Week of November 18, 2019

Our new paintings in our art gallery

No Newsletter Next Week

    With a very short week next week, we will not have a classroom newsletter. The kindergartners will have a Kindergarten Craft Day on Monday. All of the kindergarten students from each classroom will be mixed up and put into new groups for the day. Each group will visit all three classrooms and do a different turkey craft with each teacher.

Remember, the children only have school on Monday and Tuesday next week. I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving!         

Extra Mittens and Socks

      With snow on the playground comes very wet mittens and sometimes wet socks. Please put an extra pair of mittens and socks in your child’s backpack every day. Riding the bus home with wet mittens and/or socks makes for an uncomfortable trip.

Missing Mitten...if you happen to see the match to this mitten in your child's backpack, please send it back to school.

Self Help Skills

    Snow and rain...with the arrival of winter, going out to recess every day and getting ready to go home, we have a lot of zipping, buttoning and tying going on in kindergarten. Please help your child by having him/her practice zipping/buttoning their own jacket and tying their own shoes. This makes changing into and out of our snow clothes much less frustrating.
Also, if you drop your child off in the morning, I would greatly appreciate your help in encouraging your kindergartner to get themselves ready for the school day independently. They should be taking off their snow clothes and hanging them up independently as well as unpacking their own backpacks. This way they know where things are when they go looking for them and it will help us with dressing and undressing independently for recess. We are working on instilling more independence in all the kindergartners and that starts with being able to take care of their own belongings. By all means please feel free to walk your kindergartner down the hall then please say goodbye and allow them to get themselves ready for the day.

Morning Meeting
GREETING: handshakes

ACTIVITY: Sparkle(a spelling game)

Report Cards

Report cards are coming home today. Thank you to everyone for being so flexible and rescheduling parent conferences from the snow day on Tuesday. If you have any questions that were perhaps not answered at the conference please do not hesitate to reach out to me. Please sign the outside of the envelope and return it to school on Monday. Everything in the envelope is for you to keep.

Week of November 11, 2019

Happy America Recycles Day!

Special Guests

   A big thank you goes out to Cormac and Ellie from the Lamoille Regional Solid Waste Management for coming to kindergarten to teach us about recycling on Wednesday. The children and I learned a lot. They loved making Super Hero Recycler masks as you will see in the photo above.

Conferences

   Parent/Teacher Conferences will be starting next week. Notices with the date and time of your conference went home a couple of weeks ago in your child's folder. If you are unsure of your date and time, please send me an email and I will send you a reminder notice via email (ledgerton@cesvt.net).
Conferences are 20 minutes long. Please arrive at your scheduled time as I will have to stick to the time frames in order to fit everyone in during the week.

Reader’s Workshop

  With our day off on Monday and a snow day on Tuesday our week was a little off. We were able to talk about a new reading strategy this week..."Stretchy Snake". The children are working on stretching out the sounds of words they don't know in books and when they are writing. This is a skill we will work on all year.
We have a couple of books missing from our classroom. If you happen to see either of the books that are pictured below at your house, please send them back to school with your child. Thank you!

Writer’s Workshop

   Our writing is certainly moving along. The children are working on putting spaces between their words so that it is easier for others to read their writing. They are also learning to use their environment to help them spell tougher words. They are looking around the room if they are stuck on a word to help them find a word that starts the same or sounds similar in order to get their word started.

Morning Meeting

GREETING: Beach Ball Toss

ACTIVITY: Sparkle (a spelling game)

Theme Time

      We finished our Forces and Motion unit this week. The children had a great time using force to make things move. They enjoyed moving through different center activities to explore different materials and how strong forces and light forces could make different materials move on different surfaces.

Math Lessons

        Our focus on shapes continued this week.  Our calendar focus this month is on 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional shapes. We are exploring cubes, cylinder, spheres and cones. After vacation, we will continue work with addition and subtraction as well as teen numbers.

Book Orders

   In your child's folder, you will find the November book order. If you would like to place an order, fill out the back of the book order form (with your child’s name) and send your order and payment back to school by November 22nd. You may pay with cash or a check made out to Scholastic Book Clubs. You may order online if you would like at www.scholastic.com with our class code which is DVTHH. When ordering online you pay with a credit card.  If you are ordering books as a gift for your child, please let me know and I will put them aside and notify you when they arrive instead of sending them home with your child. Thank you!

    

Week of November 4, 2019

 We had a great time doing some Push and Pull Stations with Mrs. Horton. Thank you, Mrs. Horton!!!!!

