Kindergarten Connection ~ December 14

⛄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 and beyond. 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.⛄⛅⛄
Science Highlights

We learned all about confer trees during Four Winds. We went on a confer scavenger hunt in our school's backyard! We sorted and classified found cones. We love exploring nature and taking advantage of our outdoor classroom. Charlotte is a beautiful place to be!
 See more photos below.
We started a weather unit this week. Stay tuned to learn more from your soon-to-be weather experts.

Wow! Look at the size of this cone!

Scavenger Hunt

Look what we found!

How are they alike and how are they different?
What type of tree did they fall from?

We always make time for fun in the snow!

We found a special evergreen tree and took a moment to appreciate it's size and beauty.

We love snow!

The confer scavenger hunt inspired us to create evergreen trees out of rectangles.

We know what good writer's do to teach and tell complete stories.

We can say words slowly to help us read and write.

We are learning how to count on from any given number.
We are working hard to correct reversal by using number lines and charts to guide our numeral formation. 

We are working hard to write using complete sentences, spacing and punctation.

We can draw diagrams and add labels to teach about our ideas.

We painted houses for our winter village scene that will go on the K hallway bulletin board. 

We are learning how represent addition and subtraction problems with written equations. 

We can work in small reading groups! 

We can partner read!

Pajama and Stuffed Animal Day

We work with Mr. Allen on Mondays to learn how to use technology in innovative and creative ways.
We are learning how to document our work with the purpose of sharing it with an audience. 

We can take a picture of our work and then add text and voice to it.

We are becoming snap word (high frequency word) experts in kindergarten.

Look how many words we can write in a snap!

We continue to work on representing teen numbers as a group of ten and some more ones.

We made a hoses out of shapes!

The December calendar focuses on positional words,  numbers 11-30, addition and subtraction,
and counting forwards and backwards.

We love partner math games!

November Self Portraits

We can compare and contrast a variety of gingerbread man stories.
We can discuss the different settings, characters,  and events.

We can sequence and offer oral retellings of the traditional Gingerbread Man story.

We kicked off our Weather Unit! 

We can record the day's weather in our science journals.

We are learning how to form uppercase letters.

We can tap cvc words to help us read and write.
💜Have a wonderful weekend with your children!💜