Oh my gosh! Time has flown and I have some catching up to do!
We have done a great job coming back to school and jumping right back into the routine again. I am so glad to see everyone every day, and am optimistic about the numbers in our area lowering. Since we have been back, we have learned so much! We have learned the sound and letter of (short) Ii and how it sounds in the middle of words. We have begun blending 3 letter words with i in the middle. This is tricky for us yet, but our Heggerty has been helping us make a roller coaster with our hands to make these CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words. We keep trying hard! We have also learned the letter and sound of Nn. We have been hearing it very well in the beginning of words, and have tried hearing it at the end of words. This is trickier for us yet, but we keep trying! We have been practicing such skills as rhyming words, syllables, and sounding out words. We continue to practice looking at pictures for comprehension and read to make sense. We have 2 new sight words so far this month: to and and. This new word has been tricky for us but we continue to write it and read it. Point it out to your Kinder when you see it! Last week in Math we had fun working with measurement. We learned that to measure we have to line our measuring tool up with the item we want to measure. We measured with our own feet, with unifix cubes and with snowballs. We learned we can use anything to measure! We measured length and we measured weight. We got to see a pan balance and see which object was heavier and which was lighter. We discovered that some were the same! This week in Math we have been skip counting. We have decided that it can be faster to skip count. When we do this, we skip numbers when we count. We skip counted by tens and by fives. Most of us know how to skip count by tens, but skip counting by fives was new for us. We will continue to practice this at school. You can practice this at home by counting hands, or feet in your home. How many fingers are their in your family? How many toes? Can you do this by fives? By tens? Last week we learned much about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We learned that he had a long name :) and that he worked hard to change things. He taught us to use our words and kindness, not hate, to change minds. This week we are learning about landforms. We learned that bodies of water can be landforms, and that the land can be shaped in different ways. Ask us about landforms! Thank you so much for continuing to send those warm winter clothes, and even extra socks and mittens. Depending on the temperature, we can come in very wet from the melting snow. The extra mittens are great for the walk to the bus! I am noticing that we have fewer water bottles in school. Feel free to label and send a water bottle, especially on PE days. We are not taking off our masks during PE and get very thirsty afterwards. We do have cups in our room, but the bottles are nice. Enjoy your Kinder and enjoy your weekend!
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It was so good to see everyone today! I had the best day every saying hi to each of your Kinders and they were AMAZING today! We practiced rules and routines, however your Troopers came back like we had school (in person) just 2 days ago. I am so proud of the hard workers, the kind words and the respect our Kinders showed to each other and their peers. Woohoo!
We have earned a bucket filler party! Since our day was so busy, I will plan something for the Kinders tomorrow. I hope they like it! This week we will be learning about holidays celebrated at the beginning of the new year. We learned that there are different traditions. These include breaking plates, watching fireworks, having parades, and making resolutions. Ask your Kinder what tradition they liked! Today we made our own resolutions and practiced our patterns by making a party hat. We will continue to practice letters/sounds/ words we have had previously as well as math concepts. We will read some books about bugs this week, and have a chance to create our own bug out of playdough. We will be working on rhyming as well as beginning sounds and handwriting. We will also explore magnets and see what things are attracted by magnets. Ask your Kinder what they did for Tray Time today! Thank you for returning all your student's supplies...it was sure A LOT! We are missing iPad chargers yet, so please search your homes. In addition, I am short some purple At Home Learning folders we will need and about 5 sets (15 per kiddo) unifix cubes. Please be on the lookout and send them in when you can! Enjoy your week! We had a quick week! We created in Santa's Workshop this week, and I hope you are (somewhat) surprised! I know the Kinders were so excited to show you what we made I wonder if it made it under the tree... :)!
We shared kind words and talked about why we give gifts. Your kiddos were amazing. They were all very clear that we give gifts because we want to "share love" or to show others we care. You have done a great job raising your kiddos to be aware of that! What kind and thoughtful things were said, and given. Thank you so much for your generosity and for sharing your Kinder. I am truly blessed! I am so excited for the return of school on January 4th, 2021. Our schedule will be the same, with the exception that Fridays will now become our at home learning days. There will be some live instruction in the morning and some activities for your kiddos in the afternoon. Your child will come home with an iPad and a folder each Thursday. We will be pros at this! I wish you a wonderful and merry Christmas. Wishing you health and happiness! We have been doing great! Last week we practiced the sounds and letters of Pp. We also talked a bit about word family -ap (cap, tap, map, etc) and how if we know the sounds we can spell the rhyming words. We learned that rhyming words are almost always spelled with the same ending and same middle sounds -not always, but mostly. We continue to practice sight words as well. In your kiddo's BEE folder you will find a list of sight words. Have them make these into cards to put up around your house so they can read them when the come into or leave the room. This week we will learn the word "like". Sight words are tricky! Remember they are words we want to be able to read by sight and often they don't follow the traditional "sound it out" rules. The more Kinders are exposed to these words to read and write, the more they will become ingrained.
