K002 – Week of 12/5/16

By , 12/05/2016

Hello K-002 Families!

It was wonderful to meet and talk with so many of you last week at Parent Teacher Conferences! Many of you echoed the importance of kindergarten as the time in a child’s life when they build essential skills that they will use the rest of their lives.

Some of you have asked if you can support the classroom in any other ways. Click here for an Amazon Wish List with a few items that we could use in the classroom. If there is anything you can donate it would be greatly appreciated!

Our beautiful stuff inquiry in math was a great success! After we collected and sorted our stuff multiple times, students had the opportunity to work with a partner to count all the stuff. Counting large quantities (between 20 – 100 of one item) poses challenges for our young mathematicians as they try to keep track of which items they have counted, remember the order of the numbers, work with a partner and record their final count. You can have your child practice this at home by having him/her count a large group of things. Maybe pennies, or pieces of dried pasta or beans. Toys can be fun to count. How many Pokemon cards or Matchbox cars does your child have? Count to find out! As a culminating activity, we will be using our beautiful stuff to create art projects.

In writing, we have been thinking about the questions “Why do people write?” We listed some of our ideas and realized there are many reasons that people write. These include writing:

to tell what something is (labels)
to learn how things work (recording observations)
to remember (lists)
to share stories (books, poems, songs)
to give information (signs)
to let someone know how they are feeling (cards, letters)

We have been working on stretching out words and and hearing as many sounds as we can to help write the word. We practiced this week by making labels for our classroom. You will notice that the words are not all spelled correctly. That is okay! Learning to write is a little like learning to talk. At first things don’t come out perfect, but with lots of encouragement and practice progress is made.

closet library couch smart board telephone paper

Last week, we introduced literacy centers in our classroom. This is a time when students are working in small groups on different activities. The activities they are participating in are a concrete way to practice several different literacy skills that will help with reading and writing skills. Building independence during this time allows for me to meet with small groups and focus of a particular skill with those students. Here are some pictures of literacy centers in action:

Mark Your Calendars:

Winter Celebration: Wednesday, December 21 at 1:30pm – students and families
Winter Break: December 26 – January 2 (school resumes Tuesday, January 3rd)