Happy Homecoming Weekend!

 A look at our learning...

September Reading Logs: September is coming to an end and reading logs are due on Wednesday, October 1st.  You still have 4 days left to post September's "Sneaky Reading Challenge" in our class Facebook Page.  September's challenge was to read in the car.  October Reading Logs are in your child's Friday Folder, along with a new "Sneaky Reading Challenge." I'd love to see more participation in this next month! You post the photo anytime you catch your child doing the challenge!  You don't need to wait for me to make a post. Beginning in October, students who complete their required monthly reading log will earn a free pizza coupon to Pizza Hut. 

Reading is required homework at BEU.  In K-1, the expectation is at least 4 days a week for 15 minutes at a time.  Reading TO your child is what is appropriate right now.  We DO NOT expect Kindergarteners to be readers at this point in the year. 

Fundations: this week we learned the letter name, sound and correct formation for lowercase c and o.  Please use the verbal prompts below to practice at home. Your child should be saying these prompts to themselves every time they write a letter on their homework to ensure they are doing it correctly.  

c: over, around, open

o: over, around, close

At school, we have learned that the "over" motion should look like a "hill" or a "rainbow." Watch for this when forming these letters. Please make sure that your child is going over to the left when forming these letters. 

On the handwriting homework, please make sure their pencil begins at the dot and goes over to the left. 

Handwriting Homework: please make sure your child's name is on their optional handwriting homework.  Many students are turning it in without a name.  This is also a great opportunity for them to practice writing their name and forming letters learned correctly.  Please make sure the student is writing their name, not an adult or older sibling. 

Spelling Word: our new Word Wall Word this week was a.  Just like I, we learned that a can be a letter or a word. 

A new spelling routine, that involves you at home, begins on Monday! Be sure to check your child's Daily Take Home Folder on Monday for more information. 

Writing: we continue to work on telling stories through pictures.  We are getting better at drawing people using shapes and have moved onto learning about settings.  A setting is where the story takes place.  Check out this song that has helped us with this. They were able to choose a character card to glue in their writing notebooks and draw a setting that matched that character. As you can see below, one child chose an alien character card, so drew a rocket ship in space.  Another child chose a farmer so they drew a farm and barn setting.  Next, we will transfer this knowledge over to writing about ourselves and including a setting based on something they have done (Mizzou football game, riding their bike, going to the store, etc). 

Math: this week we continued working with 5 and 10 frames.  We used red and blue snap cubes on our 5 and 10 frames and found different ways we can make 5 and 10.  We discovered there is more than one way to make a number! 

During our morning Number Corner time (aka calendar time) our focus continues to be learning the names and attributes of 4 basic shapes (square, circle, triangle, rectangle), recognizing and extending patterns and counting our days in school. 

Friday Craft: we read the book Mouse Shapes and made this cute craft that goes along with the book and shapes we have been learning in math! 

Health:  This week we began using the A Little SPOT of Feelings book series in class. These stories feature simple, relatable characters called “Spots” that represent different emotions. The Spots help children recognize and name their feelings in a way that makes sense to them. While this is just one way we are teaching about feelings, it gives our kindergartners another tool to build important emotional literacy skills—learning how to talk about what they feel instead of showing it only through actions.

Packmate of the Month: Congratulations to Isaac!  He was chosen, by his peers, as our September Packmate of the Month and honored at an assembly on Friday.  Students will vote every month for one of their classmates that they believe follow our BEU expectation of the month.  It is a private vote and the winner is kept a secret until their name is announced during the assembly.  Responsible was our character trait for September. 

Our class also won the attendance award for kindergarten!  That means we had the highest percent of attendance out of all 5 kindergarten classes.  Not only that, we had the best attendance in the entire school with 98.1%.  Yay!!  We will have this flag and a banner displayed outside our classroom for the next month!  Thank YOU, parents, for prioritizing school!  As one kid said "it's because we love school so much!"  I love it!  Such a great group of kids this year!  

Custodian Appreciation Day: Thursday, October 2nd, is Custodian Appreciation Day! While we are lucky to have several custodians who care for our school, the two our students know best are Mr. Brandon and Ms. Teesha. This day is a wonderful opportunity for children to show them just how much they are valued. Students may choose to make a card at home, color a picture, share a kind word, or even bring in a small treat or gift. None of this is required, but it’s a meaningful way to let them know they are an important part of our school family.

This year’s celebration is extra special because Thursday will also be Mr. Brandon’s last day as our head custodian. He has accepted a job closer to his home. Mr. Brandon is truly amazing, and both staff and students agree he will be irreplaceable. He has been such a loved and appreciated presence in our school, and what better way to send him off than by showering him with gratitude!  If you would like to know some of their favorite things (snacks, drinks, gift cards, etc.) please send me an email and I'm happy to share! 

