Week Three: August 28-September 1

Happy Friday! Thank you all so much for making it a priority to come to Curriculum Night on Wednesday.  It was great to see all of you and give you all of the information you need for a successful kindergarten year! :) If any questions came to mind afterwards, do not hesitate to email me.  Below is a review of our week and important upcoming dates:

 

September 4th: No school! Happy Labor Day!
September 7th 9:00 AM Parent Volunteer Training: In the elementary music room
September 13th 10:45-11:15 AM "Kindergarten Chat": with Joy about the future plans of CSD.  In Mrs. Robinson's room (room 112)
September 15th: CSD Community Support Cards due!  These were given to you at Covenant Conferences.
September 21st and 22nd: No school!

***Volunteering in our classroom will begin next week!  I will send out a Sign Up Genius today with the days/times that we need help.  You must have filled out the volunteer paperwork and turned it in before volunteering in our classroom.

Math:

This week in math workshop we began "counting collections".  This is explained in the article I gave you at curriculum night and why it is so important in the beginning of kindergarten.  We spent most of our math time learning about our math manipulatives (unifix cubes, pattern blocks, attribute blocks, C-rods, etc.) and also counting collections.  We are focusing on teaching the children one-to-one correspondence, how to sort/group objects, and how to count them in different ways.  We added a new game into our tubs called "Roll and Cover" and next we will add one called "Roll and Record"!  In the game "Roll and Cover", students roll a die, look at the number they rolled, and cover that number on a gameboard with a circle chip.  The continue to roll and cover until the game board is full!

Literacy:

This week in reader's workshop we learned how to properly write the letters "F" and "E" using big lines and little lines.  We learned that we ALWAYS start our letters at the top.  We will learn more "Frog Jump Capitals" next week.  We also began literacy centers that include ABC puzzles, an upper case/lower case letter matching game, SWAT with letters, and crayon rubbings with letters.  The game "SWAT" is a really fun game that you can easily make/play at home!  We have all of the letters of the alphabet written on index cards.  Three students play and one is the "caller" who calls out the letters and two students are the "swatters" and they have a fly swatter.  The caller calls out a letter and the swatters try to find the letter first and hit it with their fly swatter.  The person who hits the letter first gets to keep the letter!  They continue to play until there are no more letters.  This can be adapted for any level because the student can say the sound that the letter makes or you can write sight words on index cards. 

Thematic:

We finished up our nursery rhyme unit today!  We learned about rhyming words through our nursery rhymes and practiced making up our own rhyming words.  Your child should have many nursery rhyme mini-books at home that they can read with you!  We begin our fairy tales unit on Tuesday and will start with the 3 Little Pigs.  Beginning Tuesday, students will rotate through four thematic centers (one each day) that will involve art, reading, writing, math, or science.

Science: 

For our Sci-Fri today, we are reviewing Humpty Dumpty and are experimenting with a hard boil egg and a raw egg.  We will take the eggs outside and have each egg in it's own plastic container.  We will drop the container off of a brick wall and observe the differences between the two eggs when dropped.

Have a great, long weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James