A look at our learning...

Fundations: our focus has been building sentences.  I will say a short sentence, such as: "The cat is on the mat." and they will have to say the sentence, count the words and help me write it.  If a word isn't a word wall word, they have to tap it out to tell me how to spell it.  We also make sure we begin with an uppercase letter and end with punctuation.  Once our sentence is built, we practice reading it fluently.  This ties in wonderfully with being independent writers during writing time as well. 

We are also working on saying the "th" sound correctly.  Watch your child's mouth when they make this sound. Do they have their tongue between their teeth? If so, they are saying it correctly.  Are they biting their lip?  If so, that is the /f/ sound and they need to work on making this sound correctly.  A great way to see if they are using this diagraph correctly is listening when they count and get to the 30's and 40's.  Many say "firty" instead of "thirty" and we want to work on correcting this.  

Check the Friday Folder for your parent packet and ways to help build and read sentences fluently at home. 

Shared Reading: this week we read the books Tools and These or Those? to help us with our new spelling words.  The kiddos are really becoming great readers and reading longer books with more words on each page!  We are working on being problem solvers when we come to an unknown word and NOT skipping the word or mumbling over it.  We can look at the picture, tap it out and think about what makes sense to help us solve it, but we DO NOT skip it.  

We are also learning about non-fiction text features, such as: table of contents, index, glossary, captions and labels.  This ties into our informational writing unit as well. 

Next week's spelling words:

of

have

Writing: due to our class spending a week with Mrs. Fitch learning all about weather, we did not have a dedicated writing time.  When we had free moments, we did continue to listen to books about butterflies to learn more facts for our informative writing unit. Next week, we will be back in action and begin writing our book of facts about butterflies!

Math: this week we learned all the ways to make 10 and how a rainbow can help us find all the ways (ask your child about this), took a survey about our favorite summertime treat and graphed our information and continued to tie in addition and subtraction when we could!  

Can your child do the following?

*Count to 100 by ones and tens

*Count a set number of objects, up to 10, with one to one match

*Count backwards from 10

*Count on from a given number that IS NOT 1

*Identify the following shapes: triangle, square, rectangle, circle, hexagon, trapezoid, rhombus, cylinder, sphere, cube, cone, pyramid

*Write numbers 0-20

*Identify numbers 0-20

*Add and subtract numbers to 10

These are all end of Kindergarten goals and will be assessed for their end of year report card. 

Science: Mrs. Fitch, our media specialist, visited our room every day this week to team teach a science weather unit.  We learned about the sun's warming effects on the Earth and how the sun can affect our weather.  We observed the weather and collected data this past month.  We used this data to notice weather patterns and make predictions for upcoming weather.  Students had to work together to design a structure that would protect a pretend character, Milo, from the sun.  They were excellent engineers this week!  Here are a few photos from our week and the big project, but even more are on our class Facebook page! 

A to Z Countdown to Summer: the countdown is on and we are having so much fun! On A day we created art and on B day enjoyed bubble gum and blew bubbles outside.  These are the days they will remember as they grow older and one of the many magical parts of Kindergarten!

Here are a few pics, but I will post them ALL on the class Facebook page. 

Next week, students will need to bring a few items from home for the countdown: a flashlight, headlamp or lantern on Thursday for flashlight day and a board game or card game on Friday for game day! 

More fun at school!