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Kindergarten News
October 28, 2021
Large Group Reading and Math-Our large group reading and math time this week revolved all around Halloween and pumpkin-themed activities. We spent time writing clues about ourselves under a ghost costume, making our own version of Spookley the square pumpkin, graphing the candy we got from a harvest mix bag of candy corn, and measuring a pumpkin. Our Halloween excitement is high, so we might as well make the most of it!
Star of the Week-Our “Star of the Week” for the week of November 1st - 5th will be Jaxson Petersen.
Snack/Sharing--Your November calendar for a snack and sharing schedule is included in this week’s Friday folder. Thank you for being so good about providing snacks and doing the sharing clues. Your children really do enjoy having a sharing day! :)
Upcoming Dates of Importance:
*Friday, October 29th– No School--Professional Development
*Monday, November 1st and Thursday, November 4th--Fall Conferences: Please sign up for a time, if you haven’t already. Again, let me know if those nights do not work for you, and we can schedule something separately!
*Friday, November 5th--No School
*Thursday, November 11th--Retakes for fall school pictures will take place on this date.
Have a wonderful Halloween weekend!
Kindergarten News
October 22,2021
Ms. Corner - We were joined this week by a UNI student, Ms. Corner, who was getting some field experience with us by spending these five days in our room. We so enjoyed having her company, and I loved watching your children show such immediate kindness to her. :)
Reading – Our two stories this week had us thinking about ways that people and animals communicate. Our first story, Amelia’s Show and Tell Fiesta, was an interesting realistic fiction that told us the story about a little girl who was new to a school in America and spoke Spanish. After reading, we talked about how it is okay to be different. Our other story was Mice Squeak, We Speak. We had fun reading this story and giving our own versions of the animal noises. Throughout the rest of the week, then, we also wrote about Halloween. Our new sight words for this week were: we, at.
Language – We also worked on a few new sounds this week. We learned /ng/, as in sing or sang. We also learned about the long sound for our vowel e, when we were introduced to the sound /ee/ (tree). On the same day, we learned /or/, as in fort. We immediately saw these sounds trickle into our writing, which was fun to see!
Miss Morgan - We had a fun lesson with Miss Morgan from Linn County Farm Bureau on Monday. She talked to us via Zoom about pigs, pork products, and what pigs eat. We were able to touch soybeans and kernels of field corn, which was pretty exciting for us all. We colored pigs a realistic color and also created ourselves as a farmer!
Math – In math this week, we continued our work on number sense with numbers 0-10. We talked about numbers that are “one less than” a given number and also worked on telling both what is “one less than” and what would be “one more than”. We ended our week talking about how many more a number is than another number. We concentrated very hard throughout the week and did some awesome math thinking!
Thank You! - Thank you for all your wonderful support of our PTO and our school with your support of the Fun Run over the past week! We enjoyed some wonderful fresh air and exercise this morning and will probably be a bit more tired out than usual tonight. :)
Upcoming Dates of Importance-
* Thursday, October 28th--Halloween Parade--Remember, we come in our normal clothing, with costumes/supplies in our bags.
*Friday, October 29th– No School--Professional Development
*Monday, November 1st and Thursday, November 4th--Fall Conferences: More details will come soon.
*Friday, November 5th--No School
*Thursday, November 11th--Retakes for fall school pictures will take place on this date.
Our “Star of the Week” for the week of October 25th-29th will be Raelynne Riniker. Have a good weekend!
Kindergarten News
October 15, 2021
Weather—What a big difference in temperatures we had some days this week! As our weather starts to cool down, please remember we do go outside for recess each day with temperatures above zero, even some days when it is sprinkling! :) Your child will need a warm coat/jacket for recess this fall and early winter. This is also a great time to work with your child on independently zipping his/her own coat! It is so helpful when the children are able to do it on their own!
Jolly Phonics – During this week, we started to learn our sounds/signs for our vowel teams. We learned Ms. A’s long sound when we met the team of /ai/, like in rain. We learned Mr. O’s long vowel sound when we saw /oa/ together. We heard that sound in the word boat. Finally, we learned Mr. I’s long sound when we met the team of /ie/, like in tie. It will be fun to watch these sounds creep into our writing!
Math – We started a unit on comparing numbers 0-10 this week to talk about which numbers are greater than, less than, or equal to each other. As always, we had fun playing games to deepen our understanding of numbers. One of our favorites was an adaptation of the game of War. This would be a great card game to play at home as a family, too! We ended our week by working on mentally figuring out what “one more” of a given number would be. Many, many of us are quick at this concept already!
Reading – This week our stories and poems helped us discover how our senses help us learn about the world around us. We worked on the skills of comparing and contrasting by looking at how the senses are the same and different. We also talked about how in some situations we only use a few of our senses, but at a time like lunch, we use all five senses! The sight words for this week are see and big. We used our sense words in our writing this week, too, as we wrote about how we will use our senses on Halloween.
