Ms. Concannon's Kindergarten: A look at our learning...

A big THANK YOU to everyone who has utilized the car drop off at the front of the building or stopped upon entering our classroom each morning. This has allowed the children to gain confidence and independence within themselves that they are "big kids" and also created a calm environment for them to begin their morning work at their tables each day. I know sometimes it is hard to let our babies go, but boy do they thrive when given the chance!

A look at our learning this week...

Fundations: we learned the name, sound and correct letter formation for n & m. Please check the Friday Folder for ways to help at home. We use less "wordy" prompts than listed in the packets. I will post our prompts each week. t, b and f was posted last week.

Please use the following prompts at home with your child:

n-down, up and over

m-down, up and over, up and over

Shared Reading: we spent another week learning about the word "a." We continued to read the books A Park and I Can See from last week. This week we learned how to Buddy Read these books. Buddy Reading is a cooperative learning strategy in which 2 children read an assigned text together. They learned to sit "elbow to elbow, knee to knee" while one person points to the words and reads the story and the other listen. They switch roles when finished so that both have the opportunity to read the familiar text. We are learning ways to help our friends when they come to a tricky word or make a mistake. We have done a lot of modeling of kind ways to be helpful and not hurtful. They are SO PROUD to be beginning readers! They are now able to keep copies of both of these books in their book boxes for independent reading later in the day.

We are now experts at the word "a" so it has been added to our word wall! The kids were so excited to have our first word posted.

Chase pointing to words when he reads

James listening to Ainsley read

Math: The new math series that CPS adopted this year is a spiraling curriculum. This means students will see the same topics throughout their K-5 career with each encounter increasing in complexity and reinforcing previous learning. So this means we won't spend an entire month on shapes, then a month on adding, etc. It will be taught at various times throughout the year. This week was mainly spent on counting and identifying numbers 0-10. We also discussed birthday's and how they tie into math. Please see the handout in the Friday Folder this week.

Writing: We finished up week 2 of guided drawing (see last week's blog post for more info). Your child is bringing home their guided drawing journal in their take home folder today. They have gotten SO much better at drawing people and settings in just a few short weeks!

Next week we will begin learning where writers get ideas for stories and what they, as 5 and 6 year olds, can write about.

Science: Nurse Lynn visited again this week to teach us about germs. We watched a fun Sid the Science Kid video about germs and how NOT to spread them. We learned when we sneeze or cough we need to use our "cough pocket" (elbow) and not our hands or just out into the air.

Nurse Lynn brought some special lotion and a black-light that helped us see germs on their hands.

She then taught us the correct way to wash our hands:

1) wet your hands

2) 1 squirt of soap....rub your hands together getting both sides and in between fingers while singing the ABC song in your head

3) rinse with water

4) dry with 1-2 paper towels

Have your child show you the correct way at home! So many of them want to get soap first, when really they need water first. They also want to rinse the soap off immediately, so we are really reinforcing singing the song before rinsing.

After they washed their hands they were able to use the black-light to see if they washed all the germs off! Most did a great job!