Ms. Concannon's Kindergarten: Hello September

A look at our learning...

Fundations: we learned the name, sound and correct letter formation for lowercase b and f this week. When making these sounds please make sure your child is not adding "uh" to the end of the sound. It should be a quick sound rather than "fuh" or "buh." The same goes for the letter t. It should be a quick t sound and not "tuh." We don't want to add the u/"uh" sound to the end of any letters, unless there is an actual u with it.

Please use the following verbal prompts when practicing at home:

b-down, up, around

f-over, down, across

If your child has t, b or f in their name, please hold them accountable for forming it correctly at all times.

Heggerty: you may hear your child talk about Heggerty time and think "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.

Math: this week we played a fun counting game called "Count and Sit", discussed birthdays and months of the year, learned what a graph was and made a graph that shows who is 5 years old and who is 6 years old in our class, and learned that numbers can be represented in many different ways (numbers, tallies, pictures, words, etc.)

Does your child know when their birthday is? Ask them! If they don't, this is an important thing for you to work on at home.

Social Studies: our current unit of study is citizenship. This ties in nicely with learning rules, routines and expectations of school. We are also working on learning the Pledge of Allegiance and the Beulah Ralph School Pledge. They are getting better every day!

A copy of the school pledge is in your child's Friday Folder so that you can practice at home as well.

Crafts: we will do a craft every Friday and sometimes more! Craft activities help children develop many important life skills including: creativity and imagination, self expression, confidence and independence, fine motor skills, problem solving, hand eye coordination, social skills and critical thinking.

This week we did a torn paper craft with our names. Tearing paper into small pieces is a great fine motor activity that strengthens their hand muscles, therefore helping them hold a pencil and build stamina for writing.

Counselor Lessons: this week we had our first counselor lesson with Mrs. Alls. She will visit our classroom every other week. The counselors teach a 30 minute lesson and focus on important skills such as feelings and how to manage them, friendship skills, social skills and safety. We have two wonderful counselors at our school, Mrs. Alls and Ms Otto.

Alphabet Fun: today we had a yummy treat to help us practice identifying our letters! Each child was given a bag of alphabet cookies and a "cookie sheet" with the letters printed on it. They were instructed to take a cookie out of the bag, say it's name, color it on the "cookie sheet" and then they could eat it! Learning is fun and yummy!

We also read the books Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Chicka Chicka 1, 2, 3 and made crowns with the letters in our names in the coconut tree.

Food Drive: the Mizzou Homecoming Food Drive ends on Monday. Students may bring items to school and put in the bins in the front foyer. Thanks to all who have donated so far and shown your students a wonderful lesson of kindness, empathy and giving to others less fortunate.

PTA: as of our first PTA meeting last week, we have 67 members of Beulah Ralph PTA. That number is shockingly low considering we have over 600 students. We would love for ALL of you to get involved in PTA. Even if you can't attend meetings or be super involved, simply filling out the membership form and paying $5 will help our school in SO many ways. You can do that and nothing else or become as involved as you want. We love and welcome both types of members!

Need another membership form to sign up? Email me and I will send another one home.

Don't forget...

to send in a family picture, in a frame, for your child's cubby. No bigger than 4x6 and the frame can't exceed 8 inches in width or it won't fit. The picture can be vertical or horizontal. It is so nice to see our family pictures throughout the day!