Upcoming Events
12/5 Pajama Day! Wear your favorite pajamas, but please no slippers!
12/6 K-2 Family Workshop Night (The first 50 families to turn in participation slips)
12/9 Haigh Spirit Day! Wear your Haigh Shirt or something with an owl
12/16 Kindergarten Goods and Services Activity
12/21 Late Start – 9:40am
12/22 PBIS Party – Movie Theater (in school)
12/22 Holiday Party (more information coming home soon)
12/23 Pancake Breakfast & Polar Express Day – Wear Pajamas (more information coming home soon)
12/23 – 1/8 Winter Break
Agenda for the Week
Letters: This week we focused on the letters Ll and Pp. 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 worked on another R.A.N strategy about Penguins. We really focused on our informational writing and tried to include facts about penguins as well as providing a sentence to wrap up the paper (summary sentence). The children enjoyed sharing what they think they knew about penguins and then researching as a whole class to find out new information and also to confirm the facts we thought we knew.
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 as well as reviewing addition. This week we focused more on how to add using counters and our fingers. The children played a fun game with a partner where they had to roll two dice and add the numbers together, look for the number on a gingerbread man and cross it off. The person with the most numbers crossed off, wins the game. The children loved this. This game is very similar to the dice math game they played in October called Monster Mash.
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).
Social Studies: We continued learning about the concept of needs and wants. This week we did a cut and paste activity where the children had to identify what the picture was and if it was showing a need or a want. Then they had to glue the picture in the correct column on a t-chart.
Science: We continue to learn about push and pull. The children completed a cut and paste T-chart activity, where they had to cut out pictures of objects being pushed and pulled and sort them on the T-chart under the words “push” and “pull.”

Housekeeping Items:
Please make sure reading books are placed back in the green book pouches each night and returned to school every morning.
Please make sure to record the reading that you do with your child each night on the reading log in the homework.
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.

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).

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.  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).

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.

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.

The play will be on 11-18-16 at 2:45.  See you there!!

Upcoming Events

11/7 – 11/18 Yogurtopia Can Food Drive

11/14 Scholastic Book Order Due

11/14 – 11/18 School Scholastic Book Fair (Our class will go to the book fair on 11/15 [send money to school with your child on this day OR meet us in the media center at 10:40am] – Family Night on the 17^th)

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 Ii and Rr. 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 an adjective is and identifying it in our writing. We learned that an adjective is a describing word.

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.” Since we have learned that an adjective describes the noun, I will be looking for adjectives in their writing. Using the example above, a sentence using noun, verb, and adjective may look like this: “I see a black cat sleeping.”  For those children that can stretch their sentence a little bit further, I ask them to include the “where” in their sentence. Where is the cat sleeping?  Using the above example, the sentence may look like this: “I see a black cat sleeping in my bed.”

Math:  .  We continue to work on ordering numbers and filling in missing numbers in a sequence. The children are having a little bit of a hard time understanding which number to fill in the blank with and which number comes before a given number. They are pretty good at understanding which number comes after a given number, but they struggle with identifying which number comes before.

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).

Social Studies: I introduced the concept of needs and wants. We began 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 what a scientist is and things that they do. We had a cute little book that we completed on Friday that told what a scientist does. There were lots of big words in this book and the children had fun discussing each of the words and learning what they mean. Some of these things that scientists do we realized we do all throughout the day during other subjects. The children are learning that they can be a scientist all the time and not just during a science experiment!

Housekeeping Items:

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

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.

News from Mrs. Vensko’s

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.

If you are scheduled for a conference on November 10^th, your reminder note will come home on Monday. If you are scheduled for a conference on November 16^th or 17^th, 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 17^th)

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

11/22 Mad Science Assembly

11/22 Kindergarten Thanksgiving Play & Refreshments (more information coming home soon)

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.

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 week. Of course, things do come up and sometimes it is not always possible to get two sets of books sent home each week.

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.

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 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:

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 Parents,

We have been working very hard to become successful readers.  We are well on our way to achieving our goal, but we know that practice makes perfect! A Kindergarten Book Bag will be sent home every day.  Please enjoy the books that come home and return all materials EACH DAY.  We will be using these books during Daily 5,  so please  make sure your child brings their book bag to school. Please use the reading log in the homework pack to record your reading.

Ideas for you to suggest when reading with your child:

1. Check the picture
2. Look for the “heart words” or word family words.
3. Touch each word as they read. (Finger point)
4. Retell (beginning/middle/end) the story.
5. Write about the story.
6. Take good care of all of the learning materials in their book bag.
7. Good readers read the same book over and over again!

Please let me know if you have any questions and have fun reading!!!

Thank you to Mrs. Cornett, Mrs. Hammound and Ms. Ziulkowski for helping with our party.

Thank you to our AWESOME PTA for giving us a pumpkin!!!