Mrs. Schmidt's Kindergarten
Week of April 8th
General Information
Important Dates
May 6th - Kindergarten Field Trip to MN Children's Museum
May 10th - 1/2 of Kindergarten (including Mrs. Schmidt's class) Field Trip to Oxbow
May 30th - Last Day of School
Important Notes
MN Children's Museum Field Trip: On Monday, May 6th, we will be heading out on a field trip to the MN Children's Museum. They are having a special Wild Kratts exhibit that we can't wait to check out! There will be more specifics to come! We are in need of 5 chaperones (in charge of a group) for this. If you are interested, please email me by April 12th. Since we are not able to take more than 5, I will draw names if we have more than 5 people interested. We are anticipating this being a lot of fun and look forward to the experience!
Oxbow Park and Zollman Zoo Field Trip: On Friday, May 10th, 1/2 of kindergarten (including US!) will head out to Oxbow for some exploring and some learning time with one of their lovely naturalists. In addition, we will have a picnic lunch. There will be more specifics to come. If you would like to chaperone (be in charge of a group) let me know! If you just want to join, that's OK, too, as any number of parents are welcome! Please just email me to let me know to expect you. Anyone wanting to join, please let me know by April 12th. Chaperoning or not, you will need to meet us at the park, as we will not have room on the bus. We cannot wait for this trip!
CVC Word Practice @ Home
Your child is working hard on their literacy skills at school. As we talked about at the February conferences, knowing letters and sounds leads to blending those sounds together and reading CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant). At school, we practice in a variety of ways, including with word families. Your child should be bringing home some word family sheets (pictured below) that we've practiced in class. On them, we highlight the word family words and circle words that may be HFW we haven't learned or are otherwise tricky.
Please keep these sheets in a folder or safe place at home and have your child read them to you, to siblings, to themselves or to stuffed animals! Daily practice of these would be great! Repeated practice helps build fluency, which helps with reading comprehension.
In addition, I have added some other CVC practice pages in PDF format to the link below. These are sorted by the vowel in the middle. There are words-only lists and then lists of words in sentences.
You can print these or pull them up and have your child practice reading these multiple times in order to become fluent. Remember, much like sight words/HFW, we want students to be able to see the words and just read them as a whole word, rather than sounding all of them out. REPEATED practice is important to get to that point.
Also, being available to help your child know if they misread a word or to help them if they get stuck and guide them with their reading is important, so they aren't reading the words incorrectly and learning them the wrong way.
If your child is able to read most of these as a whole word already, you could time them for 1 minute, then do a challenge round to see it they can get further during the second timing.
Last, but not least, I've linked some Jack Hartman CVC/word family songs here - the kids love these songs and linking the words to songs can do magic for getting the words to stick! :)
HFW Practice @ Home
The Benchmark HFW lists are almost done for the year!
We have been practicing these words repeatedly at school, but 5-10 minutes of practice at home nightly is also important for your child to secure these words. If your child is already able to read them fluently, they could work on writing them our putting them into short sentences.
If you need the HFW list, see the "What We'll Be Learning" section and if you need ideas, see the "Learning Resources for Home" button in that section.
Starfall
Starfall is a great website your child can access with LOADS of literacy practice games, books and more! Click the link below to check it out!
KOMET Schedule
4/9 - T Day: PLTW, SMART
4/10 - K Day: PLTW, SMART and Sing Along
4/11 - O Day: PLTW, SMART
4/12 - M Day: PLTW, SMART and Media (return library books, please)
Weather Information
Weather Outlook
Wilderness Wednesday
The Wonder of Water
On Wilderness Wednesday, we learned about water. With April being the month known for spring showers, we took the opportunity to learn a little bit more about that. We read "Rabbits and Raindrops", by Jim Arnosky, which is a beautifully written and illustrated story! We talked about why water is important (water = life), where it comes from & where it goes (water cycle), the water table, wells and more.
Outside, we actually had water to play with due to the recent rain/snow! Water out there creates a whole new excitement and ENDLESS opportunities for creation and learning. It's also a hot commodity because we can't just turn on a faucet out there. The kids really had to work together to share and to make it last! This was an important lesson that can also apply to the water situation in our world.
The kids took to the mud kitchen to create MUD and worked together to create a birthday cake for a student's sibling. I heard students excitedly gathering "ingredients", offering help, running errands and someone was even making a delivery :) It was so fun and heartwarming to see the kids do something so kind and work together for someone outside of our classroom community.
In the sand pit, students were showing some real ingenuity - they created a "hot chocolate well" by digging into the sand pit and filling it with water, which became brown and murky. When the water kept draining, we talked through ways they could get the water to stay. Eventually, it was decided that rocks at the bottom or something else could hold the water better, and a bucket ended up being dug into the ground and then filled. Talk about problem-solving and engagement! And what great connections to our text and learning about water!
What We'll Be Learning
Focus Letter: Long A sound (via the magic e at the end of a word)
Word Family: -ame
Interactive Read Aloud Books: Exploring Non-Fiction (continued)
Shared Reading Stories: "Sticky", "Animal Masks" and "Look Out!"
Benchmark HFW Unit 9: my, to
Previously Taught HFW:
Bridges Math: Unit 6, Module 1
Session 1: Mystery Bag Sorting
Session 2: What Is a Sphere?
Session 3 & 4: Which Cylinder Holds More?
Session 5: Shape Detectives
Miscellaneous
Nature-Based Kindergarten Apparel
You are not obligated to make a purchase, but if you wish to do so, the link is below.
Be aware that there are adult AND youth sizes, so if you're buying for your child, please scroll to find the appropriate youth size. There are also a couple of color options.
Orders can really be made any time, so this link will stay in the newsletter all year.