🎪 The circus is coming—just one week until the big day! 🎪 A huge thank you goes to our wonderful room parent, Kayla Hagedorn, for organizing our classroom’s LEGO basket for the raffle, and to all of you who so generously donated items to make it amazing!

We still have a few open volunteer slots to help in the game rooms during the circus. Each shift is only 30 minutes, and volunteering ensures that every game room can stay open for the kids to enjoy. Thank you to those who have already signed up—we appreciate you! If you haven’t yet, please consider helping to fill the final spots so the event can be a great success for everyone. You can sign up here. 

M I Z Z O U

Happy Homecoming!

More fun from our week...

Goodbye Summer, Hello Fall

 A look at our learning...

Fundations: this week we learned the name, sound and correct letter formation for lowercase i and u.  We learned that these two letters are vowels and the other letters we've learned so far are consonants (t, b, f, n, m). 

Please use the following verbal prompts when practicing letter formation at home, especially if your child has these letters in their name:

i-down, dot (the dot should be just that, a dot.  Not a circle or scribble)

u-down, curve up, down (make sure they are going straight back down on the last part of the u.  It should be flush with the other part of the letter and not have a space between or "look like a mountain" between the curved part and down part)

Spelling word: our new Word Wall Word of the week was the word I.  We learned how I can be a letter or a word.  We learned that when I is by itself it must always be uppercase.  

Tips for home: make flash cards with the words we have learned so far this year (to, me, I) and practice reading them daily.  Each week, add our new word to the pile.  You could keep them in a baggie on their nightstand and read quickly before bed each night, keep in the car and read on the way to/from school, appointments, etc.  One idea I love is treating them like passwords.  Your child must read them before being allowed technology time, free play time, etc.  They will be motivated to practice them if they know it's their key to getting the things above!  So many ways to practice, this is just one way, but I will share more ways throughout the year! 

Writing Workshop: we are learning that writers can tell stories through their pictures.  In Kindergarten we write stories about the things we do in our everyday life.  This means we need to get really good at drawing people.  In Kindergarten we DO NOT draw stick people or spider people (a circle for a head with sticks/lines coming out of it for arms and legs....we don't have arms and legs coming out of our heads in real life, so neither should our drawings).  We are learning to draw people using shapes.  They are doing so well!  The precursor to writing is being able to draw a picture and verbally tell what is happening.  

Ask your child to draw a person for you using shapes, not sticks.  This, along with making and reading their spelling word flash cards, would be a great activity on Monday when they don't have school.

Math: This week in math, we explored how patterns can be made with colors, shapes, sounds, and even movements. The children practiced creating, copying, and extending patterns, which was not only fun but also helped build important early math skills like sequencing and problem-solving. Ask your child to show you a pattern they can make at home—maybe with claps, jumps, or even their favorite toys!

Please refer to the Math Home Connections worksheets in your child's Friday Folder.  A reminder that these are for you to keep at home as a reference and do not need to be returned to school. 

Friday Craft: we celebrated the end of summer and beginning of fall with these beautiful projects and poems coming home today.  The students came up with things we are saying goodbye to in the summer and hello to in the fall.  I wrote the words for them, but the ideas were all theirs on their own! 

Kindergarten Family Picnic: what a wonderful turnout we had at our Kindergarten Family Picnic!  Thanks to all who attended this Beulah Ralph tradition! The kids had been looking forward to this for weeks and were so excited to talk about it yesterday at school!  At last count I think we had 16 out of our 21 families!  The weather ended up being perfect.  Special thanks to The Patty Wagon food truck, Kona Ice and Flash the Timberwolf! 

Lunch with the Principal: Yay Mason! He was chosen to have "Lunch with the Principal" for the month of September! On Monday, he enjoyed a special fancy lunch on the stage with Mrs. Isenogle during our kindergarten lunchtime! One friend was chosen from each kindergarten classroom.

This is a Beulah Ralph tradition for grades K-5 and every month there will be a different winner!

International Dot Day: Monday we celebrated International Dot Day! Ask your child to tell you all about it! They can retell the story to you using their sequencing activity that was in their daily take home folder, along with a "not a dot challenge." You can also learn more here.

We enjoyed celebrating this special day with our 4th grade buddies in Ms. Cohen's class! All grades are assigned a buddy grade that we will do things with throughout the year. We sat with them during our very first Monday Morning Meeting in the gym and then they came to our room for our Dot Day activities that morning!

