December 2017

KINDERGARTEN CONNECTION

Check out our December kindergarten hallway bulletin board!
(more photos below)

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 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.

We can read this chart to help us do our best writing.

We can label our illustrations.

Four Winds
We learned all about rocks and erosion. 

We can use our sense of sight to observe different types of rocks.

We can make fossils of different types of rocks.

We can talk about how different rocks feel and look. 

We love Art class with Mr. Cotton!

We can form all 26 lowercase letters the kindergarten way!

We love seasonal art projects.
Look at our evergreen trees made out of rectangles.

We our putting our new writing skills to good use!
This student wrote a letter to the Tooth Fairy!

We love brain breaks!
Check out Ms. Akt teaching us how to dab.

We can saw words slowly to help us write new words.

We can write simple sentences to answer writing prompts. 

We are learning how to read and write all of these words quickly.

We can write true stores with a beginning, middle and end.

We can identify tricky teen numbers 11-19.

We can match letters with their corresponding sounds. 

We can label winter clothes.

We know all 26 letter names and sounds (short vowels)

We can use number paths to help us identify the numbers that come just before and just after numerals 1-20.

We love You Skills with Vicki Nelson!

We can identify beginning letters and sounds.

We are weather scientists.
We can record and talk about the weather in our science journals.

We can use our eyes and skin to observe and talk about weather.

We can read!

We can write using conventional spelling of our K sight words, spacing between words and almost all lowercase letters.

December Calendars
We can write numerals 1-20

We love puzzles!

More Weather Journaling

We can talk about the like meteorologists.
We can use pictures to help us make sense of the weather.

We can work with letter/sound tiles.

We can count by twos and talk about odd and even sets.
We know our doubles facts to 10.

Thanks for the green play-dough!

We can show teen numbers as 10 and some more ones.

We have read several versions of the Gingerbread Boy story.
We can talk about the setting and characters of the different stories.
We can talk about how the stories are the same and different.

We can make grocery lists!

We can make animal lists.