Author: Melissa Dimitriou

News from the Jungle

We all enjoyed the beautiful weather. I cannot believe it is the end of October already.

We had a magic show assembly today and the children LOVED it! It was so much fun for us to watch the children’s expressions when the magician would make something disappear!

We got together with our fifth grade buddies on Friday and worked on sorting and graphing m&m’s. The children had so much fun!

Here are a few pictures:

Upcoming Events

10/17-10/28 Savory Foods Sale

10/26 Kindergarten Parent Meeting at 8:00am

10/27 Toss or Turn? Assembly

10/28 Costume Parade 9:30 (all parents are welcome to come to the parade)/Class Party 2:00 (only parents that have been asked to help may come to the party)

10/31 PBIS Party  – Fall Fest

Agenda for the Week

Letters: This week we focused on the letters Ff and Uu. 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: This week we continued practicing components of our Daily 5 curriculum. The children are building stamina during our rotation for “Read to Self” and “word work.”   We added “work on writing.” This week we learned what an event is and what setting means (where the story takes place). We also made lots of text-to-text connections across several different books we have read. The children are learning to compare and contrast.

Math: We learned how to play a new game on the Promethean board all about 2D and 3D shapes. We used the terms solid and flat to describe the differences between 2D and 3D shapes. The children are beginning to understand 3D shapes and are having a little bit of a hard time understanding that no matter a shapes orientation (if it is horizontal, vertical, or on a diagonal) it is still the same shape. We learned how many sides shapes have and did a cut and paste sort. We also listen to our favorite shape videos on Youtube. Here are the songs:

We are also working on counting. We are learning how to count by 1’s, 5’s, and 10’s to 100. We are also practicing counting by 2’s to 30.

Here are a few videos that we use in class:

Social Studies: We reviewed fire safety this week and watched some videos on our Scholastic Let’s Find Out page. There is access to this page through our “Educational Websites” tab on our blog.

The children are still working hard at being “good citizens.” We continue to work on being a good friend and learning when is the right time to tell me about something another student is doing.

Science: We continue learning about our five senses and making observations about things we can eat, see, taste, smell, and touch.

Here is a video we use in class:

Housekeeping Items:

Please watch the weather and make sure to dress your child for the weather. We will try to get outside as much as possible before winter! On Friday, some of the children did not have a coat or sweatshirt.  At this point in the season, please send the children with something warm to wear each day.

Reminder: gym shoes should be worn each week on Monday and Friday.

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.

Dear Families,

Kindergarten will be holding our parent meeting on Wednesday, October 26^th from 8:00 – 8:30am. This meeting will take place in the Media Center. Mrs. Venkso will present our writing process, including how to interpret our editing marks, and what a published paper looks like.  Mrs. Dimitriou will present our ABC practice sheets. These sheets are used for assessing recognition of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and correctly making each letter sound. Ms. Martin will discuss book pouches and when to expect them to be coming home. Come to the meeting and find out how you can help support your child’s learning at home!

Sincerely,

The Kindergarten Team

Yesterday a Scholastic catalog came home. This was a mistake. I was sorting all of the fliers and meant to put them aside and pass them out on November 1st, however, I stuffed them into the children’s cubbies instead! Oops! Please hold on to those catalogs and take a look at them over the next few weeks if you are interested in placing an order online for our November book order.

The November due date will be Tuesday, November 15th. This will allow time for the book order to be delivered before we leave for Thanksgiving break.

Thank you for your understanding! Sorry for any confusion because of my mistake on sending those catalogs home early.

Just a quick reminder that our Scholastic Reading Club order is due Today! You still have time to get your order in! I will place the order at the end of the day.

I have added a few items to the “recommendation” list on our scholastic page. I added phonics box sets, workbooks, games and different levels of the BOB books including sight word collections and rhyming sets!

Halloween is just around the corner! We will be celebrating on Friday, October 28^th.  Here are a few things you should know:

Costumes: This year we are asking that your child come to school already dressed in their costume. It takes too long for one teacher to dress every single child in the class. Costumes should be school appropriate. This means that your child should be able to get themselves in and out of their costume by themselves in order to use the bathroom! We do not want any of the children to have an accident because they cannot undo their costume! Please keep this in mind when selecting a costume to wear to school.  Mr. Short has asked that all accessories to costumes be left at home. These items include, but are not limited to, masks, wands, swords, guns, etc.

