October 27, 2023 Class News
We had a terrific week learning together in kindergarten! Your children are working hard and having fun! Take a peek at all we did this week.
This weeks Star Student was Elijah. Next week we will not have one due to parent/teacher conferences.
Sight Words: Our two sight words this week: are and as. Next week we will learn with and his.
Phonics: During our Words Their Way phonics lesson this week we learned the letters /d/ and /f/. We cut our “sort” cards, sorted them by beginning sounds, glued them on a graphic organizer and lastly drew and spelled our own words that begin with d and f. We are working on our “best guess” spelling, meaning they write whatever letters they hear! Take a look at your child’s spelling coming home in their Friday folder.
Literacy Centers: This week we continued reading groups, sight word center, independent library center, and iPad center. In our phonics group, students “wrote the room.” They carried clipboards as they wrote different Halloween words around the room. In reading groups, we continue to observe picture clues and word clues to make predictions about what the story will be about. We are also practicing reading and writing CVC words and sight words in our reading group books.
Writers Workshop: We reviewed the four seasons and discussed the things we see and do during the fall. We learned about the parts of a leaf and why some leaves change color in the fall. We went read the book We’re Going on a Leaf Hunt and went on our own leaf hunt around our campus! We then described our leaves using our five senses. They came up with some great descriptive words!
On Wednesday, we spent time writing about why we are excited for Halloween! Students were so excited to share about costumes and festivities. We continue to work on finger spaces, writing with lowercase letters, and using punctuation at the end of our sentence.
Math: Students were excited to practice estimating with candy corn! We had one large class jar of candy corn, students estimated how many were in the jar and put their estimation on our poster. We then counted as a class to find out how many there really were! We continue to focus on “one more” when counting numbers 1-10. We are also working hard on problem solving in our math journals. Students love to critically think about questions, solve them independently, and share with the class under the document camera!
Science: We used our five senses to observe our class pumpkins. The class came up with terrific describing words using our five senses to guide our thinking. As scientists do, we had a fun pumpkin investigation lab, where we got to measure the parts of a pumpkin with unifix cubes, count the lines, and we even investigated whether our pumpkins float or sink in water! These investigations led to other questions and wonders so we got to experiment a bit further based on the kid’s own questions!
STEM: This week we challenged ourselves with our first STEM project! Students were given candy pumpkins and toothpicks and tried to make a haunted house. The goal was to have the house stand up and to fit a “ghost” inside. Ask your child if their haunted house was a success!
Second Step: This week we began unit 2, “Emotion Management.” In this unit students will learn how to identify emotions in themselves and others. They will learn strategies to manage their emotions! Lesson One focused on “happy!” Through certain social cues (smiling, calm body, etc.) students could identify that a person was happy. We talked about different times we have been happy and what our “happy face” looks like!
Common Core Standards we’re working on:
- I can read common sight words.
- I can read emergent level text with purpose and understanding.
- With prompting and support, I can ask and answer questions about key details in text.
- I can spell simple words phonetically.
- I can read CVC words.
- I can speak audibly and express thoughts, feelings and ideas clearly.
- I can read the words in a book in the right order.
- I can say the most common sound for each consonant in the alphabet.
- I can draw or write to help me share what I think.
- I can print lots of upper and lowercase letters.
- I can write numbers from 0-20.
- I can understand that the last thing I count tells the number of things in a group.
- I can name the number for each thing in a group as I count them.
Important Dates:
- Tuesday, October 31st – Happy Halloween! Students may wear their Halloween Costume on this day!
- Wednesday, November 1st – All Saints Day Mass, Dress Uniform
- Wednesday, November 1st – Noon Dismissal/Parent-Teacher Conferences (Students do not attend)
- Thursday, November 2nd – Parent-Teacher Conferences (Students do not attend)
- Friday, November 3rd – Parent-Teacher Conferences (Students do not attend)
- Friday, November 10th – No School, Veteran’s Day (observed)
- Monday, November 20th – Dress Uniform, Thanksgiving Mass
- Tuesday, November 21st – Dress Uniform, Grandparents Day for 3rd-5th Grade/No Hot Lunch this day
- Wednesday November 22nd – Friday, November 24th – No School, Thanksgiving Holiday
- Wednesday, December 13th – Field trip to the Children’s Museum! Please do not order hot lunch for this day. More information to come!