Hello Families!
You know what? Your kids are amazing - our class is amazing. On Friday we were doing the "Cinderella Greeting" where we take off one shoe, put the shoes in the middle of the circle and then each child takes one, presents it to the owner and the two greet each other. Well, the evacuation drill alarm went off and we had to quickly line up and leave the building and your kids were pros! With one shoe on and carrying the other! As soon as we got outside they put their other shoe on and walked up the block - no questions, complaints - so responsible and mature! My heart swelled. Anyway, here is the news for this week...
NO TOYS: Initially, individual classrooms had a "no toys in school" rule. Now the whole of MSC has that rule - not even toys at recess due to issues surrounding loss and conflict. Thanks for your help with this.
LICE: There is a case of lice in another kindergarten classroom. Please be diligent and proactive and check your child's hair for the next couple of weeks. Be aware of excessive itchiness. Also, if your child has longer hair it is safest for them to wear it up. Thank you!
HALLOWEEN: MSC doesn't celebrate holidays and they do not allow costumes to be worn to school on Halloween.
REQUEST: I need 20 - 22 grocery store paper bags. They will be used for a very fun project we will be doing to celebrate "Old Favorite" books! We will be creating costumes out of the bags and then will join an "Old Favorite Book Parade" that the entire kindergarten will be participating in! I will give more details as to the character we will be dressing up as and the date of the parade soon! Thank you!
SHOW AND TELL: We are beginning a new Writers Workshop unit of study called Show and Tell. For the launch of this unit I need each student to bring in a small, favorite object that they would be interested to write about. It would be great if we could bring in these objects by Wednesday. Thanks!
WHAT WE ARE UP TO:
This week in word study (phonics) we are going to be introducing some more snap words. Last week we introduced the word "the" and after labeling the room with post its using the first letter of objects we found, we wrote a class book called The Things in Our Classroom. We used the word "the" on each page (The blocks, The chair, The worktrays...) This week we will learn the words a and me. We will also learn how to support one another while writing, Since we are the experts of the first letters of our name and the sound that letter makes, we can help our classmates write other words using our first names' letter!
We are starting our new Show and Tell unit! This is a really wonderful writing unit that is all about writing more, drawing more, and eventually using the support of patterns to help write books!
We are going to be heading into finishing our work with Old Favorite books. This week we will focus on using more and more words that are exactly the same in old favorite books, focus on making sense when we "read" words in books while matching them to the illustrations, and then using all we know to read old favorite books. We will then start on our parade project!
In math we are working on the concept of holding a number and counting on. We learned a new version of a game called Build It 2 where we are presented with a 10 frame that already has 5 dots on it and then are using cards 6-10 to build a number after "holding" that 5. We will play this game in partnerships (the first time we played we did so with partnerships against partnerships - so 4 kids - and now will play with just 2 partners.) We will be having number talks around this concept as well. We will also be learning about connecting numbers in order and keeping track of numbers.
This Wednesday we will start using our "Weather Wednesday Journals." Then after this week the journals will be out every Wednesday morning.
Stacie from Harmonize Kidz came last Wednesday and started to teach us the song and vocabulary from her song The Golden Rule. This Wednesday she will come again and teach us a new lesson using that song as the touchstone. And we will focus on the skill of listening while collaboratively playing with one another. Are we listening to everybody's input when choosing roles for playing? When deciding what to build? When deciding who goes first in a game? Are we listening to one another's concerns?
The kids have really been enjoying Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and the character of Fudge! Ask your child to tell you some of his stories!
Have a lovely week! Love, Lynn