Reader’s Workshop

     This week we worked on picking Just Right Books for ourselves. When looking for a Just Right Book the children are looking for two things.

1. A topic they are interested in
2. A book where they can read most of the words

Hopefully you were able to spend a little time listening to your child read on Monday and Wednesday when he/she brought home their reading bag. Those will continue to come home every week. Please continue to send the bag back the very next day with all the books in the bag. Thank you!

Writer’s Workshop

     We spent time working on adding spaces to our writing. This is still a very difficult skill for kindergartners as all of their effort is focused on sounding out words. We are currently using our fingers to help us remember to space our words.  Please encourage your child to write at home using finger spaces. The more practice we get, the more comfortable we will be with writing in the future.

Math Lessons

   Our calendar activities this month consist of two and three dimensional shapes. We are exploring squares & cubes, triangles & cones, circles & spheres as well as rectangles & cylinders.

Morning Meeting

GREETING: Skip Greeting with dice

ACTIVITY: 4 Corners

Theme Time

      We continued our work with Forces and Motion this week. We have read many stories on the topic and explored a variety of materials and how they move on different surfaces to see how that changes the force needed to move an object. Our favorite activity was going upstairs to the third floor into Mrs. Horton's classroom and exploring some really cool Push and Pull stations.

            Outdoor Clothing

 I think winter temperatures have arrived. All of the children are being asked to dress themselves so please have them do the same at home. Please be sure to send your child with warm clothes for recess every day (coat, hat, mittens, boots and snow-pants). Please, please, please write your child’s name in all of his/her outdoor clothing (boots, jackets, snow pants…). Often we end up with clothing that apparently walks itself to school as no child will claim it and we can’t figure out who to send them home with if the clothes aren’t labeled. We have A LOT of black snow-pants!

Week of October 28, 2019

We had a blast riding a roller coaster in kindergarten this
week to kick-off our unit on Forces and Motion.

Theme Time

      This week we continued our work with Forces and Motion. The children have become very involved and excited about being scientists and experimenting with ways to move things as well as how different forces can make things move slowly or quickly.

A big thank you goes out to Mrs. Horton for our special Halloween finger pointers. We love them!

Reader’s Workshop

   This week we discussed the differences between letters and words. We also discussed how you can tell when an author writes a new word because they put spaces between their words. The children are pointing to words as they read and moving across the spaces to the next word. This can be a difficult skill for kindergartners and one we will continue to practice for many months.
We did not introduce any new letters this week but focused on correct letter formation of the letters that have been introduced so far this year. A complete list of letters introduced can be found on the Fundations page of this blog.

Writer’s Workshop

   The children are working on writing words on their own and really making progress. At this point of the year we are asking the children to try to get the beginning and ending sound of the word but many of them are even trying middle sounds!
This week we spent time reviewing muscle words (sight words). Please have your child work on muscle words (reading and writing them) at home. There is a complete list on the Writer's Workshop page of this blog.

Art Activity

As a special project last week we painted Monster pictures. Each of the children drew a monster face and then painted it. This art project will be in our classroom art gallery for the next few weeks.

Math Lessons

   This week we talked more about shapes. We are also working on counting by 1’s to 100. Crossing the decades (ie saying 20, 30, 40…) is difficult for many of us. This is a skill all of the children could be working on at home. Our pattern making skills have really come along nicely also.

Reading Bags and Math Bags

    Reading Bags and Math Bags will start coming home next week. Reading bags will come home every Monday and Wednesday. Math Boxes will come home every Tuesday and Thursday. Our hope is that you will be able to find some time to listen to your child read or play a math game with him/her at home. We understand that family lives are very busy but the children are really excited to show you all they have learned already. Please make sure that all of the books and all of the math supplies go back into their bags before putting them into backpacks to come back to school. Please make sure the reading bags and math bags come back to school the very next day.  We use them a lot throughout the day. Thank you!

Morning Meeting

GREETING: Ball Toss

ACTIVITY: Sparkle (muscle word spelling game)

McGriff Reading Program

   Earlier this year you received a newsletter about the McGriff Reading Program. Every Thursday morning 3 children from our classroom will get a chance to read to Maisy, Matti and/or Cheddar. Over the next few weeks everyone will have a turn and then we will start the list all over again.

Winter Clothing
Winter is coming whether we want it to or not. That means lots of zipping, buttoning and tying will be going on in kindergarten. Please help your child by having him/her practice zipping/buttoning their own jacket and tying their own shoes. This makes changing into and out of our snow clothes much less frustrating. If they start practicing now...they may have it under control by the time the snow flies. Thank you!