KINDERGARTEN CONNECTION
Literacy Highlights
This week we talked about the different purposes for reading and writing. We focused on reading informational text to learn about winter weather and animals in the winter. The children were really excited about the opportunity to read a variety of informational books. Remember to check out the nonfiction/informational section the next time you visit the library or bookstore with your child.
We are reading and writing in kindergarten! During reading groups I noticed children applying all of the reading strategies learned thus far in kindergarten. The focus this week was on reading with a smooth talking voice, reading bold print and matching our voice inflection with different ending punctuation marks. We also practiced looking closely at words for little parts that can help us read whole words (office, upside, candy, inside). Please continue to read with your child for 20-30 minutes everyday.
We are learning how to tap consonant-vowel-consonant (cvc) words on our fingers to isolate individual letter sounds and then blend all three sounds together to read and write cvc words. Ask your child to teach you how to tap the words cat, dog, fun, lip, pot, sit, hot.
Lists, lists and more lists! We discussed the different types of lists people write to organize their lives and work. We made several class and individual lists. The children said they often see their family members writing grocery, errand and name lists. Ask your child to write your next grocery list ~ I promise you will be impressed with his/her phonetic spelling, handwriting and eagerness to help with a family chore!
Math Highlights
We are learning how to compose and decompose numbers. Please support your child’s understanding of number relationships by working at home with pennies and other counting objects. Help your child discover all the different combinations to make numbers 1-6 and 1-10 for a challenge. Ask your child to represent addition and subtraction sentences with pictures, oral stories and/or equations. Most important, encourage your child to explain/justify his/her math thinking.
We are gearing up for the 100th Day of School which will be in early February. We have been practicing oral counting by 1’s and 10’s to 100. We continue to work on naming, sequencing and writing numbers 1-30. We are working on “counting on” from a known number/quantity such as ten beans and five more beans 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 beans all together. We are also learning how to count intervals, compare sets of objects, how to count backwards, and how to identify the number that comes just before and just after a given number.
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