Week of December 13, 2019

Our new class book from Ms. Anderson

Key-Words in Our Kindergarten Class
STOP...LOOK...Think

Tis' the season to struggle with impulse control but let's be honest, when you are five or six years old, impulse control is a difficult thing all year long. For that reason the class and I have come up with three key-words to help ourselves and friends manage impulsivity. Our words are

STOP...LOOK...THINK

When we are given a direction or when someone is talking to us we...

STOP: stop our bodies from moving and our mouths from talking

LOOK: look at the person who is talking

THINK: think about what is being said and what you will need to do once the directions are finished.

This would be great to practice at home. Practice giving a direction and make sure your child stops their bodies, looks at you and thinks about what you are asking and then send them off to complete the task independently.

Thank you!

   A big thank you goes out to Mrs. Horton and the big kids for helping us Code this week. The kindergartners had a great time using and creating code with them. Check out this cool video of the Bee-Bots the kids used during our Coding time.

Reader’s Workshop

   We continued our lessons on what good readers do. This week our focus was on decoding words and making sure our reading sounded right and matched the letters we saw in words. When young children are just learning to read they are so focused on decoding those tough words that they don’t really listen to themselves read to make sure that what they are saying sounds right and makes sense. This is something we will continue to work on all year long.

Writer’s Workshop

  I am so proud of all the progress the children have made in their writing in such a short amount of time. Writing is a great thing to practice at home. If your child is looking for something to do over vacation, ask them to write me a Small Moment story about their vacation. I would love to read them if they bring them into school in January.

Math Lessons

    We continued our work with teen numbers this week. Ask your child to flash some Tricky Teens for you. They are learning that the teen numbers are made up of a group of ten and then some more. They are all working on showing these numbers with their fingers. It would be great for them to practice writing numbers to 20 over the vacation.

Independence

    At this point of the kindergarten year, all of the children are expected to be working on skills to build independence. Thank you to all the parents that have been having their child take care of their own belongings in the morning. That means the children are carrying their own belongings into school, getting themselves organized for the day (i.e. dressing and undressing from their outdoor clothing, unpacking their backpacks,  carrying their folder and other items into the classroom…) Thank you for your help in building some strong, independent kindergartners.

Gingerbread Houses

Our gingerbread houses were a huge success today. They were all sent home today for families to enjoy. Thank you to all the families that donated items to help make this event a success. Also, a big thank you goes out to Mrs. Lotto and Mrs. Leonard for taking time out of their day to come in and help us build our wonderful gingerbread creations.

Nutmeg and Holly

You may have heard about Nutmeg and Holly the Kindness Elves that came to visit kindergarten this week. They are keeping an eye out for acts of kindness and writing letters to the children. They have been finding new lookout spots throughout the school this week to keep an eye on everyone and reporting back about all of the acts of kindness they are seeing.

Theme Time

      Thank you for all of the bells that came back with wonderful family traditions written on them. If you haven't sent your bell back to school, please do so on Monday. The children will share their traditions at Morning Meeting next week.

Next Week
Next week will be a busy one. Here is a quick snapshot of what the week looks like just to give you a heads up.

Monday: Working on our parent gifts (shhhh, it's a surprise)

Tuesday: The children have a guest teacher while I am at an all day meeting

Wednesday: Pajama Day & Craft Day (see below for more details about pajama day)

Thursday: Finishing up our parent gifts (shhhh, it's a surprise)

Friday: COL - The kindergartners are performing the annual Runaway Cookie play. COL starts at 8:10. Later that day, they will learn some holiday ASL signs in the classroom. In the afternoon, the kindergartners will watch Curious George: A Very Monkey Christmas.

Morning Meeting

GREETING: The Mitten Match

ACTIVITY: Sign Language (I went to my grandmother's house...)

We filled our jar with marbles and now we get to have Pajama Day!

We Did It!!

    We have been showing acts of kindness and have earned Pajama Day! The children may wear their pajamas and slippers (or comfy cozy clothes) to school on Wednesday, December 18th. They may bring a stuffed animal that fits in their backpack. We will read The Polar Express story, drink hot cocoa and do special arts and crafts. Please make sure your child has outdoor footwear on to get to and from school as well as for recess. It should be an exciting day!

Week of December 3, 2019

All ready for our concert!

Reader’s Workshop

This week we continued to talk about what good readers do. We talked about matching our voices to the words that we are pointing to and looking for words we already know so that we aren’t trying to sound out every word. The children are moving right along with their reading and I can’t wait to start on our formal reading assessments next month to see how the children have improved.

Writer’s Workshop

       This week we have really focused on remembering to put spaces in between our words. This is a really tough concept for kindergartners and it is a great skill to practice at home.

Theme Time

       We used this time of our day for more Winter Concert preparation. The children worked very hard on learning all of the words to their songs and were so excited to share the songs with all of you on Thursday evening.

HOLIDAY GIFTS

     Many children and families enjoy giving their teacher a gift. As much as we love “teacher gifts” we are asking families who would like to give a gift to consider getting something for the classroom that all of us can enjoy instead of getting a “teacher gift”. In the past, families have sent in a new or gently used book for the class, a puzzle, game, craft supply…. Please do not feel that you have to send in anything. Homemade cards are great and I love to decorate the room with the beautiful cards that the children bring in during this Season of Giving.

Morning Meeting

GREETING: I Have, Who Has Letter sounds

ACTIVITY: Sparkle and Four Corners

Traditions & Celebrations Bells

    Next week, you will find a paper bell in your child's folder. We will be talking about special family traditions next week. Please take a moment to write about a special family tradition you have and return the bell to school. Please write in black ink or black marker. The children will be decorating the bell at school. Thank you for your help with this project.

Math Lessons

      The children have worked really hard on the teen family for the past few weeks. They have written the numbers, talked about place value, made equations both addition and subtraction as well as worked on counting forward and backward.

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!