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Kindergarten News
October 2008
Dear Parents,
We’ve had a very busy month of school getting to know one another, establishing daily
routines and setting behavioral and work-related guidelines for the children to follow.
Many learning centers have been introduced to the children and a few more will follow. Once
centers have been explained and modeled for the children, we allow ample time for them to
practice what we’ve shown them. It usually takes the first six weeks of Kindergarten to
familiarize the children with all that’s available for them in the classroom. And as the year
progresses and we change materials, programs and practices in the various centers, we will
continue to model how they are to be used. Some centers have specific goals and ways to use the
materials and some centers are more open-ended. We’re happy to report that we are making
progress in all areas!
Thank You
We know that much paperwork has been sent home in recent weeks and we appreciate your
prompt return of these forms.
Curriculum Night
We hope that the information shared with you on Curriculum Night was helpful to you. If
you need further explanation or have questions, please feel free to contact me. This newsletter
will provide you ongoing information as new curriculum skills and concepts are introduced and
practiced.
Curriculum
We have begun using Fundations, which is our Kindergarten phonics and spelling program.
Fundations stresses letter names, letter sounds, letter formations, and includes work with
segmenting sentences into words, words into syllables and syllables into individual speech
sounds. There is much opportunity for practice and drill. We are also using phonemic awareness
activities from the Open Court reading program.
The presentation of letters for October is: week of 9/29– Orientation and letter T; week of
10/6 – letters Bb and Ff; week of 10/13 - letters Nn and Mm; week of 10/20 – letters Cc and Aa;
week of 10/27 – letters Ii and Rr.
Attached to this newsletter, you will find the handwriting alphabet that we will be
using in school. Please keep it handy and refer to it when helping your child form letters at
home.
In addition to using Fundations and Open Court, we are also using a balanced literacy
approach as part of our district’s Literacy Initiative. While phonics and phonemic awareness
skills are part of the foundation of early literacy practice, it is equally important that
children learn about book sense, concepts of print, and the skills that make a good reader and a
good writer. The children will have many opportunities for practicing reading each day. They
will be “reading pictures,” reading words, reading to us, to themselves, to a friend and even to
a stuffed animal! They will see and hear reading in various forms. They will see print
everywhere in their classrooms and will be encouraged to share their learning and love of
reading to anyone who will listen!
We encourage you to demonstrate at home your love of reading as well. It helps children to see
their families engaged in reading each day – newspapers, books, magazines – reading
environmental signs as you travel in your car; reading labels on food items in your home;
reading the mail that arrives at your house each day. There are so many ways to show how we use
reading in our daily lives. Please join us on this reading adventure!
We are also working on proper pencil grasps and many children have started using pencil grippers
to assist them with correctly holding their pencils. Children are learning proper posture when
writing, how to hold the paper still when writing (and cutting) and how to use lines and spaces.
We are practicing writing first names, using a capital letter for the first letter and lower-
case letters for all the rest.
If you notice that children are writing letters or numerals from the bottom up to the
top, please remind them that letters and numerals begin at the top and go down to the bottom. A
copy of your child’s name card is attached to this newsletter for your reference at home.
October themes will include: apples, fall, and seasonal changes. In Math this month, the
children will be exploring and experimenting with materials such as: unifix cubes, pattern
blocks, attribute blocks, collection boxes and a variety of other Math manipulatives. We will
continue to provide directed activities involving geometric shapes, counting (both rote and
rational), patterning, graphing, sorting and classifying, measurement, numeral recognition,
estimation and number stories. These skills progress throughout the year and become more complex
as time goes on. We will still be doing daily activities involving time, calendar and weather.
In an effort to help you and your children together make the connection between our
daily use of Mathematics and the real world, we have begun sending home Math activities sheets
with ideas for at-home fun games/activities to do together with your child.
