Happy Holidays...

 I hope everyone is having a great holiday season!

This Week...

I hope you all are doing well and had a great weekend.  We have a lot going on this week.  We have the next round of DIBELS this week.  We will be measuring how your child is doing with letter naming fluency, phoneme segmentation (this is where we find out if your child can hear all the sounds in the words like in cat, your child can hear the /c/ /a/ /t/), and nonsense words (basically we are checking your child's ability in reading sounds of letters).  I am confident your child will do well and we will use this information to determine what your child needs to work on and needs further instruction.  In math, we are continuing to work on addition and working toward fluency of number sentences.  Please take time to review the math sheets that are brought home throughout the week and take a couple minutes to talk to your child about it.  One great thing you can do is ask your child to explain to you what to do on this sheet!

In addition, this week we will say good bye to Ms. Fordyce on Thursday.  She will be graduating and earning her teaching license at the end of the month.  I have been impressed with her this semester and loved watching her work with your children.  She had some great lessons we planned together.  I know the children will miss her, but I have told her to come back and visit.  I am also trying to have her come back and be our guest teacher when and if I am out of the building.

I hope you have a great week.  It is hard to believe it is the second week of December!

Feast Time for the Afternoon...

The afternoon had a great feast!  Thank you to everyone who sent in donations.  The children had a great time.  We are donating the left over food to the local food pantry.  Have a great Thanksgiving!

AM Feast

The AM class had a great Feast!  Thank you for all of your donations!  The children had a great time!

Feast Week...

We have a lot of exciting things planned for Monday and Tuesday.  On Monday we will be doing some simple review of letters, sounds, and blending words.  We will also have some fun by making a pattern place-mat and also be making butter for the feast.  On Tuesday, we will be having our feast at 9:30 and 1:15ish.  We have been looking forward to this day for awhile.

I will place some pictures on Tuesday or Wednesday of the event!  This week your child will also be bringing home some practice pages to read letters, sounds, and to say the sounds in words!

Have a great week!

Information...

I hope you all are having a great weekend and bracing for the possibility of snow tonight into tomorrow.  If you are watching the Bengals game...hopefully they pull out a win!  If you have not already done so, you can sign up for text messages about what is happening/important information going on in Kindergarten.  I have attached the sheet to the email if you so choose or you can text @fcd95 to (216)672-5429.

This week we are continuing our unit on addition.  The children are doing a great understanding addition is putting things together.  We are working on how to write an addition number sentence using the addition and equal sign.  You can work on this at home by practicing different stories and having your child draw a picture and write the number sentence.  In reading we are concentrating on our sounds, but more importantly blending those sounds into words.  You can work on this by placing a consonant - vowel - consonant on a paper and having your child try to figure out the word.  You can also have your child look through various books and see if they can find words they know.  We will also be working on sequencing stories. We are also beginning to increase our writing to work on learning to write simple sentences!

We are working on our feast preparations.  Our feast is November 25 at 9:30 and 1:15.  We always need volunteers for this event.  If you would like to event, please let me know.  In addition, we are asking for each child to bring in a fruit or vegetable to share (we cannot have any cherries or anything with peanuts/tree nuts).  If you would like you can always donate gallon and sandwich zip loc bags.  We also need lysol wipes!

Text Reminders...

You can sign up to receive text messages through Remind.com  You can follow the simple instructions and you will receive reminders from me about what is happening at school.  It is safe and secure and no one will see your cell phone number!  You will not be able to respond to the text message.  It is a simple way to receive reminders about kindergarten!

This Week...

I hope you all had a great weekend!  I know my family did as we did a little traveling and we found a new puppy (standard poodle) to join our family in December.  She is the cutest little thing...I am sure the kids will hear a lot about Reese when she comes home...she is only 4 weeks right now.  I also cannot believe we are in the second week of November already.  We do have a lot of fun things happening this month for the children.  There will be more information coming home mid-week.

We are continuing to work on the letters and sounds of the alphabet.  In addition, we are working on blending sounds to read simple words.  Some of the words we are reading are make-believe.  This is so the children can have practice at reading.  We also then can decide if the word is a real word and make believe word.  The words are all 3 letters (consonant-vowel-consonant).  A word that may pop up would be roc and your child may think it is a real word because it sounds like rock.  We would tell them this is a real word because developmentally they are not ready for the -ck ending and we are working on reading not spelling at this time.

We are also beginning more writing and the children are working on writing the sounds they hear in words.  I am amazed by what the children can hear and how much they are loving to write.  I love when the children bring me in fun stories they have written at home.  I hope your child has been trying to write at home.  When encouraging your child to write, do not worry about spelling, but what they actually hear in the words.  Today we are working on book reports about what we thought about the book "A Bed for the Winter!"

In math we are beginning simple addition.  This week we will learn about the idea of putting things together and telling addition stories.  For example, a child has 2 pieces of candy and then she received 1 more.  Some children are having difficulty with number identification; therefore, please take a few minutes to practice identifying numbers to 10.  This will help when your child has to write addition number sentences.

Tens Frame...

The children had a lot of fun working with tens frame this week.  We worked on ways to make 10.  The children used cubes to create the various possibilities.  It was great to listen to the children talking about how 7 and 3 make 10, 4 and 6 make 10, etc.

