Can you believe that we are already at the end of September!  Wow!

Here is what’s coming up this week…

We will continue with week 2 of Unit 1 called Families Get Together.  Our letter this week is “A a” and our word is “The  the.”

(Last week’s letter was “M  m” and the word was “We  we.”)  Putting last week’s letter of M with this week’s letter of “A,” we have

a new word “am.”  Look for writing to come home with these words on it.

Last week we had a district writing prompt.  The students had to write to a prompt and I graded it according to our 6 + 1 rubric.

The students will have more of these writing prompts as we progress through the year.  Last week’s writing gave a baseline for each student’s writing level.

READING-I have accessed all students reading levels and each are in a reading group.  I will be teaching different reading strategies to each group.  The strategies are part of our

CAFE Menu.  CAFE stands for:

Comprehension                         Accuracy                      Fluency                Expanding Vocabulary

We also will be discussing NON-FICTION writing.  They already know about FICTION 🙂

Our WORK TIME will include sentences with our words I  Can  We  The.   Have your child spell and write these words by themselves.  Have them give you a sentence using each word.  Make sure they give you a complete sentence…we’re practicing speaking in complete sentences.  🙂

WRITING-Our writing focus will be on writing lists.  Last week’s writing focused on labels.    Mini-lesson will be writing the letters correctly.  Remember, NO letter starts at the bottom of the line.  All letters begin at either the top line or the middle line.

MATH-Number Awareness  Where do we find numbers?  We also will discuss same/different, position words, we’ll make patterns with blocks & bears, and we’ll play a game.

I sent home a Scholastic Book Order form.  Although we just had the Book Fair, I saw some Good Fit Books in the order choices and I wanted to make them available to you.

I will send home an order form each month.  Ordering is optional!  If you choose to order, please return the completed order form with a check for the total.  NO CASH, please.  Make out checks to Scholastic Books.

A special thanks to Trent’s mom for some really fun, hands-on science things that she shared with us!  The items went along with our Science and Reading Unit about our 5 Senses.

Thanks Trent and Mom!!

We also celebrated Zahraa’s birthday last Friday!  Happy Birthday Zahraa.  We’ve had 3 birthdays already this year…Natalie, Fatimah, and Zahraa.  3 new 5 year-olds 🙂

Mrs. Smith

Thanks for the egg cartons, buttons and beans donations!  We are using all of them.  I think we are all set for now.  I’ll let you know if I need anything else.

Thanks again!

I hope you got to enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend!  It was lovely. 🙂

READING-We begin our first real unit in READING.  (The last 3 weeks are called SMART START…gets us started.)

Our reading theme for the next 3 weeks is FAMILIES.  Our unit topic for this week is My Family and Me.  This morning we talked about our families and animal families.  Same?  Different?  How?

Our letter this week is “M  m” and our word is “We  we.”  Look for things coming home with these words and letters on them.

WRITING-We will be writing with “m” words, using the word “we” and working with labels. (like labeling a picture)

MATH-Today we worked with “counting the next number.”  I had them in a circle and each one counted (said) the next number.  Just about everyone could tell me what number was next. We then went to our seats and worked with color patterns.  We drew the patterns.  Then we “read” the patterns.

Every day we continue to READ TO SELF and READ TO SOMEONE.  We are building stamina with our reading.

Mrs. Smith

Thanks for visiting our room tonight!  You can see how excited the kids are to show you where they “live” during the day.  I’ll hear more tomorrow from the kids.

Enjoy your weekend.

Mrs. Smith

The kids are really excited about showing you their classroom tonight!  You’ll also get a chance to meet some of their friends.  I have 2 computers set up for you to subscribe to my blog…it’s soooo easy and you will get an email each time I make a post.

See you tonight   6:00-7:00 in classrooms

7:00-8:00 with Mr. Denison

Mrs. Smith

We will wrap up our first Literacy unit-We Are Special.  We will continue to write every day, using a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence, spaces between words, and punctuation at the end.  This week we will add on a question mark as we turn some sentences into questions.

I can make music.

Can you make music?

I will begin forming Reading Groups after we have split the classes.  In the meantime, please continue to read every night with your child.  It sure helps.

MATH-We will continue counting from 0-10, practice writing the numbers, and making connections from numerals to objects.

Looking ahead…

F.Y.I. Wednesday, 9/18 Peace Program  2:30  We meet outside  as a whole student body, hear from some of our students and sing our Peace Song.  Students may need jackets.

