Week of February 17, 2020

The kids filled their kindness jar and were able to spend the day at school with their stuffed animals and do special "fun" stations in the afternoon. 

Big Change Round-Up

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of the donations to the big change round-up. Our class raised $449.70! That is amazing! This is a wonderful cause and this money will help so many children and families at the UVM Children's Hospital.

Reader’s Workshop

     This group of children seem to love to be read to. It is a great time of the day when we all gather on the carpet and enjoy some wonderful stories. This week the children are working on retelling stories that they read or listen to. This is a skill the children could work on at home. After reading to  your child at home, ask him/her to tell you about that story. They should include the characters, the setting, the problem and the solution.

Writer’s Workshop

   Our Eric Carle stories are almost finished! We are hoping to have all of the stories finished shortly after we come back from vacation. The "big kids" came down to our room and helped type our stories on Thursday. We created our covers on Friday.

Winter Break Activities

      Winter Break has arrived! Here are some activities you might consider having your child do during vacation to keep up with skills we have learned at school.

1. Keep a journal about the vacation (have your child write about what he/she does each day). Remember the three rules of sentences

• Start every sentence with a capital letter
• Put spaces between your words
• End every sentence with an ending mark (. , ?, !)

2. Read, read, read

3. Play a card game

4. Play a board game

5. Add numbers together, subtract numbers

6. Sort coins &  talk about their names & values

7. Count forwards, backwards, &  by 10’s

8. Have your child write a story and illustrate

9. Practice reading and writing muscle words.

10. Practice writing their full name (first, middle, last)

Morning Meeting

GREETING: Coin Greeting

ACTIVITY: Money Poem

Muscle Word

   You can find all of the muscle words covered so far on the Writer's Workshop page of this blog. These are great words for the children to practice reading and writing over the vacation.

The Wall of Sparkle

  Many of the children are very interested in learning how to tie their shoes. With interest comes determination...this is a great time to teach your child how to tie his/her own shoes. We have started our “Wall of Sparkle” but it does not have many names on it yet. This is always of great interest to kindergartners. Children who can tie their shoes on their own, have them names made out of glitter and placed on The Wall of Sparkle. Please spend some time over the vacation helping your child with this step to independence. Here are some YouTube links that may help with this activity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKlB5UCrUrU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4q2vKlvuXM

Fundations

    We have been learning about digraphs for the past few weeks. Last week we learned about the ‘th’ digraph. This week we talked about 'sh'.

Math Lessons

  This month our calendar theme has been coins (penny, nickel, dime and quarter). This week the children explored more activities about coins during math time. Our goal is to have the children be able to name the four coins and state their values. Here are some activities the children could do at home.

1. Give your child a handful of coins and have them sort them
2. Read books about coins
3. Hand your child change you get at the store and have them add the coins together.
4. Make patterns out of coins and then say the name and/or value of the coin as they check the pattern.

I hope everyone has a healthy and restful break!