Happy Holidays!!!

Wow...we have reach the 72nd day of school!  Hard to believe how quickly this school year is going!  I continue to be so impressed by all that your children have learned this year!  They have shown so much academic and social growth since the first day of school.  I look forward to sharing about their growth through the Progress Reports that go home on January 24th.

This week wrapped up our holiday tradition shares.   We learned about Leo's Christmas village, Joey's stocking and cookies, Lyvia's Christmas Eve box, Zoe's mom's birthday celebration, Camille's trip to Santa's Village, and Jr.'s Christmas tree and ornaments!  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!

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.   Ask your child to tell you about the story he or she wrote in the booklet.  It should have three parts (or more)!

We learned our last two reading superpowers this week: sound power and persistence 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. Persistence power 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 while reading books in our book boxes. Everyone was really working on his or her persistence power!



In math, we continued to work on putting numbers in order and working on the number line. The children learned four new Work Places: Scrambled Numbers, Forest Game, Beat You to 20, 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. In the Forest Game, we worked on adding and subtracting by ones, twos, and threes (counting on and counting back) and in Beat You to 20 we were continuing to work on number recognition to twenty and finding efficient ways to count.


Lastly, we enjoyed reading a few more versions of the Gingerbread Man and then we got to taste Gingerbread cookies. I made and brought in a Gingerbread person for each child and we decorated them...and enjoyed them as a treat in the afternoon!  We also spent some time creating a family gift for the holidays.  Please check your child's Friday Folder for his or her gift for you.  They were all so proud of their work!

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday and a happy and healthy 2020!  School resumes on Thursday, January 2nd.

That's all for now...see you in 2020!

You Can't Catch Me...I'm the Gingerbread Man!

We have been in full Gingerbread mode! This week our Let's Find Out Scholastic Magazine was about bakeries and the jobs that people have in the bakeries and we talked about how gingerbread cookies are made and gingerbread houses.  We also had some fun reading a few versions of The Gingerbread Man. We read The Gingerbread Baby, The Gingerbread Girl,  The Gingerbread Bear, The Gingerbread Boy, and The Ninjabread Man.  Which version was your child's favorite?  Lastly, the children got a new book for their book box:  Run, Gingerbread, Run.  They used their reading superpowers to help them read this new story!

Speaking of superpowers...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 two new powers we need to activate when reading:  picture power and snap word 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!  Ask your child to show you some of his or her reading superpowers this weekend!

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. This week 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!

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: in and to.  They were in a snowman book we added to our book boxes! We have compiled quite a list of sight words so far!
a, are, am, do, I , it, in, see, the, to, we, you
Can your child point out any sight words in books at home!

We also enjoyed hearing about everyone's traditions this week!  We heard about Nora's special Christmas Eve breakfast, Alectra's decorations on the Christmas tree, Clementine's name pancakes, Roman's cookies, Alex's trains around his Christmas tree, Miss Carol Ann's picture calendar, Violet's visit to the Shelburne Tree Lighting, Henry's Green Friday, and Caroline's visit to the Waldorf School Holiday Mart.  Can your child tell you about anyone's traditions?





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?  Be sure to ask your child about a new game we learned called Avocado Smash!  We had a lot of fun playing it and it great for recognizing teen numbers!

Have a wonderful weekend!

A big week of learning!

 This week during theme we have been enjoying learning about each other's holiday traditions! It is fun to see all the similarities and differences 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 Winona's gingerbread house, Arsenie's cookies, Madison's Christimas caroling, Sabine's trip to Mexico, Ray's Christmas in Minnesota, and Hannah's Chanukah menorah!  We are looking forward to learning about more traditions next week!  If you haven't sent me an email about your child's tradition, please do so soon!

This week in Reader's Workshop we started a new unit called "We Are Super Readers". In this unit, the children will be learning strategies for beginning readers.  We are learning we all have reading super powers that will help us to become the best readers we can be.  This week we were introduced to Pointer Power.  All the children were given a special pointer to use to point to each word as they read which helps them match their reading voices to the print on the page.  Developing one-to-one matching is on the early reading behaviors that will help the children move into more conventional reading.  Can your child demonstrate his or her power to you at home? Go Super Readers!

We had a new Scholastic Let's Find Out magazine to read this week.  It was about bears and other animals 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 Math, we continue to study numbers from 1-20, with activities the include matching numerals and quantities, counting forward and backward, ordering numbers,  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 and Grab Bag Five and More that required us to use tally marks to build numbers.

During Writer's Workshop, we moved from just labeling our illustrations in our stories with words to writing a sentence to describe what is happening in the story!  We practiced counting out the number of words in the sentence and then stretching out the words to write down the letters that make those sounds.  I was very impressed with our Kindergarten Writers!  They are working so hard on stretching out words and listening for sounds.  Everyone wrote at least one or two sentences!  Great work!


Lastly, we had some fun reading snow stories this week!  We were inspired by one story about a snowman so we made our own snow people!  They are pretty cute!

Have a wonderful weekend!