We have been writing more sentences as well. You may have heard me to tell kinders that we don't have spelling words in Kindergarten. This is to build confidence in writers. If we were to continually correct spelling, kiddos tend to shut down and won't write as freely (at this age, at least). In Kindergarten, we focus on the sounds we hear in words. Some words with the same sounds (/c/ and /k/) can be interchangable to start, until writers become more aware. Kinders tend to (not always) hear the beginning sounds first ("c" for cat), then the last sound ("ct" for cat), then the middle ("cat" for cat). We are also working on using an upper case letter at the beginning of the sentence, spaces in the middle, and punctuation at the end. In addition to this, we continue to focus on adding detail to our drawings. We try to draw people with arms and legs, feet and hands. We try to add detail to the setting around the people we draw and to color carefully with 5 or more colors. As you can see, this can be a complicated process!! It is also very developmental. Your child will improve over time the more we do this. In Math we have been working on patterns, another developmental task. If your Kinder doesn't have this down yet, no worries. We will come back to this throughout the year and it will come. We will translate these patterns into patterns with numbers. Feel free to point out patterns and numbers you see with your Kinder, and to count items (stairs, count back the microwave timer, number of ornaments on your tree...) to help show that we are always using math. This week we introduced number stories by drawing pictures to help us solve problems. We will eventually add numbers and symbols to these as well. We will continue to work on those teen numbers, as they are tricky! We have been learning about different holidays that come in December. We have talked a bit about Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Posadas. I have a short video that celebrates these differences that I may add to Seesaw "for fun". Please note there are some dress up days coming! This causes a change in our PJ day scheduled for next Tuesday. PJ day will now be on Monday. I have updated our calendar on Weebly as well. As always, please let me know if there are any questions or concerns! Here is hoping your weekend was healthy and full of fun! The kiddos had lots to share about their weekends! Many of you saw Santa and the lights at the Pioneer Park. I heard it was amazing!
We are continuing with our Learning from Home, and it has been going well. Just a note that there are some corrections to our weekly plan this week. I have tried to fix them and posted them on our Learning From Home page. Please note: we are on week 12 of Heggerty; we will have Media this week on Friday (day 1) with Ms. Eibensteiner (login alemedia); I will be gone Friday afternoon Math lesson time. I will make a video of our lesson to post on Seesaw and your Kinder can complete the assignment and share a photo when completed. I will schedule this to be released at 12:00 on Friday, so you may choose to keep your routine of Math beginning at 12:30. Thank you for your understanding! Please note there is a change in pick up. Our new pick up date will be Friday, December 14. Please return any library books at this time and exchange your blue folder with your child's journal pages then. I have gotten a new folder (black) that will have your child's work through Christmas break and there will be new library books for your child. I may also include some supplies for your child to use for our small groups next week. Please keep all paperwork together (it should be in the order to complete) and take note that there will be a special Santa's Workshop project that we don't want you to see! Please tell your Kinder to save their work until it is time to do it together, and that their present is to open with their friends on Tuesday, December 22. Even though we can't have a celebration in school, we will do our best to have some fun activities our short week (December 21 and 22). Your child is invited to wear warm PJs on Tuesday, December 22:). We will have some games planned and perhaps a sing-along that day. As always, please let me know if there are any questions or concerns! Thank you for your patience and understanding! First, I hope you had a super Thanksgiving, whether it have been a bit different from normal. Our home celebrated quietly with lots of technology involved to share wishes and smiles.
