Upcoming Events/Mark your calendars:
- Tuesday, October 21: 8am Mass
Looking Ahead:
- Halloween: Halloween Guidelines for Kindergarten
Looking even further ahead: 🙂
- Christmas: I want to make sure our busy families mark FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19TH on their calendars. This will be the kindergarten Christmas Mass and song performance. We will be partnering with our 8th grade buddies to be in charge of the different Mass parts, and then after Mass, the kindergartners will stand on the altar and share their Christmas song presentation with you. The Mass will begin at 9:30 and will end with the song presentation close to 11:00. Keep in mind, this is a 2pm early dismissal day.
What’s Due:
- Hot lunch orders: Order now!
- Virtus training: In order to volunteer in our classroom or go on a field trip, you must be VIRTUS TRAINED: https://stcletusschool.com/volunteering/; Please be sure to get this completed! We’d LOVE to have you in our classroom! 🙂 Please reach out to Ms. Krieger in the office with ANY questions about virtus training: mkrieger@stcletusparish.com . We LOVE volunteers and are happy to help you with any questions. A BIG thanks to all that have gotten these requirements completed. We are so grateful to our volunteers!!
- Boom cards: the boom cards will be active until Monday 10/20, then I’ll upload new ones. Watch for those!
This Week:
We had so much fun on the field trip. Be sure to check out the pictures! We picked out our class pumpkin at the market and will use a graph to determine which face we will carve on it. Can’t wait! We wrapped up our discussion on apples with some crockpot applesauce on Friday. Students then graphed: Do you like homemade applesauce? Ask your child to tell you about the results!
We had a lockdown drill with the police present. The kids did just fine!
Next Week:
We will have a busy week of learning and have a couple of Halloween art projects to complete! Those projects are always great fine motor and direction following practice and just plain SPOOKTACULAR fun!
Language Arts:
- Fundations: So far, I’ve introduced:
t, top, /t/
b, bat, /b/
f, fun, /f/
n, nut, /n/
m, man, /m/,
i, itch, /i/
u, up, /u/
c, cat, /c/
o, octopus, /o/
a, apple /a/
g, game, /g/
d, dog, /d/
s, snake, /s/
e, Ed, /e/
r, rat, /r/
Between the short week and our field trip, I didn’t get to introducing our two new letters this week. We’ll get to those next week!
Next week, I’ll introduce: p, pan, /p/ and j, jug, /j/
Fundations reminders: We are ONLY working on LOWERCASE formation right now in Fundations. Each letter is introduced as “letter-keyword-sound”. Here is what that sounds like and how the students recite it each day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYhKyXCs7Ug
During Fundations, formation will be explicitly taught for each lower case letter using the following language: Sky line (top), plane line (dashed), “grass line” (under the plane line) and “worm line” (bottom).
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- Journal writing: We continue to work on: picture with crayons, labeling with pencils and I model “stretching out” the word and writing the sounds we hear. We have also started to add writing “I see” and “I like” sentences.
- Listening center: 2 more weeks of Halloween stories at the listening center!
- Poetry journal: We will illustrate the song: Pumpkin Patch in our poetry journals next week. Ask your child to sing it to you! hint: pumpkin patch, pumpkin patch, come along with me to the pumpkin patch! Every Thursday, we get the finger flashlights out and practice reading and singing our poetry journals. This helps a lot with left to right tracking and building confidence.
- High frequency words: I have introduced: the, I, we, go, yes, no, will, to, see, like, is, a. Next week, I will introduce: MY
- Decodable books: Remember, each week on Friday, you should be looking for your child’s “book folder.” Take the book out. Have your child read it to at least “three lucky listeners.” Leave the “blending page” in the protective sleeve and have your child say the sounds and blends. This practice should only take about 10 minutes, but that repeated reading of the decodable text along with the blending page practice will be SO helpful to your reader. When practicing the blending page, being able to quickly (within 2-3 seconds) produce the sounds is very important. If children can’t automatically produce their sounds, it makes blending much harder. If your child’s not quite automatic yet, that’s okay!! That’s what we’ll keep practicing in reading group, and that extra practice at home will also help. They’re all doing GREAT. I am so proud of them.
Math:
We are currently working on modules 7-9 (we will go back to modules 4-6 right after) which is all about representing numbers 6-10.
- Teen numbers: We are practicing reading and writing our tricky teen numbers.
- Counting to 50. We will now practice counting to 50. At home, please practice counting to 40 (or beyond)! The goal by the end of kindergarten is to count to 100 (or beyond)!
- Greater than/less than: Students will continue to compare numbers using the < > = symbols. Students will then have to practice READING those number sentences, using the words ‘greater than,’ ‘less than,’ or ‘equal to.’
- One more/one less: students will practice naming “1 more” and “1 less” for numbers within 10.
- Graphing: Students will complete fall graphs. We will discuss how many in each category and also compare– “how many more,” “how many less?”
Religion
- We will continue to attend 8am Mass each Tuesday. Remember, doors open 5 minutes early, at 7:45.
- The next several weeks during religion time are all about how God is with us no matter what we’re feeling–happy, scared, sad, angry. Along with our “I am Special” book, we will also incorporate our “Second Step Program.” This is our social emotional learning curriculum that teaches social emotional skills to students. It teaches students how to manage emotions, improve listening and attention skills, develop empathy and emotion management, and foster positive social skills like getting along with others and solving problems. The kids always enjoy this time to chat, reflect and of course, share stories! 🙂