Life in Kindergarten

I am amazed at how quickly the children have settled into Kindergarten!  Their understanding of the expectations and daily routines has impressed me.  The children are already able to enter the classroom and complete their morning jobs with few or no reminders from me!  Our morning jobs consist of unpacking our backpacks, making our lunch choices, hanging up our belongings, taking attendance, and then waiting in a morning meeting circle.

Reminders:
~ Scholastic Book Orders are due this Monday.  You can either submit an order online or send the paper order to school in your child's take home folder.
~ Please make sure your child always has a change of clothes in his/her backpack in case of bathroom accidents or clothes getting wet on the playground.

      This week in Reading we:

• Spent time buddy reading and reading to self.
• Continued to read, sort, and identify letters in our names.
• Learned about rhyming words and practiced identifying rhyming words in the song Did You Ever See? and the book The Pout Pout Fish in the Big Big Dark.
• Explored letters through the use of magnetic letters.
• Created a class Chicka Chicka Boom Boom book.  We also made Chicka Chicka Boom Boom name trees.  I wouldn't be surprised if you've heard your child reciting phrases from Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! 

      This week in Writing we:

• Wrote every day using the "think, draw, write" process.
• Began using writing folders to hold our daily writing.
• Learned the phrase "When you're done, you've just begun!".  This means the children must be working for the whole writing period.  If they think they're done they can either add more details to a piece of writing or begin a new piece.
• Wrote about our hopes and dreams for Kindergarten.

      This week in Math we:

• Learned about sorting.  Each child sorted a pile of buttons based on attributes they identified.
• Practiced counting backwards and learned about the number zero as the number that means "none."  We sang the song 5 Little Monkeys and used monkey puppets to act out this song and count down to zero.  Ask your child to teach you this song!!
• Identified the numbers 1 and 2 and explored these numbers through the use of concrete objects.
• Created a birthday bar graph and talked about the birthday data (the month with the most birthdays, the least birthday, etc.).
• Completed our math routines daily.  Our math routines currently consist of calendar, weather, days of school, and attendance data.  We will do math routines every day.

One final note: We will only be having one snack a day.  You no longer need to send your child to school with a morning and afternoon snack.

Enjoy what looks to be like a beautiful weekend!
~ Miss Dutremble