Upcoming Events/Mark your calendars:
- Tuesday, October 17: 8am Mass
- Wednesday, October 18: Surprise Assembly for students
This Week:
- New boom cards are posted!
- The kids had fun on their first field trip. Thank you to the La Grange Farmer’s Market for welcoming us and for sending a representative to talk to the children about fruits and veggies.
- Each morning after the children sign if, there is a picture that lets them know what their morning activity is. So far, they’ve been introduced to dry erase sleeve word/letter/number practice, morning STEM tubs, book look and this week, they were introduced to poetry journal reading. Each of the pocket chart songs/poems the children have learned are placed in their poetry journals. Once a week, their ‘morning work’ will be reading/singing their poetry journals. They do this independently and then once all the children have arrived, we read and sing through the songs and poems together. The flashlight pointers help us focus on tracking as the children are learning to match up the spoken word with the written word. Even if they can’t read all the words, their growing phonemic awareness as well as their word wall word knowledge really helps them with their tracking. It’s so fun to see their confidence grow when reading/singing our pocket chart poems and songs!
What’s Due:
- You can send in items for the Halloween party at any time! I will set them aside for the party. Also, we still need someone to sign up for the containers of frosting. If you can contribute, click here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090E48ADAC2FA20-44766907-stcletus#/
- Thank you for helping your child practice his/her name at home. The pages the kids are turning in look great! Try to compete 1 each week!
- Your child came home with 2 printable word wall books in a ziploc bag along with some reading tips and book recommendations. When these books come home, please have your child read to “three lucky listeners”–mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, pet, stuffed animal, etc. At this point, the focus is left to right tracking, understanding letters make up words, words make up sentence, word wall word recognition and confidence building. I know after school is not the best time to do any kind of practice since the kids are tired from the busy day, but put them in a safe place like a basket or tub for practice over the weekend. Sunday afternoons are a great time to practice!
- Cooler weather is here to stay! Please practice putting on jackets and zipping independently. Set the timer for 5 minutes and practice. If it’s a jacket with the liner, practice taking it off without the sleeves coming out or consider a different jacket for school. We want to continue building independence in kindergarten and putting jackets, hats, gloves and shoes on is a part of this. Thank you for your help!
Next Week
Language Arts:
- Current word wall words: a, do, go, I, no, yes, the, to, we, will, yes, like; Next week: is
- Super Kids: We will continue D for Doc. Doc uses a hammer to fixes things, so we will be making a hammering motion with our hands while saying /d/ /d/ /d/.
- Journaling: we will continue to draw pictures with crayons and label the picture with a pencil. We will practice “stretching our words” and “writing the sounds we hear”. Correct spelling will come later. At this point, we just want the students to become more confident with their letter sound relationships and become more independent with their writing. So, if your child is spelling “dinosaur” as “dinsr”—that’s great! Don’t try to correct the spelling. Current writing goals: DETAILED picture with crayons, independent writing of words with pencil.
Math: Next week we will start to finish up Chapter 3 in Go Math! They’re doing great. When we do Go math, half of the kids work with me (the other half are with Mrs. Zontos) on their lap desks. I have the same page they’re working on up on the smartboard. We work through the pages together and then practice the skills in a more hands on way in an even smaller group during centers.
- Tally marks: tallying numbers up 10 remembering to “make a bundle with 5” and “circle groups of ten”.
- Number formation: I have no introduced ALL number poems. Just a reminder, poems can be found Number Poems It really helps the kids to form their numbers correctly.
- Counting to 30: We are practicing counting to 20 and are being extra careful with “13, 14, 15”
- Ten frames: representing numbers 1-10 on a ten frame. We have introduced the “double ten frame” and are starting to show numbers 1-15. We are learning that numbers 11-19 are, ” 1 group of ten with ___ ones left over”. We are trying to become more automatic with recognizing numbers on a double ten frame.
- Comparing numbers 1-15 and naming them as less than, greater than or equal to.
- Counting by 10s. We will begin to practice counting by 10s.
- We will work with number pairs to make numbers 6-9; we will do this with counters.
Religion: Thanks for your help with baptism this week! The kids enjoyed sharing their special items. We had a chance to go to church for a little visit and see where many of the children were baptized. Ask your child sometime to show you the three areas in our church we have visited as a class—the candle next to the tabernacle, the holy family statues and the baptismal font. I reminded the children the church is open outside of Mass times so anyone can go and spend some quiet time with God. Consider walking over one of these days after school and do just that with your child! Let your child see that it’s also important to you to keep God close. Next week, we will begin the Creation unit. We will learn a new pocket chart song that will also be in our poetry journals. “God made flowers, God made trees…” Thank you, God for everything!
Science: We will continue our unit on healthy eating. If you could please send in any food ads, that would be great! We will learn about the main food groups and discuss ways we can keep our bodies healthy.