Updates

I love kindergarteners.  They come to school with a spring in their step every day, even though it certainly doesn’t feel like spring outside.

Last Monday, we welcomed in spring with our Spring Hat Parade.  We enjoyed decorating our paper hats with tissue paper flowers, jewels, stickers, paint, pom-poms, and streamers.  We paraded through the whole school playing loud instruments and chanting “Happy spring!”  The faces of joy on the kindergartners was truly priceless.

Math:

In math, we are working on various concepts.  We will continue to work on subtraction.  We will begin a subtraction word problem book next week.  We will be learning about 3 dimensional shapes over the next few weeks.  Another important concept in the area of mathematical practice is using check in thinking. It is important for students to stop and ask “Does this make sense?” and “What other strategy can I use?”

Language Arts:

The new Lively Letter we are working on is the long e sound.  His name, in the Lively Letters program is King Ed.  The story goes like this.  He is very mean.  When there is a vowel standing before him, he does not like it.  He makes the vowel say its name.  When the vowel says its name, he is silent.  Examples of words with King Ed in them are (make, like, bone, rude)

In reading, we focusing on retelling.  After we read a fictional story, we go through the retell rope.  Each child will come home with a retell rope to use at home.  Here is

a picture of the rope and the chart that explains each picture.  I used Goldilocks and the Three Bears as the mentor text to teach retelling.

Sight Words:

This week we will continue to review all of our kindergarten sight words.  We will also learn some new words from the Grade 1 High Frequency Words list. “Where” is the most recent sight word we learned.

Science:

Ask your kindergarten meteorologist what he/she learned about wind last week and the wind experiment we conducted with a straw, cotton ball, paper, pattern block, and a spoon.  How fun!

Concepts for the Car Ride:

(Concepts for the Car Ride is a section of my blog that gives you tips on what to practice with your kindergartener in the car, before bed, in the bath, or at the dinner table)

Words that end in “e”. For example:

-bike

-ride

-made

-bone

-came

Counting from 0-100 (with no errors)

      

Focusing on subtraction using numbers up to 10.

Read with your kindergartener and have him/her look for sight words.

Begin talking about 3 dimensional shapes with your kindergartener.  We have not learned about them yet, but it would be a great preview.

Sounding out words without writing them:

FYI:

Thank you for replacing your child’s “Take Home” Folder. 

       Bingo for Books was a blast yesterday.  We played

       sight word bingo with the entire kindergarten.  Mrs.       

Pobuk called out and wrote sight words on an overhead projector while students colored in their squares.  Every kindergartner won a new book to take home.  What a motivating way to practice our sight words!

 Mrs. McCarthy did it again!  Here is her latest masterpiece!  This is based on the book The Wide-Mouthed Frog

Math Websites:

http://www.mathplayground.com/games.html

The best games are:

Number Bonds 10

Jet Ski Addition

Another great math game is on the site below:

http://www.softschools.com/math/games/subtraction_games/

Language Arts Websites:

http://www.starfall.com/n/level-a/learn-to-read/load.htm?f

**Your child received a Ziploc bag with a monkey on it a few weeks ago. If you have not returned it, please do so that way I can send home a new book this week.