Book Orders--I have included a few October flyers for book orders. The online or paper orders will all be due on Friday, October 22nd. If you need help with online ordering, let me know. Our class code is GNQWG, and the website is www.scholastic.com/readingclub. The orders have been taking a lot longer than normal to come in, so if anyone is interested in ordering for holiday gifts, it may be helpful to do it now to ensure it arrives on time. The website has a much larger selection of books for those interested!
Star of the Week—Our “Star of the Week” for the week of October 18th-22nd will be Phoenix Rust.
Important Dates
* Thursday, October 28th--Halloween Parade (see note in folder)
*Friday, October 29th– No School--Professional Development
*Monday, November 1st and Thursday, November 4th--Fall Conferences: More details will come soon.
*Friday, November 5th--No School
*Thursday, November 11th--Retakes for fall school pictures will take place on this date.
Have a great weekend!
Kindergarten News
October 8, 2021
Reading--Our reading stories had us thinking about how tools help us do things with our hands. We read the fable about The Little Red Hen and loved looking at the beautiful illustrations. We continue to work on asking and answering questions while reading to increase our understanding of the story. Our other large group reading story this week was called The Handiest Things in the World, which was an informational text. We continued to work on verbs in the present tense throughout the week, too. We also introduced some new Jolly Phonics sounds related to digraphs and our LAST Letter People….Mr. X and Mr. Q! The digraphs we learned this week were /ch/, /sh/, and /th/. It will be nice to be able to use these sounds when we are trying to spell.
Math—This week in math we were working on noticing similarities and differences. We had so much fun looking at two pictures that are the same, for the most part, and looking to see what is different. We also played memory one day with two partners, which really had us thinking about same and different. To end the week, we used noticing same/different to make patterns with shapes, blocks, colors, and even our bodies!
FAST Notes--Your child has a note in his/her folder to explain about a screener that was given over the past few weeks, called the FAST Assessment. I have been working my way through emails to explain your child’s scores, and I will continue to do this until I am all done! If you look at the note and have any questions, please reach out to me.
Social Studies--We spent some time this week talking about fire prevention and fire safety. We talked about ways to be safe around a fire and what we can do to prevent fires from occurring. We took part in a school-wide fire drill on Monday to help us practice what we’d do if there was a fire when we were at school. We were also excited to have a quick trip out to the new Alburnett Fire Station on Wednesday. Our trip went well! We loved getting to see all the equipment that firefighters use and learn more about being a volunteer firefighter.
Upcoming Dates of Importance:
*Friday, October 29th: No School: Professional Development
Our “Star of the Week” for the week of October 11th-15th is Kent Shaffer.
Have a great weekend!
Kindergarten News
October 1, 2021
Reading - Our stories this week were all about jobs and places to work. It was fun to compare some different stories that were fiction and non-fiction. We also learned that pictures help us to find out new information while we are reading. We did a neat writing activity where we told what job we would like to do when we grew up. We also added another sight word—and. We have introduced the, like, I, and so far. It would be great practice to point these out and look for them in books at night! With Jolly Phonics, we almost finished up our Letter People and were joined by Mr. Z, Ms. W, Ms. V, and Ms. Y. Next week we will meet our last Letter People, which is hard to believe!
Handwriting—We worked on creating “Mat Man” this week, which helps us with our ability to draw a person. We built Mat Man out of wooden pieces, and then used his design to step-by-step draw a person. It was neat to see how much more realistic our drawings looked!
Math—We spent the week wrapping up our second unit in math, which was still number sense from 6-10. We worked on finding a classroom collection of ten and organizing it on a ten frame. We counted up to 10 and backwards down from 10. We also worked on recognizing what numbers come before and after a given number. This was a difficult concept for us, so we will continue to touch base on before and after, which is a great foundation for one more/one less done quickly in our heads. Finally, on Friday with our buddies we created pictures out of black dots, which went really well with our math story Ten Black Dots. We were very creative with our buddies!
Second Step--Over these first weeks of school, we have completed a few lessons using our “Second Step” program, which helps with some of our social emotional learning. The first two lessons were spent talking about listening, both what we look like when we’re doing it and why we listen. The two main reasons we discussed for why to listen were to stay safe and to learn. We also added to the list to be kind because listening to someone speak shows that we think what they are saying is important. We have been using that language a lot in the classroom. This week we talked about mistakes and how they are a part of learning. We watched short video clips of children making mistakes and then continuing to try afterwards. These lessons have made for great conversations!
Upcoming Dates of Importance:
*Friday, October 29th: No School: Professional Development
Our “Star of the Week” for the week of October 4th-8th will be Nolan Wilken.
Have a great weekend!
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