Kindergarten Connection

May 15, 2012

I hope all of the moms had a very happy Mother's Day!

Our letter focus this week is on Qq and the combination of "qu" when we read and write words that start with Qq.

Our focus words are "find" and "now".


May 10, 2012

The last book order of the year is coming home today.  Orders are due on May 23 to allow time for placing the order and shipping. 

Scholastic Book Clubs Ordering Information
www.scholastic.com/bookclubs
Class Activation Code: GRHHL

Ms. Hartson, our school counselor, came in for our last lesson of the year.  She did a lesson on safety which reviewed the safety lessons we have done throughout the year.  Ask your child what was taught about bicycle helmets!

We started something new today called "Fix It Up"-you will find the paper in your child's folder.  We did the paper together today-I modeled on the overhead (the first time it was used this year-they were amazed by it!!) and the children wrote on their own copy.  We are working on identifying mistakes in a sentence and correcting them.  The children also will work on reading the sentence and correctly illustrating it.  I will continue to model next week and then hopefully we will be able to move into doing this as independent morning work.

In math we have been working with geoboards (yesterday and today)-we worked on copying a design.  Some of the children picked up on this quite quickly and some really struggled-they had a hard time with spatial awareness.

We reviewed the bible today in religion.

Happy Mother's Day to all of the wonderful moms!!!


May 7, 2012

Many thanks go out to all of the children and parents who worked so hard to kick off Teacher Appreciation week!  The notes, cards and duty free lunch were all greatly appreciated!  I feel blessed to work at SWS! 


I am sure that some of you noticed in the newsletter that I will be teaching first grade next year.  I am so excited to know that I will continue the learning journey with some of you next year.  I began my SWS teaching career in first grade and really enjoyed teaching the young, yet a little more independent learners!    Because it is not typical for a teacher to move to the next grade with the students, I am confident Ms. Doyle will be contacting you with information on  how to proceed if you would prefer that your child has a different experience (with Mrs. Jeffrey) next year.

Our focus letter this week is Ww and our words are "as" and "by". 

In religion we are  working on a  "handbook" from Promise Magazine that will review many of the Catholic teachings that we have focused on this year.



May 4, 2012

It was a great week. 

The grandparents seem to enjoy seeing the kindergarten class in action and helping their grandchildren with their craft projects.

The children did a wonderful job at both concerts.  I know they were TIRED by the time the finale came!

Today we had the "African Market" to conclude our diversity study.  It was a really neat experience.  A big THANK YOU goes out to the diversity committee for all of their hard work and to the parent volunteers for manning the stations.  Ask your child what s/he did at the market place.  My favorite activity was the peanut race!

It will be nice to get back to a "normal" routine next week!

Today we did a math lesson focusing on longer than and shorter than.  We really worked on using the correct math words!

We also did our last Promise newspaper/magazine!  The end of the year is near!!


April 24, 2012

WOW-I am so glad it is a new week! 

Some of the students who went on the mission trip to Guatemala, including Harrison, gave a presentation to the school this morning.  Last Wednesday, Harrison gave our class his own presentation with his mom. They also brought in Guatemalan candy and chips for the children to try and a bracelet for each child. Thank you Harrison and Andrea!

Yesterday we had a TaeKwonDo demonstration from Tiger Rock martial arts.  Landen, from Mrs. Busch's class, is a student there and his instructor offered to come in and do a demonstration with Landen.  Letters from the instructor were left at the school today and will be coming home in your child's folder.  It explains a little about what was presented.

We are busy finishing up our Egypt projects and making our display boards for the diversity fair.  Mrs. O'Rourke helped us make finish our collar necklaces last week.  We finished painting our scarab beetles today.

I forgot to give the Mystery Reader clue yesterday, so part-time kids, here they both are for you:
1.  I am a girl.
2.  My favorite color is green.


April 12, 2012

We read part of the poetry book Elympics.  The poems present different Olympic sports, but for elephants.  We read the summer section and talked about the summer Olympics being in London this summer.

We painted our cartouches gold and most children got their names stamped in heiroglyphics.  We will finish painting and stamping tomorrow.

I have been pulling children to read with me as they return their book bags.  I am so impressed with their reading skills!  Every child has needed more challenging books.  If your child has not returned his/her book in awhile, please send it in ASAP!  Thank you!

April 11, 2012

There is a new photo page from Catholic Schools Week.  Not all of our CSW pictures are on there.

Mass was a wonderful experience for all today-we witnessed the initiation of one of our 8th grade students who received the sacraments of baptism, Eucharist and confirmation.  Ask your child to tell you what s/he remembers from Mass today!  We read the book Water Come Down! as a follow up to our discussion about baptism.

Many thanks go out Mrs. Moeding (and daughter Lauren) for helping us begin our Egyptian cartouche project.  We are making these out of clay and it is a multi-step project!  A cartouche was an encircling of the King of Egypt's heiroglyph name.  We all get to be royalty for a day! 


April 10, 2012

We celebrated Ashley's 6th birthday today!

We read the very long poem A Giraffe and a Half by Shel Silverstein.  It was so long that a whole book was made out of it!  We noticed a lot of rhyming in this poem.  We also made a Time For Kids mini book about poetry.

Our focus words this week are "little" and "with".

We did some adding, graphing and drawing during math.  We will finish this paper tomorrow.

April 9, 2012

Happy Easter!

It was good to get back today!  We had 5 of our friends absent today, so we did a lot of review work.

April book orders are coming home today.  You will notice something new-a flyer for Scholastic's Storia.  This is their new ereader program.  If you have a tablet, I highly recommend downloading the app.  You get 5 free books and the primary level ones are good!  You can set up a "bookshelf" for each child and designate which books go on each child's shelf.  That way, you can keep the books your child isn't ready for out of reach.  There is a good chapter book, from the "Ready, Freddy!" series that you and your child would enjoy reading together.
The due date is April 20 (Friday) for both online and paper orders.
Online ordering information:
www.scholastic.com/bookclubs
Class Activation Code: GRHHL

We started practicing for our next Mass.  The nice thing about doing 2 so close together is that the whole "process" is fresh in our minds.  The children did a fantastic job, especially coming off of a weeks vacation.

The letter "d" is our focus letter.  We are working SO hard on reading and writing "b" and "d" correctly EVERY time we see them! 

We were listening for and identifying vowels in words today.  You should be able to say a simple word to your child that has one short sound vowel and your child should be able to identify the vowel.  Some words to try: fast, west, hill, top, bug, big, sock, next, fun, red.

Did you know that April is poetry month?  We will be reading many different types of poems throughout the month.  Today we read some of the poems from Dirty Laundry Pile-Poems in Different Voices.  We discussed how the "voice" of the poem in this anthology means the object or animal is telling the poem and it is from its point of view.  Ask your child if s/he remembers what the vacuum cleaner's revenge was!  ("I think I'll swallow you today.")  We read poems in the voice of a washing machine, sky blue crayon, vaccuum, pile of dirty laundry (hence the title), snowflake and cat.

We read the book Duck Soup which gave us the opportunity to talk about the reading skill of inferring.  At this age, the difference between inferring and predicting is quite subtle and hard for the children to see the difference.  But over time, this skill will develop!  Ask your child what Max the Duck's friends inferred when Max wasn't at home and they found a duck feather in the soup pot (that Max was in the pot of soup!).

 
Last Modified: Tuesday, May. 15, 2012
 
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