September 16th-20th
Check out what we learned in Ms. Wermerskirchen's room!
What's to come...
**We will be celebrating Kindness Week next week. See below for special days.
Tuesday, 9-24: cycle day 4; send in collage pictures (keep reading)
Wednesday, 9-25: cycle day 5; wear red and/or black for our school-wide kindness picture
Thursday, 9-26: cycle day 6; 2 HOUR EARLY RELEASE
Friday, 9-27: cycle day 7; wear Saber apparel for kindness week
Name Writing
Lunch Numbers
Check it Out!
There were a few posts done this week whole group. Make sure you check it out!
Jackson Pride
What We Learned
Take a Look into our Class
- Kinders continued to practice sharing through turn and talks during our read alouds.
- We also learned that good readers use pictures to help figure out what's happening in a story. Before reading a book, we go for a picture walk to give our brains an idea of what could be happening. This is especially helpful as we begin the early stages of reading. This week, the kindergarteners read two books featuring the words the and I.
- For the first week of independent/partner centers we did pretty good! Centers is a time to practice what we are learning. Ask your kinder which center he/she has liked the best so far. A short video was shared via Seesaw.
Writing:
- I continue to model the five steps of writing (see last week's update) every day and will do so for the year in it's entirety. The kindergarteners job was to share a story (something that has actually happened to them) and draw a picture to match.
Handwriting:
- The kindergarteners were introduced to the handwriting strokes called tall and short line down, ez across and down the slide. If you Google "EZ Write", you will find the first image has a picture of what the EZ write strokes look like.
- What can you continue to do at home? Practice with your child writing his/her name with an uppercase letter at the beginning of his/her name and lowercase to follow! Also, practice coloring within the lines of pictures + cutting on the lines with scissors. These skills are essential to building hand strength and building muscle memory.
Phonics:
- We continue to practice identifying letter sounds. Vowels, especially /a/ and /e/ can be tricky. Mastering these is key as we begin our year!
- Kinders also learned the zoo phonics favorite letters.
Poem:
- Title: Humpty Dumpty
- HFW [High Frequency Words]: the
- Punctuation Focus: period
- Skillset: reading with 1:1 consistency [meaning, his/her finger, eyes + mouth all correlate]
Math:
- We worked on establishing our math routine--counting to 100; counting backwards; writing a basic math addition sentence; etc. and we also are breaking apart numbers 1-10 using tallies, ten frames, finger flashing and identifying if it is an odd or even number.
- What can you do to help at home? When you use math in your every day life, share it with your kindergartener! As you are cooking or baking, counting or whatever it may be, have a discussion for them to see how math is not a separate subject in school.
Theme:
- Mr. Bjerken to read a story about friendship to our class. This is an opportunity for us to get to know him a bit more as well and become more familiar with who he is in the building.
- We also completed a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom project that is hanging in the hallway, and painted for the first time to go along with our story The Rainbow Fish.
Special Home Assignment
Hi Kindergarten Families, Next week, the Jackson community will be celebrating Kindness Week. Teachers have a variety of read alouds and activities planned throughout the week to do in their classrooms and as a school body to celebrate and recognize the different acts of kindness we see everyday. One thing all of kindergarten will be doing is a collage of each individual student, and the kindergarten teachers are asking for your help at home. Each kindergartner is being asked to bring between 5-8 pictures of things that makes them special or unique. Some ways you may find these pictures can be by cutting them out of magazines, searching images on Google or by using clip art. The images do not need to be large (they will all be glued on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper) and are meant to represent things that are meaningful to your child. For example, you can include different activities your child participates in (soccer, dance, piano, arts and crafts, etc.); pets; favorite colors or foods, etc. Please send these in a Ziploc baggie with your child’s name by Tuesday, September 24th as this is an activity we will be doing in our classroom.
Ms. Kaitlin Wermerskirchen
Email: kwermers@shakopee.k12.mn.us
Website: www.shakopee.k12.mn.us
Phone: 952-496-5802
Twitter: @Kindersin235