in addition to identifying them.

We have several wonderful books that we will be reading this week: Tap the Magic Tree, Bear Feels Sick, Little Tree, and A Tree For All Seasons.

We will be using an OWL chart (Observations- Wonderings- and Learnings) in science to record our thoughts about the changing seasons.

In math, we will continue to work with the concepts of More and Less. We will also be working with patterning.

The local Firefighters are scheduled to come visit us this week!

I was very impressed last week with how well the students are undertaking the roles of listener and speaker!

As most of the class is finishing up learning all their letter names and sounds, I encourage you to keep studying with them at home. Being able to recognize the letter and the sound it makes (automatically, without having to think or guess) will help them immensely when we start our reading strategies and learning how to decode words. 

HOMEWORK

Reading:
10 minutes each night. Reading can include reading stories, the poems in the binder, sight words, and working on alphabet sounds and letter names. I strongly recommend having your child sing and act the Zoo Phonics song with you. These animals serve as fun anchors to the all important letters and sounds that we use so much!

Math:
Remember, math should be done for 10 minutes.
Monday- G.3 Fewer and more - compare by counting

Tuesday -G.5 Fewer, more, and same

Wednesday- H.1 Color patterns

Thursday- H.2 Size patterns

Skills can be revisited and repeated to increase your child's automaticity. 

Week 6- Firefighters

This week, our thematic focus will be firefighters. We will continue exploring a topic through both fiction and nonfiction. We are revisiting many important concepts this week including:

* fiction vs nonfiction

* purpose

* parts of the book and how they help us get ready for the book

* author/illustrator

* how characters are feeling throughout a story

We also continue our focuses on letter names and sounds, as well as rhyming. We have some fun and valuable rhyming activities centered around the whimsical song Down by the Bay (a personal childhood favorite). 

In writing, we are continuing our writing about what we enjoy doing.

In math, we are continuing our work with sorting by attributes and working on the concepts of same number and more than.

We are also really delving into the oh-so-important skills involved in developing strong Habits of Discussion. These are the specific jobs we have as a speaker and as a listener. We will be creating a chart and using hand movements to help us remember to use these skills in our discussions. 

These jobs include:

Speaker:                                                            

* Look at the audience

* Speak “loud and proud” 

* Speak in whole sentences

* Use people’s names

Listener:

* Track the speaker

* Keep my hands down and still

* Wait until it is my turn to talk

• This is so important: truly listening to what they are saying AND I give them time to think when they need it.

* Time or help?

• This is the question you ask if someone seems to be struggling
• Help is reminders, not just the answer

As we transition into Fall, our weather is fluctuating. Please send in a jacket or sweatshirt with your child- just in case the day turns chilly.

If you get a chance, please collect and send in some colorful leaves. During the week of October 16th, we will be exploring the changing leaves of autumn. I would like to be able to have students observe and sort a variety of real leaves. We are looking for different shapes and colors. We would appreciate any you could contribute to our class. Time spent collecting counts as volunteer time :)

HOMEWORK

Reading:
10 minutes each night. Reading can include reading stories, the poems in the binder, and working on alphabet sounds and letter names. I strongly recommend having your child sing and act the Zoo Phonics song with you. These animals serve as fun anchors to the all important letters and sounds that we use so much!

Math:
Remember, math should be done for 10 minutes.
Monday- P.5 Classify and sort by color

Tuesday -P.6 Classify and sort by shape

Wednesday- P.7 Classify and sort

Thursday- P.8 Count shapes in a Venn diagram