Week of Dec. 6-10th

This has been a fun week hearing a lot of different gingerbread stories. We are learning about characters, problem/solutions, the refrains in the story, and the endings. In their journals, they are writing and illustrating the different endings to the stories. We are working on good sentences that have a capital letter at the beginning, spaces between the words, and a period at the end. We are also working on stretching words and putting down all the sounds we hear.

We added the letters, sounds and actions for short e and z and the words “this that”.

In math, we are practicing problem solving with simple addition, playing games to reinforce our math skills and number recognition. Every morning for calendar, we are working on teen numbers and building them. We say 13 has 1 group of ten and 3 extras, starting on beginning place value.

Every day we are working on social skills, appropriate behavior and how to treat others with kindness. Not a day goes by that we don’t address this in some way. Be sure to ask your child what happened with our kindness seeds that Buddy brought!!

Please make sure all book bags are returned next week by Monday at the latest. I will give new books today if they come in but after today, I will just be keeping them until after break. They have lots of sight word books that have come home that they can practice with over break.

I will be sending the winter break packets/games home next week with those that requested them.

Again, if you won’t be here next week or the end of the week, please let me know so I can get stuff sent home. We will be having our holiday party day on Thursday of next week. We aren’t having a “party time”, we’ll just be rotating through activities all day. They will NOT need a snack that day.

Friday Dec. 17th is a half day and pick up is at noon.

I am leaving early tomorrow (the 10th) to take my Dad to an appt. It will be at the end of the day so Mrs. Hermann will be dismissing my class. Just wanted to give you a heads up. She won’t have access to email, so if something changes, please call the office before 1:00. thanks!

If your child is playing basketball or another winter sport, I love to come watch them play when I can. Please email me the schedules and I’ll do my best! 🙂

I will not be updating next week, so please have a wonderful winter break and stay safe and warm. We are in town for the holidays and then headed to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl! Our family is very excited about this opportunity! If you don’t have anyone to cheer for, feel free to cheer on the Utah Utes! My daughter is the blonde on the sidelines taking pictures. Our family loves football, so this has been fun for us! (As long as she doesn’t get tackled….which has happened!)

Have a great break! Make sure your child keeps reading and enjoying some great books!

Week of Nov. 29th-Dec. 3rd

We started this week learning about families and sharing information and pictures about our own families. We learned about needs and wants and the difference between the two. As I said in my email, the discussion veered off into donating to help those less fortunate and many brought in toys to donate. It’s never too early to teach kids how to have a giving heart and I love that the idea came from them! Our class elf, Buddy, arrived on Wed. He is a springboard for our writing this month and it never hurts to have reminders about behavior this time of year. It was fun to see them SO excited! Today we worked on a project that we can’t tell you about yet! Tomorrow we will be learning about reindeer and using information we learn to sort fact and opinion cards.

This week, we added the capital letters O, L, and R and the sight words, went, one, two. We are working on changing the first sound in a word to make a new rhyming word. This would be great to practice at home along with rhyming words. For example, have them say make, change the /m/ to /c/ (say the sounds not the letters here. They should say the word cake. They will also need to be able to produce a rhyming word but it doesn’t have to be a real word.

In math, we’ve been working on more/less and problem solving. We’ve also been learning to do some graphing and how to read a graph. We are starting to work on simple addition facts as well. Each day we working on counting to the number of the day we’re on. If your child can count to 100 independently with no reminders, they need to come tell me at recess and do it for me. I’ve had several kids earn their smartie reward by doing it already.

We have really been working on how to solve problems in kindergarten. We have had several issues with kids playing “guns” at recess. We had a long talk about weapons and how that is a BIG problem and we can NOT do that at school. Please help us reinforce this at home.

Next week we start our gingerbread unit and will hear lots of fun gingerbread stories. We will start a new journal and write the different endings to the stories while we also talk about characters, problems and solutions. It’s always such a fun unit. (I say that a lot I think 🙂

We will have our holiday party on Thursday the 16th. Look for a sign up genius from our wonderful room Moms soon. Friday the 17th, we will have a holiday sing along and will only have a half day. Dismissal is at noon that day.

Don’t forget that Monday is our first pajama day! Please be sure they wear tennis shoes and are dressed for the weather outside!

Have a great weekend!