A few photos are below, but even more are on our class Facebook page. Haven't joined yet? Hurry and join today! Search "Concannon's Kindergarten 2025-2026" and request to join. This is for parents and legal guardians only.

Monday Morning Meeting: this week we had our first Monday Morning Meeting of the year. This is a Beulah Ralph tradition! It begins at 8:20 and we hear the week's announcements from Mr. Foulk and Mrs. Isenogle, say the Pledge of Allegiance, Beulah Ralph School Pledge and sing our school song. We also hear a joke from a staff member and any other special announcements that need to be made.

Due to the size of our school, grades K, 2, and 4 go one week and grades 1, 3 and 5 go alternate weeks. We sit with our buddy class, which makes it even more special! As mentioned above, our buddy class is Ms. Cohen's 4th grade class. When it isn't our week in the gym, we participate virtually in our classroom on the SMARTboard.

We encourage all students to wear their BEU spirit wear every Monday, regardless if they are in the gym or not. This is a great way to show school spirit and community. Don't have BEU spirit wear? They can wear blue and green, our school colors!

Flash's Big Top Circus: we still need MANY more volunteers to help work a quick and easy 30 minute shift at the circus on Friday, October 3rd. Have your student work the shift with you if needed.  Have a high school age student? You can sign them up to work as well! The circus is our schools largest fundraiser and we need all hands on deck in order for it to fully operate.  Please sign up here. 

Thank you to all families who donated an item to our Lego basket for the raffle.  If you have not sent the items you signed up for to school, please do so by Thursday, September 25th.  Forgot what you signed up for? Find it out here. 

Walking Tickets: now that we have been in school for a month, expectations taught and the students have had time to adjust, we are really focusing on the importance of making good choices and doing the right thing, even when no one is watching (integrity).  We use this phrase a lot.  I will always give the children many chances and reminders to do the right thing (they are 5-6 year old after all), however if the poor behavior choice continues we must follow through on consequences.

In CPS we follow these procedures for discipline:

1) Verbal reminder (in Kindergarten it is several reminders)

2) Safe Seat: a spot in our room away from others where they can sit and calm down and think about how to make better choices

3) Buddy Room: the safe seat in a teachers classroom across the hall.  We utilize this when the verbal reminders and classroom safe seat haven't seemed to work.  At times, the children may fill out a "think sheet" while here that explains their behavior and why they are there.  If they receive one of these, it will come home to you in their take home folder.  If their behavior is disruptive, we skip this step and call the office, as we don't want to disrupt another classroom while they are trying to learn.

4) Recovery Room/Principal's Office: when none of the above work, the child will be sent with an office referral to talk with administration and a phone call home may be made.

We also use walking tickets and it varies how these are used.  In my classroom, if a child is sent to the safe seat by a teacher, they will have an automatic 5 minute walking ticket.  This means at recess they will have to walk back and forth on our line up zipper spot/or sit depending on the situation for 5 minutes before they can play.  They are still getting exercise during this time and movement is being allowed, but their free play time is taken away as a consequence.  If they go to the buddy room, it is a 10 minute walking ticket consequence.  If they visit the office, admin will assign a consequence.

Sometimes we also give walking tickets even if they don't go to the safe seat.  Not all behaviors warrant the use of the safe seat.  Sometimes walking tickets can be given for a minute or two if they are having a hard time making good choices and have needed an excessive amount of reminders. 

Please know we do our best to avoid the above and if they receive one of the consequences it is because we have exhausted other options and they are taking away from the learning of their peers.  I am sure at home when they don't listen, follow directions or make good choices you have to take things away or have a consequence and this is how we handle it at school to be fair and consistent with every child. 

With all of that being said, if your child is consistently receiving walking tickets or any of the above, I will put their walking tickets in their Friday Folder each week for you to see.  I don't want to send them home daily because some children may "lose them" knowing they don't want you to see them.  If they are in the Friday Folder, which they know is for parents, they are less likely to be mis-placed before making it home.  However, if it is just a one time thing (or even two or three times...we all make mistakes) I probably won't communicate that with you.  I want the children to know that we all make mistakes and it is ok and they can trust me.  I don't need to run to mom and dad telling them about every mistake they make. It is not necessary and causes unnecessary stress on the child. They are learning opportunities.  Some problems are just school problems that we can work out here ourselves.  If it is something that is repetitive, you will see those tickets and it will be reflected on their Success Ready scores. I will not email or call home every time they receive one. These tickets will have a quick note as to what happened, and you can refer to the information stated above, and discuss further with your child.  Thank you for understanding and supporting your child and their teachers.  It's a hard job raising little people and I'm here to help!

More fun at school

Our first birthday of the year-Rafael!