News from the Jungle

WOW! It was a very busy week.  The children had a great time at the book fair and enjoyed their first “late start” day!

Next week is a short week! There will be no homework and no book pouches sent home next week.

A note about book pouches —

Moving forward, I will give the children 2 – 3 books in their book pouches at the beginning of the week to read for the rest of the week. Trying to give new books every Monday and Wednesday was just too time consuming and using up too many of the books in the book room. Soon, we would run out of books that the children haven’t read if I continue sending new books every Monday and Wednesday. I also want to have time throughout the week to focus small group instruction on skills the children need help with rather than just focusing on getting the books passed out. Thank you for your understanding and support as we move forward with our instruction!

Thank you to everyone that came out to support our Kindergarten group in their performance of the “The First Thanksgiving.” I really appreciate all the parents who donated cookies for our refreshments after the play!

Here is a group shot from our play:

We also got together with our 5th grade buddies from Mrs. Niner’s class and the children worked together to write a mini book! We have not finished the books yet, but when we do, they will come home for you to enjoy!

Here are some pictures from our writing time with our 5th grade buddies:

Upcoming Events

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 Jj and Qq. 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: We reviewed nouns, verbs, and adjectives. We continue to stretch our sentences by adding more details through the use of describing the noun (the adjective) and telling what the noun is doing (the verb). Some of the children are even working on stretching their sentence to tell where the noun is (the setting).

During Daily 5 this week, the children received a writing journal. We learned how to turn to the correct page in the journal and we reviewed that we read and write from left to right, top to bottom, line to line. The children learned that they could go back and write in their journal on the same page as a previous day and add more to their story rather than having to start a new story each day. The children loved their writing journals and are doing well with their writing.

The children also got writing binders this week. There are many resources for the children to use to help them with their writing in the front section called “tools.” Then we file their writing in the binder for each genre we are working on. The genres are informational, narrative, and opinion writing.

Here are some pictures from our writing block today:

Please continue to have your child practice writing at home. Here is what I am looking for in class:

Uppercase to start the sentence

End punctuation (. ! ?)

Finger spaces between words

Does the sentence make sense? Are the words in the correct order?

Does the picture match the words?

Did you stretch your sentence? (Is there a noun, adjective, and verb?)

Math: This week for math we reviewed sequencing numbers. The children know that sequence means to put in order. Most of the children are great and ordering numbers 0 – 10, but are struggling with numbers 11 – 20 and beyond.

Here is a video that helps the children to better understand numbers in the teens:

We also practiced more of our patterning using Thanksgiving pictures to cut and glue the pictures in the correct pattern sequence.

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).

I introduced the concept of subtraction, just to give them a little taste of what “take away” means. Both addition and subtraction will be on the NWEA test in January, so I want them to have some exposure to both before they take the test again.

Here is an subtraction video you can watch with your child to help reinforce the skill of “taking away:”

We will continue on practicing our addition in the weeks to come! The children will learn how to use counters to add groups together, use their fingers to find the sum, and how to use the “counting on” method to find the sum. This method works by having the children put the larger number in their head and the smaller number on their fingers. Then they say, “I’ve got 5 in my head and three on my hands… then they say 5 for the group in their head and then count up from 5 on their fingers, 6, 7, 8.”

Here is another video about addition and subtraction:

Social Studies: We continued learning about the concept of needs and wants. We watched a short video about what a need and a want is. Next week we will do a cut and paste activity where the children have to identify what the picture was and if it was showing a need or a want. Then they will glue the picture in the correct column on a t-chart.

Science: I introduced the concept of push and pull with a simple worksheet where the children had to identify if the picture was showing push or pull and then write the word underneath. We did this together as a class and the children did well.

Housekeeping Items:

Please make sure to record the reading that you do with your child each night on the reading log in the homework.

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.