Thursday, 9/19 OPEN HOUSE 6:00-7:00  Classrooms

7:00-8:00 Mr. Denison in the gym

BIRTHDAYS-We are trying a new birthday procedure at Howard School.  I will acknowledge your child’s birthday on his/her day, give them a birthday crown and we will sing “Happy Birthday” to our student. However,  we will not be having treats at school.  You can save the treats for home. 🙂

A few classroom needs…

any egg cartons

buttons (any kind)

dried beans

Thank you all for your support.

See you Thursday night at Open House!

Mrs. Smith

We will be adding a third Kindergarten class to help with ease our large class size.  I will make details available to you as I receive them.

What a great, productive week!  We did a lot of writing, reading, comparing, contrasting, predicting, counting, adding, problem solving, and all the while  learning new routines, expectations, and appropriate behaviors.  No wonder we are so tired at the end of the day!

Reading every night to your child will be a terrific boost to their learning. Read together for 20 minutes every night.

READ TO SELF- is moving along quite well.  I know that many students enjoy reading familiar books and I invite them to bring 2 or 3 favorites from home to keep in their book box.  They can leave them here to read during the day and switch them after a bit.

READ TO SOMEONE-is another component of our Literacy Program.  We started this new adventure today.  We made an anchor chart so we will know what READ TO SELF and READ TO SOMEONE will look like.

READ TO SELF                                        READ TO SOMEONE

1. Find a spot                                          1. Find a spot with your partner

2. Eyes on book                                     2. Sit knee to knee, elbow to elbow

3. Keep on reading                              3. Listen and look at the book while

with a quiet voice                                partner reads

4. Switch readers

5. Keep on reading

Reminder that Monday is PICTURE DAY.  I will write more this weekend.

Mrs. Smith

Thanks to Natalie Hansen for sharing her dead bee that she brought in for our Science Center.  BZZZ  🙂

Yeah…our blogs are finally back up!  It was down all weekend and I had taken pictures that I wanted to post.  I will try to post them this weekend.

We are in Week 2 of our 3 weeks about We Are Special.  You may have noticed papers coming home with words on them about:

-things our hands can do

-things our nose can do

-things our feet can do

We also read 2 books and compared the texts. Wow!  We read Jasper  and Curious George Goes to School. We found :

-Both stories are about monkeys

-Both stories have a monkey who doesn’t follow directions and gets into trouble

-Both stories have words

-Both stories have pictures

Writing-Check out the writing going on in here!  Lots of watching, listening,  following directions, and trying!  I can see improvement in just a few days.  Way to go Kindergarteners!

This week we began our Daily Five with Read To Self.   We made a chart that tells what Read to Self should look like.  We will be working with these steps:

1. Find our spot and stay there

2. Eyes on our book

3. Keep on reading

As we read, we will be building stamina. Building stamina will help us become strong readers.  Today we read for 8 minutes!

Math-We jumped right in with writing numbers and  making connections between objects and numbers.  Our daily Calendar Time is loaded with math.  We figure out the date.  We have a 100’s chart on which we are counting the days we are in school.  We also have a Place Value Chart (ones, tens, hundreds) into which we add a straw for each day that we are here.  Lastly, we have a Money Chart where we add a penny for each day in attendance.  Since today is day 8. we have already made a trade of 5 pennies for 1 nickel (and 3 more pennies).

Of course, our daily Lunch Count provides us with daily story problems and number sentences.  Today we had 9 buying pizza and 2 buying stuffed sandwich.  So, 9 + 2 = 11.  We counted on from 9 and got 11 very quickly.

Our words this week are I and can.  We have been spelling and writing these words.  Practice with your child.

Students should also be writing their name-with only 1 capital letter at the beginning.   All other letters are lower case.

Looking ahead…

MONDAY 9/16 -PICTURE DAY Payment envelopes were sent home last week.  Bring them in next Monday, along with your smile 🙂

WEDNESDAY 9/18-PEACE ASSEMBLY at 2:30

THURSDAY 9/17 OPEN HOUSE 6:00-8:00PM you will have a chance to sign up for a conference at that time.

We are learning so many things in Kindergarten!

Enjoy the cooler temperatures.

Mrs. Smith

It was great to see so many of you at last night’s PTA picnic!  I always enjoy meeting new families and seeing former students and their families too.

Reminder that tomorrow is LATE START.  Students come to school at 9:35

( instead of 8:35.)  Dismissal is regular time.