We are ready for our first full week of Distance Learning! I hope you have gotten everything you need via the pick up. I have tried to keep things in order for you. I would suggest going through all the papers you have completed so far and take them out of the blue folder. You can then store the upcoming work in the blue folder. If you wish to return anything to school (the Turkey journal, perhaps?) so I can put it in your child's portfolio of work, please tuck it in your Kinder's BEE folder so it gets back to me. Please hang onto the pumpkin puzzle, the syllables and the letter cards to be used later. Just a reminder to please swipe all files from your iPad each night and to plug in your iPad each night so it works for your kiddos. We had almost everyone show up today for our Mrs. Boyer Time. I emailed a time to meet with your Kinder for 13 minutes each Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. If you would like me to resend that to you, please let me know. Thank you for your help with this! This week we will be learning about Wants and Needs. This can be a tricky concept and it is a good one to bring up at the Holiday season. Feel free to chat with your Kinder about the things we really need to survive (food, shelter, clothing, water) and things we don't need to survive (toys, pens, pencils, etc). It gets to be an interesting discussion when we talk about electronics and cars, if Kinders think they are a need or a want. We will be learning the letter and sound of Ss this week as well as the new word "see". We will be practicing answering and asking questions while we read as a strategy. In Math we will be talking about patterning and creating a fun craft with that on Tuesday. Save those paper strips for then! Thank you for all your help and patience! Wow! We did it! We all did an amazing job at trying something new and challenging today! I am especially proud of the Kinders for their positive attitude and attention to detail. They get these traits from you! :)
There were a few glitches, but overall was very proud and happy with the way lessons went today. We learned about the letter Aa and it's sound today. We will learn about a new sight word tomorrow, the word "we". We learned that good readers ask and answer questions when they read. Feel free to cut apart the games that were sent home (the pumpkin puzzles, the syllable pages, the letter cards). Some of us planned to put them up on the walls or under light switches to practice the letters and sounds. The same goes for numbers! I really enjoyed going through your Kinders' work on Seesaw. It was fun to see and hear them explaining and showing their amazing work. I can't wait until we do some reading and they can even read to me from their folder books into the video! I also appreciate any feedback from you. It helps me to know what needs tweaking and what is working well. I appreciate you and all you are learning right alongside your kiddo. Our week has gone by so quickly!
This week we have learned about the letter and sound of Mm. We have talked about how to make the letters M and m. We often say in Kindergarten "top, top, start at the top". Please encourage your Kinder to begin forming letters at the top when they are working on their name or on letter formation. If they are writing for fun, please let them form their letters and write whatever sounds they hear. Please don't overcorrect, as we want to encourage students to write independently and not to depend on you for spelling and for formation cues. We have also learned the hight frequency word "the" this week, and one game we LOVE to play is when Mrs. Boyer tries to fool us. We just can't be fooled! Kinders love to show Mrs. Boyer what they know and how to read these words. If you like, have your Kinder write the word of the week on a recipe card. Post this under the lightswitch in various rooms. Have them read the word when they come into or leave a room. Change these up every week! One family liked to put new words on the bathroom mirror so their Kinder could read the word while brushing teeth! In Math we continue to practice those tricky teens. We are learning that the teen numbers are ten and some more. This is tricky for us. We often write the one in the final number place (51 instead of 15). Just give your kiddo a gentle reminder to switch number placement. Reversals are developmentally appropriate, but we want to teach kiddos the difference between the value of "switched" numbers (51 and 15). I asked each of the Kinders to tell us about their family. Here are the results!!
We are moving through this week quickly! We are loving to share about our families, thank you for returning the family pictures and the page telling about your families! I will put this in our "scrapbook" of items to be returned at the end of the year. We are learning families can look very different, but they all love each other, help each other, and like to do things together. Tomorrow we will share that our class is like a family as well!
In Language this week we continue to practice the words I and can. We continue to practice rhyming words, and to practice syllables. We have tried a version of Centers in which we do an activity a day, and rotate activities throughout the week. This week we practiced writing letters and lines in salt, we strung the ABC's on yarn, we used ABC magnets, and we made our ABC's with playdough. We will have new ideas next week! During our Classroom Social Emotional Learning time we read stories almost every day about Tom Cat and Tabby Cat. This might be a good question to ask you Kinders at night. Today we learned about giving compliments. We learned they help us feel good inside and we learned it was important to always try our best. In Math this week we have been reading some graphs and these past few days we have been talking about teen numbers. We learned they are very tricky, but we noticed they start with a "1". This represents ten and some more. We have been using a ten frame to model this and to count. Some of us have even learned to start counting at ten and adding on from there. We had our very first official fire drill on Wednesday. We did an amazing job walking outside and staying in line. We even got complimented by a 5th grade teacher! Some of us thought the alarm was loud, and that it scared us. ALL of us remembered exactly what to do to stay safe. Ask your Kinder what they thought of it! A reminder that next week there is no school on Monday. This is a staff development day, so enjoy the day with your Kinders! I know I will miss them as they always bring me smiles! |