Winter Update

Happy New Year! I hope that you and your family have a very happy and healthy year. What an exciting time the children will be having for the rest of the school year. We are about to begin the big journey to become first graders. Many new and exciting things will be happening in the Kindergarten classroom.

There are some changes occurring in our centers during reading. Our English Language Arts center will continue to listen to a story all week and complete various follow up activities based on the story. The parent letter for the stories will continue to come home along with the packet for the story and we also be doing literature studies once a month on various story books related to our science and social studies themes. Our English Language Arts center will be using the Superkid Big Book of Blending to practice blending sounds to read words.

The skill center for the next two months will focus on rhyming words. The children will be playing various games and using different computer software on the smartboard that focus on recognizing and producing rhyming words.

The math center will focus on numbers. The children will be working on recognizing and counting all the way to 100. We will be reaching the 100th day of school in the middle of February and I have a fun day of activities planned for that day. The children will also be working on counting by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s to 100.

We also have some new items that the children will be using in the classroom after snack time. One new item is our reading and math center bins. The bins are filled with various games and activities that the children can complete by themselves or with a friend. The bins are filled with activities that review the skills we are working on or have worked on. The other new items for the classroom are the center boxes. The boxes are filled with activities for two or four children to play with that review skills and concepts. We also have some new table toys and puzzles for the children to explore.

Our quiet time is changing. On Mondays we will be working in our journals to draw pictures and write sentences about the picture we have drawn. On Tuesdays the children will be reading and searching for items in our I Spy books. On Wednesdays we will be completing handwriting sheets to review the letters we have learned with our Superkid program. On Thursdays the children will be reading to themselves from the different level readers in our classroom. On Fridays the children will look at and read from our books of the month. Your child will also be given the choice that if they just want to sit and rest with their head down for quiet time they can. I find that the children really enjoy these activities and look forward to the different activities planned for each day.
In our journals we will be beginning to write our own sentences about the pictures we have drawn related to the picture of the week or Superkid stories read. The children are very excited about being their own authors and illustrators for their journals.

First thing after prayers each morning, we will be reviewing our handwriting skills. We will be working in our notebooks to copy letters and words. After the children have finished working in the notebooks they will be playing with the table toys. This will be preparing them for the morning work that they will have next year in first grade.

Our class will have a visiting bear for the next two months. Each night starting the week of January 9 a different child each night will be able to take home our class bear Buster. Buster’s bag will be filled with different activities for you and your child to do as well as a journal to tell us about your adventure with Buster. A note will be sent home with your child explaining what needs to be done.