News from the jungle
November 4, 2016
This week went by so quickly! I think the entire month is going to go by quickly as well. We have lots of fun activities coming up this month.
Red folders came home today for the first time. This is just a quick snap shot of the how the week went. Please review and sign the half sheet of paper for this week. Make sure to send the red folder back to school on Monday. Thank you!
If you are scheduled for a conference on November 10th, your reminder note will come home on Monday. If you are scheduled for a conference on November 16th or 17th, your reminder note will come home the following Monday. The reminder note will include the day and time of our conference.
Upcoming Events
11/7 – 11/18 Yogurtopia Can Food Drive
11/8 Election Day – NO SCHOOL!
11/10 Parent/Teacher Conferences (A reminder note will come home with your day and time)
11/14 Scholastic Book Order Due
11/14 – 11/18 School Scholastic Book Fair (Our class will go to the book fair on 11/14 [send money to school with your child on this day OR meet us in the media center at 12:00pm] – Family Night on the 17th)
11/16 Late Start – 9:40am
11/16 Parent/Teacher Conferences (A reminder note will come home with your day and time)
11/17 Parent/Teacher Conferences (A reminder note will come home with your day and time)
11/18 Picture Re-Take Day
11/18 Kindergarten Thanksgiving Play & Refreshments (more information coming home soon)
11/22 Mad Science Assembly
11/23 – 11/25 NO SCHOOL! Happy Thanksgiving!
11/30 PBIS Celebration – Jazz Band
Agenda for the Week
Letters: This week we focused on the letters Hh and Ss. We talked about the sounds they make, brainstormed things that begin with each letter, and spent time practicing the proper formation of each letter. These letters will show up on next week’s homework for a handwriting review.
Reading/Writing: Our focus this week was on learning what a verb is and identifying it in our writing. We learned that a verb is an action word, or something you can do. Here is the video we sing in class to help us remember what are verbs:
I hope the children are enjoying the books I sent home this week in the book pouches. Each week I will try to send home two sets of books per week. My goal is to send home new books every Monday and Wednesday. Of course, things do come up and sometimes it is not always possible to get two sets of books sent home each week.
We are still working on our writing through stretching our words and writing down the sounds that we hear. I am looking for the children to write simple sentences that may look like this: “I see a cat.” Now that we have learned that verbs are actions words, I have been asking the children to stretch their sentences to add more detail and tell me what action the noun is doing. Using the example above, I am looking for them to write a sentence similar to this: “I see a cat chasing a mouse.” OR “I see a cat sleeping.”
Next week we are learning about adjectives. At that point I will be looking for them to include a describing word in their sentences. An example may look like this: “I see a black cat sleeping.”
Of course some of their writing may only have the beginning sounds and look like this: “I c a b c S.”
At whatever level your child is writing, please practice with them at home. I only give them ONE goal at a time. If they are forgetting a period at the end, I may make that their only goal. Some of their goals are to use finger spaces between words. Some are working on using an uppercase letter at the beginning of their sentence. The sentence may need all of the above, but I do not want to overwhelm them, so I pick one item for them to work on. Please only focus on one of the items to work on at home in order to help build confidence in your child!
This week we talked about opinion writing. We learned that an opinion is something you think or feel. The children used a sentence stem to tell me about their favorite season. The sentence stem was “My favorite season is _______ because ___________________________________________________.” The children are learning that opinions can be different from others and that they have to support their opinion by stating why they feel that way using the word because.
Math: We played a really fun game called Monster Mash. The children used really large dice (the size of my head) and had to take turns rolling the dice and coloring in dots on the game board. Whoever colored in the most dots was the winner of the game. This was an excellent way for the children to learn how to take turns. We played it several days in a row during our math centers because the children kept requesting to play!
Please continue to practice counting by 1’s, 5’s, and 10’s to 100 with your child at home. Also practice counting to 30 by 2’s (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20…..). Other activities you can practice at home are using tally marks to count objects, identifying 2D/3D shapes around the house of community, and really making sure your child has good one-to-one correspondence when counting (this means that they touch each object as they are counting and count all objects correctly). Here is a link to the blog post which contains several videos that will help with these skills:
https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/dimitriou/2016/10/21/news-from-the-jungle-6/
I began introducing the concept of addition this week. The children are picking it up really quickly! We learned how to play two interactive games on the Promethean board which help the children learn how to add in a fun and easy format. We will begin having weekly addition quizzes starting next month. I explained addition to the children by telling them that we were going to count how many items were in the first set (group) and how many items were in the second set and then count how many we have all together and that is our answer. We learned how to identify a plus sign and the equals sign. We talked about how the numbers are getting bigger when we add them together. We will continue learning this concept for the rest of the year, so if your child feels a little uncomfortable with the material, we have lots more learning opportunities coming up!
Here are a few videos that we will use in class to help reinforce addition:
Social Studies: Although we will continue to discuss being a good citizen all throughout the year, we are closing out our unit about this and moving on to needs and wants. Next week we will begin discussing the difference between things we need and things we want. This can be a little difficult for this age group to grasp, but we will be working on this social studies unit until January, so the children will have plenty of practice with it. We will use picture sorts and videos to help the children understand the difference between these two terms.
Science: We talked about the seasons this week and read a book about each one. The children were able to do a few activities involving what each season looks and feels like. We also discussed activities done in each season and clothing that we should wear during each season. We are starting our unit on push and pull. This unit will last until February. The children will have lots of opportunities to do simple experiments to determine which objects can fall into each category.
Housekeeping Items:
The easiest way to get a hold of me during the day is through my email at dimitrm@dearbornschools.org. If the children are working independently on a task, I can easily check my email and send a quick reply.
Please make sure to empty the green folders each night! It is very difficult and time consuming to locate homework or important notes when the folder is full of papers from the day before.
