Fall is here!

September Packmate of the Month

Yay Claire!  She was chosen, by her classmates, as our September Packmate of the Month.  She was honored in an assembly today.  Students will vote every month for one of their classmates that they believe are kind, respectful, responsible, positive and do their best...our 5 school character traits.  It is a private vote and the winner is kept a secret until their name is announced during the assembly.  Their Kindergarten and First Grade friends are at the assembly, as well as the Packmate of the Month's families.

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). 

Beginning this week, your child will have optional Fundations handwriting homework in their Friday Folder on the "return to school" side.  While this is optional, I highly encourage you to have your child sit down and complete it to reinforce their learning at school.  You will see dots on the handwriting paper.  The dots are where your child should start each letter/place their pencil to begin the formation.  However many dots there are, that's how many letters they should write.  Anyone who completes this optional homework and returns it on MONDAY will receive a small prize from me.  If they return it after Monday, I will give them a sticker rather than a prize.  This routine will continue every Friday as we learn all the letters of the alphabet.

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.)

Math: this week we continued to work on counting,showing numbers in different ways, 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. 

Science: we continued our unit on living vs. non-living.  We are learning that living things grow, breathe, eat, reproduce and need space.  Check out a cute video we watched this week.  

We also took another nature walk to celebrate the first day of fall.  They had fun finding items for their collections. 

Friday Craft: today we read the silly book Don't let the pigeon drive the bus! and made a craft to go along with it!  If you ever need suggestions on books to get for your kiddos, the pigeon books are great ones!  Simple and so silly!  The pigeon books are by Mo Willems. 

Handwashing: learning proper hand-washing 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 hand-washing 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

Nurse Bridget came in for a hand-washing lesson on Monday.  She brought a bottle of "germs" (lotion) that she had the children rub on their hands.  Next, she used a special tool to shine on their hands so they could see the germs on their hands.  After that, she had each child wash their hands.  Then they came back and she shone the light on their hands again to see how well they did at washing their hands.  We learned that we often miss our wrists, in between our fingers and around our nails.  She also taught us the proper steps of hand-washing mentioned above. 

I know it seems silly, but it takes a lot of practice.  I appreciate your help at home.  

Kindergarten Family Picnic: We had a wonderful turnout at our annual Kindergarten families picnic last Friday.  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!

Recess Time!

Monday Morning Meeting Grades K-2