DATES TO REMEMBER:
-Monday, September 17th—Mileage Club Begins
We are off to a good start in Kindergarten! The students are adjusting to the routines and have done a great job with learning our classroom procedures. Last week we spent some time reinforcing how to walk in line and how to be good listeners at group time. We will continue to review and practice these things together. Students are now aware of our colored behavior chart and are working hard to ‘stay on green.’ Don’t be surprised if your child does have to move their clip, as we know that children often ‘test the waters’ to see if we really will hold them accountable.
STUDENT OF THE WEEK:
Our student of the week is Paige DeWitt. Paige enjoys reading, swinging, sliding, swimming, & playing basketball. Her favorite place to go is to her Aunt Debbie’s house, and when she grows up Paige would like to be a figure skater.
Congratulations to Paige on being our first Student of the Week!
**Remember to send in your All About Me posters!
KINDERGARTEN T-SHIRTS:
All of the students who went through Kindergarten Round-Up received a yellow McBain t-shirt. We will wear these periodically throughout the year on special days. If your child registered after round-up, or if they were in Jr. K last year, they will be receiving a t-shirt so that we can all match—compliments of the McBain PTO.
LABELS:
I mentioned at Kindergarten Orientation that the PTO collects various labels, which they turn in and redeem for supplies and equipment for the student body. Your child is bringing home a baggie with all of the details. You can send labels in to school in any Ziploc baggie; just make sure it is labeled with your child’s name and the # of labels—for every 20 labels they bring in, they are entered into a drawing for various prizes. This is an easy way to support the PTO and our students.
READING:
This week we will be reading From Head to Toe as we work on comprehension skills, rhyming, & comparing and contrasting. Our focus letters for this week are Y, E, L, Z, & I. During our literacy stations we will continue to work on letters, sounds, & our names. We will also practice identifying rhyming words and retelling Brown Bear & The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The students were introduced to the computers last week and they will begin using them during literacy stations by accessing starfall.com. The students are enjoying reading from their book boxes during ‘read to self’ time. This week we will introduce our very first beanie baby strategy: Eagle Eye who reminds us to look at the pictures for clues to figure out the words while we are reading.
WRITING:
We will continue practicing our ‘listening’ and ‘speaking’ skills during storytelling. We will complete a journal page about a butterfly and later in the week, students will work together to create a class book about their favorite animal from our focus text: From Head to Toe. I always reinforce with the students that when we write, we always start our letters at the top.
SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES:
This week we will introduce ‘concepts of time’ as we discuss the difference between past, present, & future. We are patiently waiting for our butterflies to emerge from their chrysalis’. This week we will also begin our study of apples; we will be reading several books related to apples and incorporate them into our math lessons.
MATH:
We will work on sorting various manipulatives by different attributes (color, size, shape, etc.). We will continue to practice recognizing and writing the numbers 1-9 and practice counting using one-to-one correspondence. We will conduct an experiment related to volume, create a birthday graph, and begin learning about patterns.
