Friday, November 6, 2020

End of 1st trimester

 Wow, how is it already the end of 1st trimester?

I'm so proud of how hard your children have worked during this crazy time.  They are very resilient and have been asked to do things that no other Kindergarten class has ever been asked to do before.  I am very, very proud of them.  This year hasn't been ideal, but they have been nothing short of amazing!  It has been such a blessing to be in-seat with them the past 3 weeks!

I would like you to spend some time this weekend going over the progress report with your child and looking at the handouts I sent home with their progress reports.


A look at our learning...


Fundations: we learned the following letters and verbal prompts to form these letters correctly:

d-over, around, up, down (or they can also say "c turns into a d"...they can show you this trick)

s-over, around, curve

Here are the lowercase letters we have learned during 1st trimester.  Your child should be able to name all of these letters, tell you their sound and correctly form them the "school way."  Check your child, can they do all of this? 



Writing: our new word wall word this week was my.  We are learning to incorporate it into our stories.  

Ask your child to tell you about their new writing folder.  Ask them what the "working" side is for and what the "resting" side is for.







Literacy Workstations: we have been learning about this the last two weeks.  The students will rotate through various workstations (centers) that focus on reading, writing, correct letter formation, spelling, etc.  The goal is to eventually be independent at these workstations so that I can work with children in small reading groups.  

Spelling word wall words at Play-dough workstation


Math: this week we worked on creating patterns. Check your child's Seesaw account to see a pattern they made. 




Science: next week we will wrap up our first Science unit, Living and Non-Living.  We will begin our first Social Studies unit the following week. This weekend or next week, have your child go outside while the weather is still nice and take some photos of living things using their Seek app!

We did get a taste of Social Studies this week when we talked about the Presidential Election, read the books Duck for President! and My Teacher for President and participated in our own election between Duck and Farmer Brown.  Check our class Facebook page for more info on this.  I posted about it a few days ago. 









Fire Department Visit: every year the Columbia Fire Department visits Kindergarteners around Columbia in the Fall.  They usually bring a truck and show us their gear.  Due to COVID, they were unable to visit, but we did arrange a virtual tour.  The children were able to get a tour of the fire station, fire truck and they showed us how they put on all their safety gear!  




We made fire trucks for our Friday craft.  Ask your child to read the sentence on their truck!






We loved the beautiful weather this week!  Perfect for lunch outside!