Costume Parade: Parents are welcome to come to the parade! At 9:30am we will have a costume parade out on the track. Each grade will be called out to the track and will have the opportunity to walk around the track 2 -3 times and show off their costumes to the rest of the school! You will not want to miss out on seeing all of the kiddos in their costumes! Don’t forget your camera!

Classroom Party: We will have a classroom party with centers for the children to participate in different activities.  Due to limited space and general chaos that is created by having 50+ people in one room, parents will not be allowed to attend our Halloween centers.

The centers are as follows:

1. Toilet Paper Pumpkin Craft
2. Candy Corn Craft
3. Halloween Bingo
4. Sugar Cookie Decorating
5. Sugar Skull Bean Bag Toss
6. Pin the Eye on the Monster

Trick or Treating: We will have a trick or treating portion to our day! The children will be given a brown paper lunch bag to decorate to use as their trick or treating bag. If you would like to participate, you may send in edible or nonedible treats with your child to be passed out. Please label the bag with your student’s name so we can make sure they pass out the correct treats. We have 24 students in our class. No candy will be eaten in class. Children will bring everything home and you can determine what is appropriate for your child to eat.

Today in your child’s green folder you should have received an assessment sheet with 3 columns (uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and letter sounds) on the front page. On the back there is a list of sight words we will learn this year.

Anything that was highlighted in pink means that your child did not know the material. Please review and practice all highlighted items with your child.

Mastery of the alphabet and letter sounds is imperative to learning how to read and write.

If your child knew all or most of the letters and their sounds, you may choose to start working with them on the sight words on the back of the paper.

For those children that knew all of the sight words, I attached another list of words for you to work on throughout the year.

I do not expect all of these words to be mastered at this point in the year.

The most important thing to remember about the sight words is that while your child may be able to read them to me, if I am not seeing these words in their daily writing, then they have not mastered them. Please be sure to practice writing with your child in order to practice using the words in sentences.

While you may choose to make flash cards for your child to study the sight words, there are many other ways you could help your child learn these words. Here are a few suggestions:

Put paint inside a ziploc baggie and have them use a q-tip or their finger to write the words. I love this idea because it is mess free!

You could also take a cookie sheet and put shaving cream or whipped cream on it and your child could practice writing sight words. This activity and the paint one above will also help to build fine motor skills which will help improve their handwriting. These activities can also help with the formation of the letters.

Write out the word and then have your child use a q-tip and paint in order to make the word.

Below are more examples of ways to practice sight words with your child:

In class we use a lot of songs and videos to help us learn. Here are a few videos we listen to in class:

What Do the Letters Say?

Long and Short Vowels

The Sight Word Song

100 Sight Word Collection Song

You may choose to search for more sight word songs. There are so many great resources on YouTube.

I hope this was informative and helpful for all of you.

As always, if you have any questions, please email me!

I forgot to attach the reading log to this week’s homework!  I am sending the reading log home today. Please staple it to the homework packet. I am sorry for any inconvenience.

Today a note will be coming home to inform you on how to log on to all three of these sites. MyOn, Mobymax, and Khan Academy are sites that can be helpful in extending your child’s learning at home.

The login is your child’s student number and the password is their birth date with no symbols. Here is an example of how to write the birthday:

December 2, 2010 would be written 12022010.

I will put a link under our “Educational Websites” tab for your convenience.

On Fun Fridays we get together with Mrs. Vensko’s and Ms. Martin’s class to enjoy some science activities. Today we focused on our five senses. The children used their sense of smell to identify five different smells from the kitchen (lemon, orange, black pepper, oregano, and peppermint). We listened to different environmental and animal noises to identify the sounds. Then the children reached into a “feely box” to determine the objects inside as hard or soft. Next we taste tested sweet, salty, and sour foods and talked about which was our favorite. Most of the children liked the sweet food the best!

Here are some photos from the day:

We had so  much fun with our body part/skeleton centers yesterday!

We had six centers 1) tracing one child’s body and drawing in the bones, 2) Q-tip skeleton craft, 3) skeleton dot-to-dot 1 – 29, 4) labeling skeleton body parts cut and paste, 5) sugar skull bean bag toss, and 6) sorting, graphing, and eating Cheetos Bag of Bones puffs.

Here are some pictures from the day:

Thank you to everyone that made this a successful, fun-filled learning opportunity for the children.