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.
Holiday Program
Our school holiday concert will be held on Friday, December 18th at 10 a.m. (snow date: Tuesday, Dec. 22nd) If you plan on taking your child home with you after the concert, dismissal will be from our Kindergarten room with a sign-out sheet. Our students will be learning two songs: Must Be Santa & Shiny Little Candles. We will be rehearsing the songs in school and it would be helpful for you to practice at home as well (attached is another copy of the songs).
Holiday Snack
We will be having our special holiday snack on Wednesday, December 23rd. Our homeroom mothers, Sonja Githmark and Jessica Brown may be contacting some of you to provide special refreshments for that day.
Holiday Gift Giving
The children will not be exchanging gifts this year and we would like to respectfully decline any teacher gifts also. At a time when so many others are in need, we would like to suggest a gift of food to the Rutland Food Pantry, Toys for Tots or a charity of your choice. Thank you in advance for your generosity.
Outdoor Winter Boots
Due to 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. 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.
Curriculum
This month, our Fundations reading program will continue to emphasize capital and lower-case letter formation. Children will also learn about using questions marks at the end of a question sentence, as well as continuing to count words in sentences, using capital letters for the first word in sentences and in people’s names. Ending sounds, story re-telling, word awareness and extending vowel sounds.
Another important reading readiness skill we have been stressing in class is reading trick/sight words. Our December trick words are got, had, has, his, at, and it. Please spend a little bit of time each day practicing reading these words with your child. We will be checking children’s progress 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 questions when they read: does the word 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 – trick/sight words and environmental print. Explicit teaching of these skills is important to helping children become good readers and writers.
Our Everyday Math program skills are ongoing and this month we will be working on the concepts of addition and subtraction through concrete activities, to introduce number writing, to reinforce and extend counting, numeral recognition and number comparison skills, to continue shape recognition, patterning, and graphing activities and to continue estimation and number story activities. 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.
We will be discussing the change of seasons and “Our Five Senses” during this month.
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.
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 grippers we use in school:
www.thepencilgrip.com
www.drawyourworld.com
Apple Seed Experiment
Our class was able to germinate a few apple seeds last month. We decided to plant them in a pot and are patiently waiting for the first sprout to pop up! Wish us luck!!
Holiday Vacation
Holiday vacation begins after school on Wednesday, December 23rd. Classes will resume on Monday, January 4th, 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!
Star 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 “Star 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 five (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 photographs but will keep the interview sheet for our All About Me books. Thank you in advance for your help with this project!!
Thank you again for your past donations from our scrounge list!
Holiday Greetings
Best wishes to you and your families for a happy and safe holiday season!
Sincerely,
Paula Hedlund
Jennifer Gentleman