Newsletter Updates for the Week of January 30th

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Friday, Feb. 10th—Smokey the Bear Visits

-Tuesday, Feb. 14th—Valentine Party—pm

-Friday Feb. 17th—NO School—PD for Teachers

-Monday, Feb. 20th—NO School—President’s Day

-Wednesday, Feb 22nd—Progress Reports Home

-Thursday, Feb 23rd—1/2 Day—Conferences 4-7

                                     -Sledding Party ????

AND THE PACE QUICKENS: 

Hopefully you’ve have a chance to look over your child’s report card and assessments. Overall, I’m very pleased with the students’ progress. We’ve established some great routines and foundational skills; however, now the pace quickens a bit. We will still be adding 2 new sightwords each week, learning a total of 51 sightwords this year; and instead of 1 letter a week, we will be focusing on 2 letters a week. I am beefing up my interventions at school for those students who need some extra practice and support with skills.  You can help as well by reviewing these same skills at home.  Now that we have so many strategies in our toolboxes for reading—you should be seeing your child grow as a reader.  I’ll send home take-home reading folders a couple times a week and they can do Raz-Kids at home as well.  Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns related to your child’s progress in Kindergarten.

READING:

This week our class reading stories about the kinds of fresh foods grown on a farm. Your child will be identifying different kinds of fruits and vegetables. Here are some activities that you can do with your child to help reinforce the skills we will be practicing:

· Vocabulary—fresh & delicious—talk about the fresh fruits and vegetables you buy at the grocery store or farmers’ market.

· Sightwords—he & with— Have your child practice writing these words and using them in a sentence.

· Category Words—fruits and vegetables—Write the names of fruits and vegetables on index cards. Have your child draw a picture to match and then invite your child to sort the cards into fruit and vegetable piles.

· Phonics—Ff & Rr—Play ‘I Spy’ with your child using beginning sounds. “I spy something that begins with the /f/ sound.”

WRITING: 

We’ve completed our Pattern Book Unit and will be celebrating by reading our stories to the class.  We will begin our next unit of study—Small Moments—by reading several small moment stories and discussing the qualities.  This week we will complete a couple of journals—one about hibernating animals, one about what we like to do on a snow day, and another about a groundhog.  This is an exciting time of hear because the students’ abilities and confidence for writing just seem to blossom!

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES: 

We will continue our study of Winter this week—as we learn about some polar animals and how they adapt to their cold environments.  We will also check in with Punxsutawney Phil on Thursday to see if he does or does not see his shadow and learn what that means for the upcoming weather forecast.

MATH: 

This week  we will continue to learn about 3D solid shapes as we introduce the cylinder and the rectangular prism.  We will learn about both the addition symbol and the equal symbol and begin to solve some simple number sentence using them.

 Please be sure to return your January Book-It Calendar and Library Book. 

Also, please send in your cereal box ASAP.