We had a great 2nd week of school & now have eight school days
under our belts! The children are doing well with learning the routines
and following the rules of kindergarten.
I am currently putting together two sign-ups, which I will get out to you by Monday. The first sign-up will be for classroom centers, which will begin on 9/16. We will have just two weeks of those centers running from 10:25-11:25, before we begin our extended schedule. At that time, centers will run from 12:25-1:30. Centers will run every day except Wednesdays, when we have both P.E. and music.
The second sign-up is an assessment sign-up. During the next four weeks, while we are still on the shortened day schedule, I will be asking you to bring your child back to school for some assessments. These assessments will help me group the children for differentiated instruction. If your child attends USD Extended Care, I will be able to assess him/her without asking you to come back, as I will just walk over there and work with your child. For those students, there is no need to sign up. For those who attend other after school programs, if there are any days that you can find to bring your child back to school, I'd appreciate it. If you cannot work this out, please let me know, and I will make other arrangements for your child's assessment. Thank you for your help with this!
Language Arts
In
language arts this year, we will be introducing two letters per week,
wrapping up our isolated letter & sound study by November. This
week, we will be covering letters Cc & Dd. We will also be reading and having activities around the story Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Additionally, we will
introduce our first two sight words, I and a. Being able to read high frequency words without hesitation is important to your child's reading fluency, and we will be introducing sight words throughout the year. You will receive a paper in your child's Wednesday envelope each week (starting next week) with sentences that contain the sight word(s) we are studying. Please have your child read through these several times with you for additional reinforcement.
This week, we will
begin introducing more activities in our "Daily 5" reading program. We are excited to continue implementing Guided Reading/Daily 5 in our classroom this year, as it is a fantastic way to address the varying literacy needs in our classroom. You can read a
little summary of it here. Last week, we began working on "read to self." This week, we will introduce some word work.
Math
In
math, we will continue studying 2D shapes, moving onto 3D shapes by next week. We will also begin introducing number writing to 10. We will have some
hands-on activities in class as well as several educational YouTubes.
More information on this math module can be found here.
Music & Movement
We use a lot of music in the classroom for learning. I have
already had them up and dancing to our "Alphabet Action" tune, and we
have a song and movement for each individual letter as well. We also
will be learning how to spell color words through singing some
catchy tunes. We are introducing a new song each week. Last week we
learned the "red" song, and this week it will be the "yellow" song. I
also play the violin and break that out from
time to time, mostly to play "Happy Birthday" for birthday celebrations.
:)
Additionally, Union School District subscribes to a
great educational movement online site called "Go Noodle." We have
already used Go Noodle quite a bit for our classroom brain breaks.
Educational research has shown that when we take brain breaks, it
refreshes our thinking and helps us discover another solution to the
problem, or see a situation through a different lens. In kindergarten, we love
getting the children up and moving through music and other brain breaks.
Once we extend our day this year, we will also be having music class with Mrs. Threet. We are very excited that kindergarten is now able to participate in formal music classes with the rest of the school.
STEAM
Hopefully,
you were able to view the album I sent to you of our Fairy Tale STEAM activity last week
where teams built a house for the Three Pigs using KEVA Planks.
Then we tested the house to see if it could withstand "huffing &
puffing" (a hair dryer). As you can imagine, there was lots of
excitement around this! This week, we will have a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom STEAM activity, where they will build a tree that supports as many alphabet letters as possible.
Reminder: We have this Friday the 30th off school, as well as Monday the 2nd.
Upcoming Events:
Friday 8/30: Staff Development Day
Monday 9/2: Labor Day Holiday
Friday 9/6: Picture Day
Friday 9/6: Alta Vista Movie Night
Wednesday 9/11: First Blue Book Bag goes home
Week of 9/16: Classroom Centers Begin
Friday 10/11: YSI Field Trip "Animal Adaptations"
Saturday 10/19: Alta Vista Walkathon
