Next Week:
- Monday, May 5: May Crowning Mass, 9:30
- Tuesday, May 6: 8am Mass
- Friday, May 9: Mother’s Day Tea, 10:30; be sure to arrive on time! Your kindergartener will be waiting for you! 🙂
- Friday, May 9: We will attend the 8th grade award’s ceremony at 2:00 in church.
- Friday, May 9: Sundaes and Sweethearts Daddy/daughter dance, 6:30-8:30 in the PC; $25/family; please RSVP by May 7th with form in Wednesday envelope. The girls always love this one! It’s a busy day with the tea in the morning and the dance in the evening. Such special memories are made!
Looking Ahead/Mark your calendars:
Thursday, May 22: This will be our second and final kindergarten field trip day. We will be going to the La Grange library. If you haven’t sent in your permission slip and fee, please do so by next week!
Thursday, June 5: Kindergarten Celebration at 10am. Please mark your calendars now! ALL are welcome! Come watch the kindergartners celebrate the end of kindergarten on stage in the Parish Center. After the 10am performance which will last about one hour, families are welcome to stay and enjoy some treats together and then students will be dismissed to you for the afternoon.
What’s Due:
- RSVP for the “SUNDAES AND SWEETHEARTS” daddy/daughter dance!
Next Week:
Language Arts:
- Fundations: We continue to review the 5 digraphs:
wh/whistle/h/
ch/chin/ch/
sh/ship/sh/
th/thumb/th/
and ck/sock/k/.
- Reading group: We will continue with fluency passages and Superkids books. Even in this final month, keep watching for those book pouches to come home, keep practicing with your child, and remember to return the pouches. We’re learning right up until the last day! 🙂
- High Frequency words: I have introduced: NO, GO, THE, YES, WE, TO, WILL, DO, A, MY, LIKE, AND, HAVE, HAS, HIS, YOU, AT, IT, IF, IN and color words, RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, PURPLE, WHITE, PINK, BLACK, BROWN, BY, WENT and number words ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT and NINE, AM, PLAY, WITH, LOVE, FROM, DEAR, OR, FOR, CAN, NOT, ARE, HE, SHE, SAID, COME, SOME, WAS. Next week I will introduce: WHAT, WHEN
- Journaling: Journaling continues. You will have so much fun reading their journals when they’re given to you at the end of the school year. The kids have SO much to say and it’s fun to see them put their thoughts into sentences on paper. You’ll love seeing all the progress they’ve made. At this point, writing expectations include:
-Starting sentences with a capital letter.
-Ending sentences with punctuation.
-Writing 2 or more sentences.
-Including a detailed picture.
-Correct spelling of word wall words.
-Independent “stretching” of all other words.
They’re ROCKING their writing time in kindergarten! I am so proud of them.
- We have also started our “opinion writing” unit. Students are sharing their opinions by writing sentences with the word “because.” We have a special song to help us remember how to spell that big, long word. Their opinion pieces include writing whether they like cake or ice cream, whether they’d rather be a firefighter or police officer, whether they’d rather have a snake or hamster, and so on. Kindergartners have lots of opinions, so they always enjoy this writing time! 🙂
Read alouds: We will be reading a lot of books about MOMS. It’s easy for the kids to “make connections” to these stories. The children have lots of wonderful things to say about their moms! We will also be reading fiction and nonfiction stories about caterpillars and butterflies throughout the month of May.
Math: We finished modules 14-16 on Friday and will move on to our FINAL workbook, modules 17-20. This final kindergarten math workbook includes the following skills:
- Review: writing numbers 11-14.
- Measurement: length and height-compare and describe.
- Weight: describe attributes of weight, compare and describe weights.
We will continue to review:
- 2D shapes: circle, square, rhombus (instead of diamond, we will try to use the more mathematical term, rhombus), rectangle, triangle and oval. Students will learn these are FLAT, not FAT (3D shapes) shapes.
- Students will learn how many vertices or corners there are for each 2D shape.
- Students will learn how many sides there are for each 2D shape.
- 3D shapes: Cylinder, cube, cone, sphere. Students will learn these are SOLID shapes.
- Students will learn about whether these 3D shapes can stack, roll or slide.
- Money: coin recognition—penny, nickel, dime and quarter. The goal is to name each coin, give the value of each coin, and do some counting of coins. The concept of money is introduced in kindergarten just to expose the kids to it, but they’ll get much more into this skill in 2nd grade.
- Counting to 100 by ones.
- Counting to 100 by tens (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100).
- Counting to 100 by 5s.
- Counting to 20 by 2s.
- Acting out and solving addition problems within 10.
- Acting out and solving subtraction problems within 10.
- Tallying, graphing and sorting.
Religion/Science:
- Spring is all about God’s plan for new life! We will be learning about God’s plan for new life in our world, including how a tiny seed turns into a big, beautiful plant. We will observe this by watching popcorn kernels and bean seeds grow in bags taped up to our windows. We will will check them periodically to see their growth which includes looking for the “root”, “root hairs” and “shoot”. We will document the growth in our seed journals.
- We also had caterpillars arrive in our classroom on Friday! We will spend the next few weeks observing our caterpillars and watching them eat, and eat, and eat and get bigger, and bigger, and BIGGER. Once they’re big enough, we’ll watch for that unique “J” shape to form which lets us know they’re about to form their chrysalises. May will be such a fun month for us to observe all this spring-like growth in our classroom!