I hope you are all enjoying a nice long weekend. I think our first week of small group meetings went well, and I look forward to continuing to meet with students in small groups this week. A reminder again that it is helpful to set alarms on your child's iPad for their meeting times, since we have several meetings at different times each week. We are all working to give them the tools they need to manage their distance learning (mostly!) on their own.
Finished Work Folders
I understand that the "finished work folders" are getting rather stuffed. There are only a few items I'd like you to continue keeping in there:
- The first day of school self-portrait
- The heart map
- The "This is Me in August" self-portrait
- The number writing assessment that we did last Wednesday & Thursday
The rest of the work, you may choose to "archive" in whatever your preferred method is for saving non-essential work. Please make sure the above items remain in the folder though.
Materials Pick-Up
We are going to schedule a second materials pick-up for Monday, September 14th, from 12:00-12:30. This pick-up will be in the kindergarten parking lot, which is close to the corner of Westchester & Blossom Valley. You enter this parking lot from the Westchester corner (about) and exit next to the school garden. If this time is not convenient for you, please contact me and we will arrange another time for the pick-up. As with the first pick-up, please have your child's name in the windshield (passenger side) and please wear a mask while we are handing the materials to you or placing them in your trunk.
What We're Working on This Week
- We will introduce 3D shapes this week. The shapes we study are the cone, cylinder, sphere, and cube. By the end of the unit, children need to not only name the shape, but describe its attributes: sides, vertices, and faces.
- We will introduce letters Gg & Hh.
- We will learn the sight word "at."
- We will focus on "Growth Mindset," following along with the character trait Mrs. Bailey introduced this week in her "Cougar Corner" update. Kids will be viewing some great Growth Mindset videos from Class Dojo and I have some wonderful books to share with them around this topic.
- We will continue working on phonetic spelling by labeling pictures. This week, students will draw and label a picture of their bedroom. A reminder again to please encourage your children to sound out words on their own. Even if they just put only the beginning sound, I'd rather them attempt to spell on their own than have words spelled for them. My mantra over & over again is: we are emphasizing independent work skills.
- We will introduce our classroom magazine "Let's Find Out" this week. This magazine explores a variety of social-emotional, social studies & science topics. This week's lesson is on feelings.
Lunch Bunch
Let's have another lunch gathering this Friday! Similar to the teddy bear picnic (but no teddy bears required this time) I'll be leaving the Zoom on during the lunch time (11:20-12:00) so that children can talk & visit with one another in an unstructured environment.