Apples, apples everywhere! Soon our Kindergarten classroom will smell like an apple
orchard! We have planned some interesting and fun activities for our study of apples. We’ll be
discussing the parts of the apple and how an apple seed becomes a tree bearing blossoms, leaves
and eventually, becoming apples for us to pick and enjoy. We’ll graph our favorite apples,
estimate how many seeds we’ll find inside, cut them apart to examine the core, and count the
seeds. We’ll save the seeds in our refrigerator for about 4-6 weeks and hopefully, they’ll start
to germinate and we’ll begin this year’s Kindergarten crop of apple trees! We’ll also discover
the “star inside the apple!”
Literacy Corner
Nursery rhymes are one of the earliest ways children learn about rhyming. This month,
try to find a nursery rhyme book and choose some old favorites to recite with your child. Listen
together for rhyming words (they end with the same sounds) and repeat them several times. Try
changing the rhyming words to different ones, even sillier than the originals! This will help
your child to isolate ending sounds. The goal is twofold: to hear and identify words that rhyme
and to generate rhyming words when given the first word.
Responsive Classroom
Our Meeting Time is going very well. We start our day with heartfelt (and sometimes,
hilarious) greetings to each other. The children are trying hard to learn everyone’s names,
practicing making eye contact with one another when speaking, using strong, clear voices, using
friendly smiles and being polite, courteous listeners. The listening and paying attention part
is our big challenge!
Our daily group activity may be a phonemic awareness song or poem, rhyme or chant; a
Math skill to be introduced or reinforced; or a Science experiment to try with the class.
Meeting time also includes the calendar activities – days of the week song, weather and
temperature graphs, counting the days in school and the days in school using coins.
Once everyone has had a turn to take home the “Getting To Know You” bag, we will begin
our Sharing portion of Responsive Classroom. I will let you know when that new piece will start
and how it will work.
Second-Grade Buddies
We will soon be having our first meeting with our “second grade buddies.” We’ll be
alternating months with visits from Mrs. Esposito’s class: AM class one month, PM class the
following month. Our meetings will focus on an aspect of literacy and will tie into our
district’s Literacy Initiative.
The children in both classes look forward to these gatherings and we’ve found these experiences
to be mutually beneficial to the younger children as well as the older ones. And it’s always a
treat for us to see some of our former Kindergarten students coming back as very grown-up second
graders!
Shoes! Shoes! Shoes!
Learning to tie shoes is a tricky process and it takes some time for young children to
remember the sequence of steps and to have the fine motor ability to manipulate the laces. Any
practice time at home would be helpful in moving this process along and would help children to
feel competent and safe at the same time.
Sneakers, sneakers, sneakers!
Please remember that on Gym days, children need to wear sneakers to school. You may
consult the Calendar section of our webpage for the dates and I usually remind the children the
day before class to wear sneakers.
Library Time
Our classes will be visiting our school library for the first time on Thursday, October
2. We will talk to the children about their responsibility in taking care of borrowed books and
returning them by the due date.
Personal Safety Information
We’ll be spending more time in class learning and reviewing important safety information
with the children, including: full name, address (street name and number, town and state), phone
number, age and birth date. It is also helpful for children to know their parents’ names and
their day care provider’s name.
Kindergarten Webpage
Our Kindergarten webpage is up and running. I will be updating it on a monthly basis.
Please visit us at: http://www.wrsd.net. Then go to Schools>Naquag>Kindergarten>Mrs. Hayes.
Upcoming Events and Dates
Thursday, October 2 – visit school library for first time
Wednesday, October 8 – Diane de Groat, author, visits Naquag – PM class only
Friday, October 10 – Early Release Day; no AM Kindergarten. PM class comes in at 1:15.
Tuesday, October 14 – Box Tops due for this month.
Friday, October 16 – Read-a-Thon starts
Scrounge List
plastic spoons
Thank you for your many donations from last month’s Scrounge list. You were wonderful to send in
so many needed supplies.
Sincerely,
Chris Hayes
Joan Rice
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