Happy Holidays!

We have reached the 73rd day of school...can you believe it?!?!  The time feels like it has flown by!  I am continually impressed and amazed by all that your children have learned so far this year and all they can do.  It has been exciting to watch their academic and social growth since the start of the year.

Here are a few highlights from our last week of 2018:

We had a fun holiday project and snack on Tuesday!  Each child created a gift for his or her family.  They are very proud of their work!  Thanks to Erica, Victoria, and Karen for providing the snacks for our holiday snack!  Be on the lookout for your child's gift in his or her Friday Folder!

We continued to read more Gingerbread stories this week!  We even read about how to make gingerbread cookies in our Scholastic News.  Then the children illustrated and wrote their own version of the Gingerbread Man.  Who did your child have chasing the Gingerbread Man?

This week wrapped up our holiday tradition shares.  Now that the children have heard everyone's tradition and created illustrated pages, they are each bringing home a Holiday Tradition book to share with you at home.  I hope you are able to take the time to read through all the fun traditions from our class and admire your child's illustrations!

We learned one more Reading Power in Reader's Workshop this week: Persistence Power.  This means as readers, when we meet a word we do not know, we use all our powers to try to figure out the word.  We do not just give up!  We practiced this power by reading poems from our Winter Poetry Notebook. Everyone was really working on his or her persistence power! We even went to Ms. Deb's third grade class to show them our reading powers!

During Writer's Workshop, we continued working on our booklets and telling stories over pages.  The children were given writing folders to keep their writing in and were given an alphabet chart as a resource to use when spelling words.  Our Kindergarten writers continue to work hard!

In math,  we continued to work on putting numbers in order and working on the number line. The children learned two new Work Places: Scrambled Numbers and Foxes in the Den.  In Foxes in the Den, the children practiced addition and used the new strategy of counting on from the higher number.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday and a happy and healthy 2019!  School resumes on Wednesday, January 2nd. 

That's all for now...see you in 2019!

Reading Superpowers!

We had a wonderful time at the Pete the Cat show at the Flynn Theatre on Tuesday!  The show was funny and filled with lots of singing and energetic songs!  When we got back, Ms. Polly had made Pete the Cat chocolate colored pretzels for us!  What was your child's favorite part of the field trip?

Our Kindergarten readers have been using their reading superpowers every day and it is helping them to become great beginning readers!  I hope they have shown you pointer power and re-read power when reading with you at home.  This week we learned about three new powers we need to activate when reading:  picture power, snap word power, and sound power.  When we use picture power, we are using the illustrations in the story to help us figure out the words on the page.  This is one of our strongest powers right now!  When reading with your child, it is great to do a picture walk first (looking through the book and just talking about the pictures).  This gets the picture power activated and ready to use when trying to figure out tricky words.  We also learned about "snap word" power.  We use this power when we find and read our sight words in books...in a snap!  Lastly, we learned about sound power.  We use sound power by looking at the first letter (and the ones after)  in an unknown word and saying the sound of the first letter(s).  This can help us to sound out and figure out the word.  Ask your child to show you some of his or her reading superpowers this weekend!

During Fundations, we learned about the letters V and W.  We practiced our letter formation and brainstormed words that begin with that letter.  We also learned two new sight words this week: on and go. We have compiled quite a list of sight words so far!  Can your child find any of these words in the stories you read at home?

• a
• am
• can
• for
• go
• is
• I
• it
• like
• my
• on
• see
• the
• you

During Writer's Workshop, we are continuing to write and tell personal narratives (stories about ourselves and our families).  However, we are now working on telling our stories over several pages, with a beginning, middle, and end.  The children had the choice to continue working in their writing notebooks or to move to using booklets (three pages stapled together).  It was amazing to see their first stories.  Many wrote about our trip to the Flynn!  Ask your child to tell you about the story he or she wrote in the booklet.  It should have three parts!

We have enjoyed hearing about everyone's holiday traditions this week!  We heard from Eloise, Holden, Graham, Skyler, Charlie, and Lyvia.  Ask your child to tell you about their traditions!  We have also been enjoying reading many versions of the The Gingerbread Man. We read about The Gingerbread Baby, The Gingerbread Girl, The Gingerbread Pirate, The Ninjabread Man, The Gingerbread Friends, and the Gingerbread Bear.  Which was your child's favorite?

Lastly, in math we are working on ordering numbers from 1-20.  We learned about the number line as a math tool and have been practicing talking about numbers that come before other numbers and numbers that come after.  We have also been working on positional words in math using our December calendar.  Can your child demonstrate the positions, in front of, behind, inside, outside, to the left, and to the right?

Have a great weekend!

Upcoming Events!

Hope to see some of you at the PTO Holiday Craft Fair on Saturday, December 8th.  It is from 9:30-1:30pm.  Also, we are going to the Flynn Theatre on Tuesday, December 11th to see Pete the Cat: The Musical.  This is a morning field trip.  We will leave around 8:45am and be back to school by lunch.  We are looking forward to seeing Pete the Cat on stage!

This week during theme we have been enjoying learning about each other's holiday traditions! It is fun to see all the similarities we have around the holidays.  On your child's sharing day, he or she has talked about the tradition and shared a photo (if there was one) and then we all illustrated a picture to go with the tradition.  At the end of our Traditions unit, each child will bring home an illustrated book with all of our class' traditions.  This week we learned about Carter's cookies, Penelope's "Bear House", Leif's Christmas tree star, and Grayson's Grandma's pumpkin bread!  Next week, five more friends will share!



We had a new Scholastic Let's Find Out magazine to read this week.  It was about bears getting ready for winter and hibernating.  We used our "pointer power" to help us read the magazine and we learned a new sight word: "it". Also during our literacy time, we were introduced to two more letters: h and k.  We practiced forming the letters and brainstormed words that have that letter at its initial sound. We are almost to the end of the alphabet!  When we come back to school in January, we will quickly go through how to form all the uppercase letters as well.

In Writer's Workshop, we talked about what to do when you want to spell a big word and do not know how!  In Kindergarten, we call it "best guess" spelling.  This means the children are listening for the sounds they hear in a word and writing down the letters that make those sounds. Today we talked about following these steps to figure out how to write a word in a story:

• First, think of what you want to say
• Say the word slowly
• Listen to the sounds in the word
• Think about what letters make those sounds
• Write the letters for the sounds you hear

  

I was amazed today, during Writer's Workshop, to see these Kindergartners spelling larger words and writing sentences!  They should be proud! If your children ask you how to spell a word at home, instead of telling them, encourage them to use the steps I outlined above.  You will be impressed!

We also had some fun reading a few versions of The Gingerbread Man. We read The Gingerbread Baby, The Gingerbread Man Loose at School, and The Ninjabread Man.  Which version was your child's favorite?  We also did a little gingerbread math by creating a gingerbread glyph.  A glyph is a pictorial way to collect data.  I had five questions about cookies for the children and they got to decorate a paper gingerbread person based on the answers to those questions.  For example, if I asked how many cookies they like to eat at school (from 0-5), they put that many buttons on their gingerbread man.  After everyone finished, we used the gingerbread to do some sorting and gather information about our class!

In Math, we continue to study numbers from 1-20, with activities the include matching numerals and quantities, counting forward and backward, reading numerals, comparing quantities to determine more or less, and adding.  We were introduced to new game called Bicycle Race that helped us to practice doubling numbers

Have a wonderful weekend!