Welcome to Kindergarten! : December 2023

Thursday, December 14, 2023

Run, Run, As Fast As You Can!

We had a very busy and exciting week in KD! Here are some of the very important things we learned...

Our theme this week continued to focus on stories by Jan Brett. We even had a visit from a sneaky visitor, the Gingerbread Baby! More to come next week!

We incorporated some fun gingerbread activities into our literacy centers. This week's centers included writing prompts and activities that focused on The Hat and The Mitten, finding and writing gingerbread power words, digraph games, and more!

We learned about digraphs (ch, sh, th, wh) during Phonics. We talked about about how even though a digraph has two letters, it only makes one sound. We did a lot of reading and writing with digraphs. Ask your child to teach you! We also worked on more uppercase letters, middle sounds, and sentence structure.

We continued working on visualizing and retelling during Reading. We learned the new vocabulary words: pleasant, unpleasant, crowded, and uncrowded. We talked about suffixes (un-) and antonyms (opposites).

In Writing, we worked on adding more details to our stories. We asked and answered questions with our partners to help us brainstorm more ideas for our writing.

During Math, we worked on building shapes with other shapes. We will finish up our unit on flat and solid (2D and 3D) shapes next week. Ask your child to identify the following shapes: circle, rectangle, square, triangle, hexagon, cube, cone, pyramid, sphere, and cylinder.

In this week’s Second Steps lesson, we learned that a kind act is something we can do to help someone feel good. We practiced suggesting kind acts to do for people in different scenarios. Encourage your child to think of a kind act they could do for someone, for example a sibling, grandparent, or neighbor.

Looking ahead...

Holiday Happiness Drive ends 12/18

Home 2 Home Orphanage supplies due 12/18 (Thank you SO much for your generosity and support!)

Winter Party 12/20

Early Release Day 12/20

Winter Break 12/21-1/3

School Resumes 1/4

Sorry, not many pics this week! There will not be a newsletter next week but I will add pics!

Have a great weekend. STAY HEALTHY!

Jena

Thursday, December 7, 2023

Jan Brett Author Study!

What a busy week we've had! We started our Jan Brett author study and have loved reading her books! Here are some of the important things we've learned...

Our centers this week included:

Reading Group

RAZKids on iPads

Theme center- We sequenced the animals in The Mitten and we retold the story of The Hat.

Independent Reading center

ABC center- We played CVC games.

Sensory center- We played "Say It, Pop It, Write It" with power words.

Write the Room center- We read sentences around the room and matched them to pictures.

Word Work center- We completed CVC words and found and recorded middle sounds in CVC words.

In this week’s Second Step lesson, we showed that we can use body language and context clues to figure out how someone is feeling. We also showed we can use slow breathing as a way to help ourselves feel calm when we encounter strong feelings. Ask your child to tell you how they think others around them might be feeling, for example a sibling or a character in a story, a movie, or a TV show.

We continued working on uppercase letters in Phonics. We also practiced the power words to, go, no, and so. We switched beginning sounds to build new words and matched words into word families.

During Reading, we visualized the poem "It Fell in the City". We discussed which words helped us make pictures in our minds. We also used the illustrations in the story Red Sled to discuss what was happening in the book. We echo read with attention to characters' feelings to build oral fluency and discussed the typography to build our concepts of print. We practiced visualizing while reading independently. Finally, we learned these vocabulary words: grasp, observe, evening, and noiseless.

In Writing, we heard and discussed good writing. We wrote about our feelings and told our ideas orally before writing. We worked on writing from left to write and leaving spaces between our words. We also used our word wall to help us.