August Newsletters

Kindergarten News

August 27, 2021

First Week!

We have now finished our first full week, and I’m sure your child is very tired. Please help him/her get lots of rest over the weekend. I promise it will continue to get better. :) Keeping a consistent routine at night is the best way to help your child adjust to our full-week schedule. Your children did VERY well adjusting to our new routines and expectations this week, along with meeting and playing with some wonderful new friends!

Snack/Sharing Calendar

A snack/sharing calendar that begins next week is included in your child’s Friday folder. On your child’s assigned date, he/she is invited to bring snacks for the 23 children in the classroom and an item for sharing. A bag explaining about sharing will be sent home the night before your child’s sharing day. Please refer to the classroom information sheet for snack ideas, and let me know if you have any questions!

Reading

Our reading work for these first few weeks has been done primarily in large group. Each day this week we focused on a different short poem and talked about rhyming, syllables, and different concepts of print. Beginning in later September, we will also break apart into small groups for a time period each day. We have been gathering information about each student through various assessments, and each assessment helps me get to know your child’s current level of understanding. This small group time will allow the reading instruction to be geared toward your child’s current level.

Jolly Phonics and Letter People

We were excited to be joined by our first Letter Person of the year--Ms. S! During the rest of the week, we also met Ms. A and Ms. T. We are excited to combine the Letter People program with Jolly Phonics. Jolly Phonics combines a short jingle with an action to accompany each letter sound. Jolly Phonics has 42 sounds/signs to it, which means we will introduce more complex sounds, such as ee, or, ie, and ai. This program will work amazingly well at developing our reading and writing skills! Your child will bring home between 3 and 5 Jolly Phonics sheets a week in his/her Friday folder that will help explain the action that accompanies the sound. You will also receive some flashcards home when we finish a set of six sounds to help you practice at home. Look for those next week!

Math

Our math time this week focused on number sense with numbers 0-5. Many of us can easily recognize, count to, and write these numbers, but we also took time to figure out different ways to make them. For example, 2 and 3 can make the number 5 together, or 4 and 1 can make the number 5 together. We will continue this work next week as well.

SeeSaw

In our classroom, we will use a wonderful app that allows me to post pictures/videos/notes from our classroom. If you haven’t signed up to join us on Seesaw, I am going to send an email link to you over the weekend. I have sent a couple of pictures already from our days!

Upcoming Dates

Monday, September 6th: No School: Labor Day

Friday, September 17th: 1:00 Early Dismissal (for Professional Development)

Enjoy your weekend! ☺