Dear Parents,
I hope you all enjoyed a
wonderful Thanksgiving break. I'd like to thank all of you for making
the Feast such a success! We had a wonderful spread of food, and the
children all looked darling! Thanks to the MANY parents who helped with
that event.
Now...onto a very busy but exciting time in
kindergarten as we prepare for our Nutcracker performance on the 20th,
as well as continue with all the academics & exciting literature!
Language Arts
We
have now completed the introduction of all isolated letters & letter
sounds. At this point in the school year, your children should recognize
all letters and know all of the sounds. If you think your child needs
more reinforcement, please use websites such as starfall.com, or review at home using the letters & sounds songs we used in class, which can be found here. Although we will continue reviewing letter sounds, this is no longer our main focus at this time.
We
are now moving onto word endings-- encouraging children to read by
"chunking" these sounds. For example, using the endings "an" and "at,"
children will manipulate the beginning sounds of words and create words
such as fan, man, ran, can, pan or mat, bat, cat, rat, etc.
Our sight words this week are no and am. At the side of this webpage, there is a tab for "High Frequency Words." Those have now been updated, with asterisks added to all words we've introduced. It would be good to check in on this list with your child to see if s/he recognizes all the starred words.
Our
stories this week will be about Owls, both fiction and non-fiction. We
will be learning and writing about Owls, along with doing an owl art
project.
Parent helpers, we will return to centers for
the next three weeks, then we take a break from centers again the week
of December 17th. Please check the helper schedule. In the upcoming week, I will send out a link to Sign-Up Genius to create the helper schedule. Going forward in 2019, you can select the best days for you to help by using this link. I will continue to add reminders about who is helping each week to the bottom of the email.
Math
We
are continuing Module 2 in Eureka Math: Two Dimensional & Three
Dimensional Shapes. We will study the attributes of the 2D shapes
square, triangle, rectangle, circle, and hexagon. The 3D shapes we will
be studying are the cube, cylinder, cone, and sphere. Parent tips for
this unit can be found here.
STEAM
STEAM centers are back this Friday, and we are looking forward to Hour of Code next
week. In preparation, we will be using a new coding program in the Makerspace this week called CodeSpark. On Friday, we will use a center that we purchased with money from a Home & School Club grant. Children will
look at the laws of physics using a game called Create-a-Chain Reaction. We will also make boats out of foil and test them out by seeing how well they can carry different amounts of pennies.
Upcoming
Please be setting aside time out of your busy holiday schedules to join us for our presentation of The Nutcracker on December 20th at 1:45 p.m.!
This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Daily 5, Centers (Nisha & Jenny)
Tuesday: Daily 5, Centers (Hiromi & Yvonne)
Wednesday: Recess 101, CodeSpark in the Makerspace, Blue Bags go home
Thursday: Daily 5, Centers (Brandie & Belinda)
Friday: Story time with Grandma Gail, Daily 5, STEAM Centers (Claire & Pablo)
Upcoming Events:
12/3-12/7: Hour of Code/Computer Science Week
Thursday 12/20: Nutcracker Performance @ 1:45
12/21-01/04: Winter Break
Monday 01/07: School Resumes
Friday 01/18: Professional Development Day: No School
Monday 01/21: Martin Luther King Day, No School
Thursday 01/31: 100 Day
02/18-02/22: President's Week Vacation
