Week 5

THINGS  TO TALK ABOUT OR ASK YOUR CHILD  ABOUT THEIR LEARNING AT SCHOOL THIS WEEK…..

 

·       The IB word of the week is COMMUNICATOR: How does your child receive and express his/her ideas and information?
·       We have been working very hard in our writing activities. Our motto is: When you’re done, you’ve just begun.
So often students race to finish their work. We have been working hard at using more than 3 colors in our drawing, we have been working on labeling our pictures in our work and also writing words. Students who are not writing words this early in kindergarten are encouraged to write the letters they hear in a word, even if it just one letter. Encourage your child to work on these components at home.
·       We are still working on our 5 sense. While doing an activity, ask your child how many senses he/she is using at one time.   We sorted items into categories of: Touch/Don’t touch. Did you ask your child about their touch/don’t touch picture? A good book to read to your child is 5 Senses, but Aliki.
·       In math we are working on patterns and extending patters. We have talked about AB patterns and AAB patterns. What patterns do you see around your house or out and about in your environment? Is anyone in your family wearing a pattern today? Talk about it.
·       Can your child make tally marks up to 5? Write a number from 1-10 on a piece of paper and have your child make tallies for that number.
·       How many days have we been in kindergarten? 24
·        Who is Johnny Appleseed? We had a quick lesson Friday morning.

Week 4

·        We read the book, “Chrysanthemum,” by Kevin Henkes.  We talked about feelings/emotions and touched on the elements in a story. I hope you were able to read over your child’s work and review elements in a story. We will cover this topic often.

·        Each week your child will have the opportunity to go “book shopping.” We pick out books using this acronym – IPICK. I pick books are based on the following:
 

·        We are sorting by more than one attribute. Can your child sort items that are big and read small and yellow? Things that are purple with 3 corners?

·        We read the book, “When Sophie Gets Angry – Really, Really Angry,” by Molly Bang. We talked about how illustrators use different colors in their art work to create emotion. Ask your child what color Bang used to demonstrate Sophie getting REALLY ANGRY. (Red). Why do you think the author/illustrator used that color to show anger? We also talked about what makes us REALLY ANGRY. Ask your child. In this unit a lot of our focus is on emotion and feelings because guess what?? We all have them and share that in common.

·        The IB word of the week is THINKER – How does your child use his her mind to think about the world out him/her. Talk about it

·        We are starting the writing process and brainstorming about what we are experts at. This will come into play when we begin writing. What is your child an expert at?

 

Your child may be able to answer all of these questions or just some of them.  Whatever they can do, celebrate it!  I’ll try to send questions like this on a regular basis so that you can extend and share their learning from school at home!  J

Week 3

THINGS TO ASK YOUR CHILD ABOUT THEIR LEARNING AT SCHOOL THIS WEEK…..

 

·        Practice sight words. Make sure your child is reviewing. I will test students at the end of the week.

·        We are working on our reading stamina. We are up to 11 minutes and filling in each minute on a pie-chart. Ask your child’s how it’s going.

·        Calendar – How many days have we been in kindergarten? 14. Have we had mostly hot days? How do you know? We graph the weather.

·        Does your child know the name of these blocks? We are learning about pattern blocks/shapes. Hexagon, trapezoid, parallegram, square, triangle, rhombus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

·        We will be studying and decomposing numbers 1-10. How do we spell these numbers? What do they look like on dice? Dominos? Tallies? How many ways can you make 5, 6, 7 and so on.

·        We read the book “Chrysanthemum,” by Kevin Henkes. We graphed how many letters we had in our name. Does your child have the same number of letters in their name as another classmate?

·        We have begun to dive into our first unit of inquire and discussing how we are the same and different. We have begun discussing human emotions and that we all can demonstrate the same characteristics. We read a book about being GRUMPY! When has your child been grumpy? Ask! The replies were great!

·        Have your child name one new friend he/she has made in kindergarten.

·        I have exciting jury duty Monday and will be out. : (
Please prep your child for me not being in class Monday. Talk about classroom rules and so on.

 

Your child may be able to answer all of these questions or just some of them.  Whatever they can do, celebrate it!  I’ll try to send questions like this on a regular basis so that you can extend and share their learning from school at home!  J

CHECK OUT OUR COLORS!

 

Week 2

THINGS TO ASK YOUR CHILD ABOUT THEIR LEARNING AT SCHOOL THIS WEEK…..

 

·        How to spell colors red, yellow, blue, green, orange, brown and purple. Read your books with your child and have them sing the songs to you.

·        We mixed blue and yellow play dough together. What color did it make? We mixed red and yellow paint together. What color did it make?

·        Have your child tell you about the books we read this week: Harold and the Purple Crayon, Purplicious, Where the Wild things Are, Junie B. Jones.

·        In math each child received a strip of construction paper and he/she had to find the partner with the strip of paper that was the same length. Ask your child if their strip match with everyone else or just one person? How did you know it matched or did not match? We also measured our hands to our partners and talked about length. Who had the larger hand? Who had the smaller hand?

·        Is your child practicing his/her letter formation? Is your child able to write letters A-F legibly in both uppercase and lowercase?  What about letter sounds? Does your child sounds and letters A-F?

·        We talked about 2 ways we read a book. Ask your child what are the two ways? Answer reading/pointing to the words and looking at the pictures. How is looking at the pictures helpful to reading? Do they tell the same or similar story?

·        Calendar – Has your child taught you the “Days of the Week” or “Montherana” song?

·        We graphed how many boys and how many girls are in our class. Ask your child about it. Answer 13 boys and 13 girls. How did we come to that conclusion?

 

Your child may be able to answer all of these questions or just some of them.  Whatever they can do, celebrate it!  I’ll try to send questions like this on a regular basis so that you can extend and share their learning from school at home!  J
Wendy