Dear Parents,

            The holidays will soon be here and we are all excited about the many fun activities that will lead up to the celebrations! As we all busy ourselves with holiday things-to-do, it’s important to remember that young children very often feel as hurried and stressed as we do during this season. If your child begins to show signs of stress (fatigue, crying, crankiness, bedwetting, etc.), it might be time to slow down the pace of preparations, spend time talking together, reading a story or engaging in a physical activity. Try to keep eating and bedtime routines as normal as possible and reduce time spent in front of the television. We realize that this all may be “easier said than done,” but it might be worth a try to help everyone enjoy this festive season a little bit more!

Second Grade Buddies

            Our December meeting with our 2nd grade buddies will be on Wednesday, December 23.

We will be sharing a holiday snack together.

Holiday Program

            Our school holiday program will be held on Friday, December 18, with shows both in the morning and in the afternoon. The snow date is Tuesday, December 22. More information will be forthcoming.

 Our students will be learning 2 songs: “Jolly Old St. Nicholas” and a Hanukkah song. We will be rehearsing the songs in school and it would be helpful for you to practice at home as well.

Holiday Snack

            We will be having our special holiday snack on Wednesday,

December 23.  Our homeroom mother will be contacting some of you to provide special refreshments for that day.

Special Request

            With our struggling economy affecting so many families, we respectfully request that you not purchase teacher gifts this year. We sincerely appreciate all your past thoughtfulness and generosity and want you to know that your support at home of what we do at school is gift enough for us!

Outdoor Winter Boots

            For safety reasons, children should bring to school either shoes or slippers each day that outdoor winter boots are worn. For your convenience, we will provide a storage space for children to leave an extra pair of shoes or slippers so that they will not have to bring a pair each day. However, please remember that on Gym days, children will need to wear sneakers and not slippers in order to participate in class.

            It would be very helpful if children practiced dressing themselves at home with their winter clothing. They will be going outside for a 30 minute recess every day unless there is inclement weather or it is too cold. Although we are available to help at school, children feel more capable if they can independently dress themselves and it allows more time for instructional purposes and /or fun on the playground!

Curriculum

This month, our Fundations reading program will introduce the letters: v, w, z, qu, y and x. We will also be starting to teach the children how to form the capital letters: A-I.

Children will also learn about using periods, question marks and exclamation points at the end of a sentence, as well as continuing to count words in sentences, using capital letters for the first word in sentences and in people’s names and using finger spaces between words. Ending sounds, story re-telling, word awareness, extending vowel sounds and phrase “scooping” will also be stressed.

            The sight/high-frequency words we will teach in December are: go, down, up, Friday, three, who, has, Sunday, four, in, five and orange.

We will be checking children’s progress on all of the words we’ve taught so far in January.

            In December, some new skills we’ll be working on as part of our balanced literacy program involve being a “word solver.” We’ll be teaching children to ask themselves some comprehension questions when they read: does it make sense, does it sound right, and does it look right? We’ll be reminding them that readers check again if something seems confusing; they use picture clues to help; they look at the first sounds in words and they look for words they already know – sight words and environmental print; they look for patterns in words as they read; they look across the whole word to help with decoding. Explicit teaching of these skills is important to helping children become good readers and writers.

            The foundational writing skills we will be focusing on this month are: telling a story with pictures; drawing the best we can and moving on; using realistic colors; retelling nursery rhymes; and reading folktales and making a story map.

Our Everyday Math program skills are ongoing and this month we will be working on: number stories matching dominoes; measuring with non-standard units of measure; more than, less than, addition; subtraction; number sequence; probability; graphing favorite colors; teen numbers and using pattern block templates. Please know that most Math activities in Kindergarten involve the use of manipulatives and not worksheets. So if you do not see written work coming home, no need to worry! Lots of fascinating, relevant learning is taking place in the classroom.

 In Science, we will be discussing the change of seasons. Our Second Step social skills program will focus on: strong feelings; calming down strong feelings; and dealing with waiting.

Literacy Corner

            Current research is telling us that it’s important to encourage children to be as accurate and as detailed as possible when drawing and sketching. Accuracy and detail in drawing can lead to accuracy and detail in oral storytelling which in turn can lead to accuracy and detail in writing. If your child enjoys drawing, you might want to ask questions about the drawing to promote more thoughtfulness about the work and a more detailed representation.

Pencil Grippers

            One of our Kindergarten parents passed along these websites for anyone who would like to order the kind of pencil grippers we use in school:

http://thepencilgrip.com/

http://www.drawyourworld.com/Catalog/HTML/pencilgrip.html

Apple Seeds Experiment

            We were able to plant 6 germinated apple seeds and we are waiting patiently for the first sprout to pop up! (The children think that we’ll be eating apples from our “tree” by the time June rolls around)!

Giving Thanks

            Thank you to all parents who sent in the “I am thankful…” notes for their children. It was my pleasure to read these notes to your children in private and see their surprise and delightful smiles when they heard your heartfelt words of gratitude for having them in your lives. These notes have been put aside for inclusion in the children’s All About  Me books, which they will take home in June.

Holiday Vacation

            Holiday vacation begins after school on Wednesday, December 23. Classes will resume on Monday, January 4, 2010.

Books! Books! Books!

            Please consider building your child’s home library with new books as holidays gifts. By giving books as presents, you are sending a strong and positive message to your child that you believe that reading is both fun and important and that books are very special. Here are some of the more popular authors for young children: Eric Carle, Jan Brett, Maurice Sendak, Marc Brown, Donald Crews, Tommie de Paola, Don Freeman, Ezra Jack Keats, Frank Asch, Leo Lionni, Bill Martin, Jr., Lois Ehlert, Anne Rockwell, Kevin Henkes and Mark Pfister.

            In addition to fictional works, children often enjoy non-fiction books, chapter books and nursery rhyme books. There are also available some wonderful children’s dictionaries and encyclopedias.

            Craft supplies are welcome and appropriate gifts for young children to encourage their creativity and best of all, these require no assembly or batteries! They include: markers, crayons, scissors, playdough, clay, colored pencils, tempera paint, fingerpaint, staplers, tape, paper punch, ruler, glitter glue, and of course, all kinds of paper!

Stars of the Week

            For the past few months, we have been highlighting certain staff members whom your children come in contact with on a fairly regular basis. Our “Stars of the Week” bulletin board has been a popular hallway attraction. Now, it’s time to start highlighting our Kindergarten children. When it is your child’s turn to be “Star of the Week,” he/she will bring home a notice and an interview sheet. Please help your child to fill out the sheet and also send in 5 photographs of your child, family members, pets, vacations, hobbies, etc., that will help us to get to know him/her better. We will return the pictures but will keep the interview sheet to put in the All About Me book.

Holiday Greetings

            Best wishes to you and your families for a happy and safe holiday season!

Sincerely,

Chris Hayes   &   Joan Rice

Scrounge List

paper towels

tissues – ‘tis the season!