A Little Dobbs, Will Do Ya
September 16, 2016
Reading
We sang lots of fun songs (ask your amazing little one if they can sing the alphabet backwards) learned some fun poems, and read some great books!
We read:
- Chicka Chicka Boom
- Alphabet Rescue
- Animal Underwear Alphabet
- Superhero ABCs
- It Starts with A
The children enjoyed each of these stories! We introduced our loose parts center and the children were able to go in and make letters out of our different items!
In the past two weeks, we introduced two new poems. Can You See a Rainbow and I Can Be Anything. Both of these poems allowed us to introduce two new sight words: can, you. When reading with your child, help them identify them in stories. We also used these poems to talk about different punctuation: question marks and exclamation marks.
Below you will find an attachment of our kindergarten sight words, please work with your child to find these words in your nightly reading.
Just a few of the standards addressed in reading this week were:
- RI.K.5 and 6: Identify the parts of a book and the author and illustrator
- RF.K.1 Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print
- RF.K.3a: Produce frequent letter sounds
- L.K.2: Begin to demonstrate command of the convention of Standard English, including punctuation
Project Development
During centers, the children were able to research more on the rainforest of Australia. One group of children discovered the different layers of the rainforest. We learned there are four layers: emergency, canopy, understory, and forest floor.
The children continued to look at pictures and research on our iPads. While doing so they discovered a funny looking animal called the platypus. He really caught our attention!
We began researching him and learned lots of interesting facts: for example he does not have teeth and he is a carnivore.
Your amazing little people are very excited to continue this research into both the rainforest and the platypus!
Some standards addressed in our project development were:
- SL.K.1: Participate in collaborative conversations with partners
- SL.K.3: Ask and answer questions in order to seek help, get information or clarify
- RI.K.10: Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding
- RI.K.1: Ask and answer questions about key details in a text
Teaching everyone about the layers of the rainforest
Building in the loose parts center
Working together to research the platypus
Writing
Shared journal is an amazing part of our day, where I am able to challenge each of your children at his/her level. Some children are working on writing the date and drawing a picture associated with the story, while others are trying to write the story using simple phonics, and still others are working on using spaces and punctuation. Since each child is able to work on his/her level and I am able to scaffold them to push their writing even further.
Since our last newsletter we wrote about:
- Kylie went to her Pop's house
- Chloe went to Six Flags
- Emma Grace saw the kitchen at Marco's Pizza
- Reid went bowling
- Mary got a new puppy
- Sam saw a Killer Whale show
- Brady went to the beach
- Kelsey went to the Fair
- Yuan went to the beach
Researching different animals
Experimenting in our sand table
Working on one to one correspondence in the math game center
Center Time
We opened up our sand table and our painting table! The children were very excited about both of these centers.
The painting center allows for creative expression in conjunction with the development of fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and experimentation with mixing colors, varying amounts of paint and water to experiment the effects..
The sand table allows for measuring, experimentation, conservation, social interactions, dramatic play and cause and effect. To help us with more experimentation and to allow us to work on different levels (horizontal, vertical) the community 7 friends our constructing a structure for our sand table to allow for even more experimentation.
Also this week during centers we introduced a new math game: 30 Chips. The children roll the dice and cover up that many spaces on the board. This provides development in one to one correspondence and to work on understanding a number represents a quantity.
We put a new poem in our poetry journal and completed a math journal page.
Last week we worked on our color words, so this week we sorted m&m's by color and graphed to see which one had the most and least! Your amazing little people loved this activity!
A few of the standards addressed during centers were:
- K-CC1: Count sequentially
- K-CC4: Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities
- K-CC6: Identify whether the number of objects in one group is grater than, less than, or equal to the number of objects in another group
- RF.K.3c: Read common high-frequency words by sight
FYI
- You should have received an email from PRS informing you about some bus route changes. If your child will be riding a different bus please let me know so that I can make sure he/she gets home safely on Monday :)
- Birthdays are incredibly special to our kindergarten family and we love to make everyone feel celebrated on that day! To celebrate birthdays, your child gets to decorate a wooden letter (the first letter of their name) to hang on our monthly calendar. We can also celebrate with muffins. We love to show our independence and create things for ourselves (especially since we are a year older), so our class likes to bake muffins for birthdays. If you wish to have your child celebrate with a treat, please send in the ingredients to bake muffins for our class on his/her birthday.
- Our amazing intern, Ms Schmidt, will begin her two weeks of independent teaching Sept. 26. Not only will your children be learning from a great, enthusiastic, young teacher; it also provides me with the more opportunities to work with your children one on one and push their learning evening further.
Dates to Remember
- September 26: Cuco's Spirit Day
- September 30: Book Orders Due
- September 27 - September 30: Spirit Week:
Wednesday - Crazy Hair Day
Thursday - Favorite Team Day
Friday - Tacky Day
- October 10: Parent Conference Day (no school for children)
- October 11 - 13: Book Fair
- November 16: Field Trip to see Pete the Cat