Week 18 Highlights!

What a fabulous first week of 2019!

During our Shared Reading, we focused on the poem, My New Friend, to explore letters, sounds, rhyming words, and print concepts.  We introduced one new word wall or snap words this week!  Our new word that we can read in a snap is can.  Please practice identifying, reading, and writing our sight words with your child at home.

In Reader's Workshop, we began our third unit, Bigger Books, Bigger Reading Muscles.  We learned that challenging books have more words, longer words, new snap words, and surprise endings.  This week we introduced our personal reading mats.  Using our reading mats, we make a stack of our book box books sorting from easiest to hardest, we read all our books, and read our way back.  Take a peek at our kindergarten readers using their reading mats!

Our Read Aloud of the week was The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.  We discussed character, settings, and important events.  We used retell cards to identify the beginning, middle, and end of our story.  Please ask your child to share the events from our story of the week.

On Friday, Komal Singh joined us for an author visit.  Ms. Singh is the author of Ara the Star Engineer.  What a great way to kick off our new science unit, Materials and Motion! 

During Daily Five word work stations this week, we played Sort It, Color, It, Roll and Read It, and Spin It with our snap words.  We reviewed our word sorts and explored Lexia on the iPad.  We also practiced labeling at the writing table.  Please ask your child what was their favorite Daily Five station this week!

This week during Writer's Workshop, we began our how-to writing unit. We learned that how-to writers study other writer's texts.  We also created a chart of how-to ideas and discovered the three things that are included in all how-to stories.  How-to stories must tell what to do in steps, have a number for each step, and pictures for each step.  Please ask your child the topic of their first how-to book.

We introduced lowercase letter writing in our Handwriting curriculum.  We learned how to correctly write lowercase c, o, and s.  Please practice our frog jump, corner starter, center starter uppercase letters and all numbers with your child at home.

In Whole Group Math, we began our fourth module in our Eureka Math curriculum.  Our new unit is all about number pairs, addition, and subtraction to 10. This week's focus was composing and decomposing numbers 1 to 5.  Please ask your child to share with you a number bond for each of our numerals to five.

This week during Math Tubs, we began our new round of tubs.  This rotation will focus on number writing, subitizing, one-to-one correspondence, number identification, number sequencing, and basic addition.  Please ask your child what their favorite math tub was this week.  Take a peek at our kindergarten mathematicians!

On Friday, Nurse Jamie joined us to read the story, Sick Simon.  She shared strategies for keeping our bodies healthy during this cold and flu season. 

Upcoming Dates

January 21st--Martin Luther King Jr. Day--NO SCHOOL

January 31st-- Parent-Teacher Conferences--please check your email for our sign up

February 1st--The 100th Day of Kindergarten Class Party--more information to come!