K-PALS...

During our reading groups certain children use K-PALS.  You may have seen these sheets coming home, but here are two students demonstrating how we use K-PALS with a friend.

Pumpkins...

On Friday we had a lot of pumpkin fun!  We read books about pumpkins and also wrote facts about pumpkins.  We also learned about the pumpkin life cycle.  We sequenced the life cycle and turned them into a headband!

I hope everyone had a great Halloween...Whitney sure did!

Leaf Man...

We read "Leaf Man" this past week.  We took a nature walk and observed the area.  Then, we observed various leaves and then we created our own leaf man.  The children then shared their leaf man and described it to their classmates.

Fun Books...

I had to run into my library in Kenton County the other day and I noticed this flyer with 50 great books to read in kindergarten.  We will be reading some of these in school, but thought you may want to try and find some of these books at your local library!

Book Fair...

We will be going to the book fair tomorrow, Tuesday the 21st!  We will also have literacy night tomorrow from 6-8.  I hope to see everyone there!  I'll be there with my kiddos!

This Week...

In reading we will be reading "Animals in the Grasslands."  It is one of my favorite non-fiction books we read.  The children will learn about the various animals that live in the grasslands and learn about baby animals.  As we read this story and other stories, we will be identifying the main idea of the text.  We will also be working on sequencing.  The children will also work on sight words, letter names, and sounds.  I am super impressed by the children as they all can identify the first sound of words.  We are working on breaking words into further parts.  This means we are having the children take a word and say the first sound and the rest of the word (bat would be "b" "at" and turtle would be "t" "urtle."

In math we are working with the number 10.  The children will be working on various combinations of 10.  This is beginning the preparation in teaching the children how to add and how to write number sentences.  Yes, the children will be writing addition number sentences in the upcoming weeks!  It is amazing how well the children are doing with the preparation in this skill.

This Week...

This week we will be continuing to work on our sight words (I, am, little, then, a, to, have, is).  We
will be delving in to science with this new reading street unit and reading books about nature, flowers, and animals.  I think the children will love it!  We will be reading "Flowers" and learning about the parts of a plant.  We will also be learning the sound of a.  The children will also learn how to begin blending and reading real and make-believe words.  Some of the words we will learn are: mat, tam, at, sat, ats, tas.  In math, we will be working with numbers 7 and 8.  We are also working on decomposing numbers.  One great site you can go to play a game to help with decomposing numbers and working with 5 frames is: http://illuminations.nctm.org/Activity.aspx?id=3564

Math Game...

Yesterday we learned how to play "Steal the Card."  The children put number cards in line and then their friend "steals" a card and then figure out the missing card.  The children loved trying to trick their friends.  It was great to see the children collaborating and working together!

A Peek into this Week...

We will be reading Dig, Dig, Digging this week.  The children will work on classifying and categorizing (sorting).  I think the children will love this book as it deals with construction and machines!  We will be working with learning the letter sound of Tt.  The children should know the sound of Mm when shown the letter card of m.  If children are excelling, we are working on all the letter sounds and blending of words.  If your child is having difficulty, we are working with letter names and the sound of m.

We will begin to work with numbers 6-10.  The children will work on building and modeling the those numbers.  In addition, we will learn how to read the number words for 6-10.  We will continue to practice greater and less than.  I assessed the children on Thursday and I noticed many children had a difficult time with less than.  Children will be bringing home their assessments tomorrow.

It is important to note the end of the quarter is Oct. 24 and the children should be able to name all their letters and know approximately 6 sounds.  In math, children should be able to count to 25 (100 by the end of the year) and write their numbers to 10 (20 by the end of the year).

Reading PALS...

This week we started our K-PALS reading program.  The children have a reading pal and they practice helping each other with letters and sounds.  This week we focused on learning how to be a good partner and taking turns.  The children did an awesome job working together!  I was quite impressed.

Last Week Fun...

The children have had a blast"reading" together!  

 

The children made up a game with the community helper pictures!  It was great listening to their conversation!

 

Students working together to play our math game "Cover-All!"

A Peek at this Week...

 

This week we will be learning about community helpers.  We will also be classifying and categorizing.  The children will have to sort various items and pictures into groups and then label those groups.  We are also working with the sight words "the" "little" "I" and "am."  A great way to practice these words is to write them on a card and mix them up and play a matching game.  You can also put them around the house and have your child go on a hunt for the cards.  Finally, we are working with the last part of the alphabet for letter identification.  Your child should be able to identify all the uppercase and lowercase letters.  I will be reassessing the children on this skill and will resend home another alphabet assessment checklist at the end of the week or beginning of next week. 

In math we will be working with greater and less than.  We will delve into comparing numbers.  We are also working on our counting.  Children should be able to count to 25 and by 100 by the end of the year.  I have noticed a lot of children have difficulty counting the "teen" numbers.  The only way to work on this is just repeated practice.

Friday Fun...

We had a great "Plaid" Day on Friday with our stuffed animals.  The children had a blast sharing their animals and sequencing what we did.  We also figured out the first sound of our animal and matched it to our friends' stuffed animals!

Pl