Happy 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 doing the final "down" part, as many forget it.  There should be a "stick" at the end of the letter if they are following these verbal prompts.)

Heggerty: you may hear your child talking about Heggerty time and thinking "what in the world is Heggerty?" Heggerty is a phonemic awareness program that works on rhyme, beginning/ending sounds, blending and segmenting words, adding and deleting phonemes and substituting phonemes.  Daily Heggerty lessons will help your child learn how to read, write and spell as they hear sounds in words.  

Writing Workshop: we are working on "3 Star Coloring."  This means we 1) stay in the lines 2) use colors that make sense 3) fill in the white space.  In Kindergarten we take our time, do our best and don't scribble. 

We continue to work on drawing people using shapes, not sticks, adding detail to our people and a background/setting to our pictures.  Pictures ARE stories at this point in the year.  Before a child can WRITE a story with words, they must be able to DRAW and tell a story VERBALLY.  Soon we will move to labeling our pictures with beginning sounds or words.

Math: this week we continued to work on counting/numbers to 10, learned what a 5 frame is and how it can help us count and show numbers in a variety of ways, explored shapes and described attributes of shapes.  Check your child's Friday Folder for ways to extend their learning from this week at home. 

Science: we began our living and non-living science unit.  We are learning that living things need air, sun, food, water and space.  We had fun celebrating the first few days of Fall by going on a Fall Nature Walk and making a Friday Fall Craft that connected science and writing. We also read several Fall related books this week.

Handwashing: learning proper handwashing in Kindergarten is a big deal.  We want to keep our friends healthy and at school.  Kids this age often wash too quickly, without scrubbing.  To help everyone stay healthy at school, I encourage you to reinforce proper handwashing at home.

1) wet hands (soap "doesn't work" unless hands are wet first)

2) ONE squirt of soap.  Scrub hands, with water off so they aren't tempted to wash it off, while singing the ABC song.  Make sure to get all sides of the hands, between fingers and around the wrists

3) wash off with warm water

4) dry

I know it seems silly, but it takes a lot of practice.  I appreciate your help at home.  Check out these expert handwashers!

Recess: we are phasing out our extra morning recess.  K-5 has two recesses a day, but for the first 4-6 weeks of Kindergarten we take an extra recess as they ease into the school routine.  This third recess was 20 minutes long in the morning, but it went down to 10 minutes this week and will be 10 minutes next week during our final week.  Beginning October 4th we will just have two recesses like grades 1-5 (lunch and afternoon).  This will allow us to spend more time on academics.  We will still take wiggle breaks in the classroom, as needed, by dancing, exercising, GoNoodle or Cosmic Kids Yoga. 

A peek at our week

Kindergarten Family Picnic

We had a wonderful turnout at our annual Kindergarten families picnic last Friday.  It was so nice to be able to have this again after having to take a pause last year due to COVID.  I love this tradition that brings us all together and I hope you did too.  It is so nice to meet new people and see your children interact at their home away from home!  Thanks to everyone who came!

A look at our learning...

Fundations: this week we learned the name, sound and correct letter formation for lowercase n and m. 

Please use the following verbal prompts when practicing at home:

n: down, up and over

m: down, up and over, up and over

So far this year we have learned the following letters: t, b, f, n, m.  Now that they have learned how to form these letters, they should be forming them correctly at all times, not just during Fundations.  If your child has one of these letters in their name, please hold them accountable for forming it correctly. 

Writing Workshop: we are getting better at learning how to draw people.  Check out the charts below to see the different shapes, skin colors, hairstyles and faces/feelings we can use when drawing people.  The kiddos are getting better at not drawing stick or "spider" people and making their work look more realistic.  

This week we also learned that stories/writings have a background or a setting where a story takes place.  We used special "character cards" and had to create a setting in our writing journals to go with the character card we chose.  Check out these amazing drawings!

Friday Craft: today we watched a Pebble Go video (online reading resource we have at school) to learn all about wolves/Timberwolves since they are our school mascot.  Then we made a Timberwolf craft to hang in our classroom!  

Math: this week we continued to work on counting, our birthday, we made a graph of our ages and we will update this graph as students have their birthdays and turn a new age and learned a new program on the iPad called "ST Math." ST Math is a PreK-8 visual instructional program that leverages the brain's innate spatial-temporal reasoning ability to solve mathematical problems.  ST Math games include challenging puzzles that help your child deepen their mathematics understanding.  They guide "JiJi" the penguin through a variety of self paced math activities.  Every Tuesday we do ST Math instead of our traditional math lesson.  We also integrate it into morning work time throughout the week. 

Dot Day: on Wednesday we celebrated Dot Day.  To learn more about this fun day, click here 

We read the book and created our own masterpieces!  They came home in your child's Take Home Folder this week.  

Counselor: every other Thursday, from 10:00-10:30, we have a counselor lesson with Mrs. Bergeson.  This week they discussed bullying.  They discussed the difference between bullying and being unkind, as well as what to do if this is happening. 

Severe Weather Drill: this week we had our first severe weather drill.  We discussed severe weather and learned what to do to keep ourselves safe.  We practiced in our classroom and learned where our safe place is in the school during severe weather.  We have also had 2 fire drills this year.  The kiddos do a great job during these drills and we stress they are just practice and that while it's unlikely for these things to happen, we practice so that we know what to do just in case. 

Lunch Bunch: this week I was able to enjoy lunch with some of my friends in the classroom!  They earn "Table Points" by following directions, staying on task and working quietly at their table during different parts of our day.  Once their table earns 10 "points" (stickers on a 10 frame), they get a special reward!  The current reward is lunch in the classroom with their teacher and a special treat!  I love getting to chat with the kiddos during this time and learn more about them.  

Library day and reading books in our classroom are some of our favorite times!  Here's a few (but not all) of the books we read this week!

"Play gives children the chance to practice what they are learning" 

-Fred Rogers