Happy Halloween! Tomorrow is our Halloween party. Kindergarten children should arrive to school dressed up in their costumes. Remember that if the costume has a weapon with it (pirate sword, Star Wars lightsaber, etc.) to please leave those at home. No gory costumes/fake blood allowed either, although that's not usually a problem in kindergarten :) The afternoon kindergarten will begin heading over to the school-wide parade at about 1:00. The parade starts at approximately 1:10. Afterward, we will return to the classroom for some fun Halloween activities.
Thank you again to the many volunteers who are cutting costumes for our Thanksgiving Feast. There are still many more parents who have also offered to help, so if you have had enough cutting, please feel free to pass the shirts/apron/collars onto another group of parents. Thanks again for all the help.
So that you can plan ahead, we have two big events (back-to-back!) in November. On Monday the 21st, we have our Thanksgiving Feast. If you can take some time off work to join us, this is a pretty fun and special event. We ask each family to send in a dish for the event-- either a traditional Thanksgiving dish or a dish from your family's cultural background. We always enjoy the wonderful mix of foods that we get. Both afternoon kindergartens come together for this event. The children from our class will be dressed as Pilgrims, and the children in K1 will be dressed as Native Americans. No need to provide any costumes-- this is what parents are preparing for us right now out of pillow cases and sheets. The event will be at 10:15 for the morning class, and 1:30 for the afternoon class. We hope to see you there!
The next day, Tuesday the 22nd, we have Grandparents' Day. This is an event for grades K-2, so there is a general reception held in the cafeteria at 10:30. After that, they come into the room. The kids can briefly introduce their grandparents and tell whose parents they are (mom's, dad's, or both sets) and then the grandparents will join us for a fun art project. We hope that all grandparents can join us, but if distance, etc., makes this impossible, the children can also invite another special adult to join in (uncle, aunt, special neighbor, even mom or dad). Also, children are welcome to bring in pictures of grandparents who are too far away to make the trip.
Our letter this week is Bb, and our Alphafriend is Benny Bear. Our sight words this week will be like and can . In math, we are introducing a new unit on Comparing Numbers: 0-10. Again we will be comparing numbers to identify which numbers are more than each other, less than each other, and equal. We will also be ordering numbers.
We have begun doing a lot of blending exercises during our opening. This is an important pre-reading skill. We say words with the beginning sound separated, for example, b-ath for bath or f-ox for fox. We ask the children to guess what the word is if they put it back together. This is a great game to play in the car, etc., and really helps them start to learn how to blend isolated sounds into words.
Our sharing this week is Letter of the Week sharing. Please have your child bring in something that starts with Bb, in a bag, with three clues about it.
We will be doing some Fall/Thanksgiving art projects this week-- Indian corn, cornucopias, turkeys and totem poles are all in the plans! We will also begin our Social Studies unit on Times Past. This is our last week of Centers before we put them on hold for the next 3 weeks due to parent-teacher conferences and Thanksgiving week.
We are looking forward to meeting with each of you beginning next Monday the 7th, for your child's conference. Conferences will be held in the office conference room. The conference room is located in the main office, 2nd door to the right after you walk through the swinging half-door. If you are unsure of your conference time, please e-mail me. Thanks!
Finally, please send in the Blue Bags tomorrow in the midst of the Halloween excitement!
Upcoming Events:
10/31: Halloween Parade @ 1:15
11/7-11/17: Parent-Teacher Conferences
11/11: No School, Veteran's Day
11/21: Kindergarten Friendship Feast @ 10:15 (a.m.) and 1:30 (p.m.)
11/22: Grandparents' Day @ 10:30 (a.m.) and 11:30 (p.m.)
11/30: November's Wacky Wednesday
12/16: Kindergarten Nutcracker Performance @ 10:00 (a.m.) & 1:30 (p.m.)
