December 25-January 5: Christmas Vacation

These past two weeks have been full of Christmas excitement and fun filled days of learning in Kindergarten!

My favorite time of day continues to be Daily 5. I love to see the children choose their activity and work on them independently.  The last two weeks we have been using our iPads for listening to reading. There are two options: one is RAZ kids. This has digital leveled books for your child to listen to, read on their own and then take a quiz to check for understanding. The other option is listening to a book read on iTunes and following along with a real book in their hands. Both options are quite popular.

I love working with small guided reading groups to work on letter sounds and reading books. We are working on two reading strategies. One is two look at the picture in the book for clues when we get to a word we don’t know. The other is to look at the first letter of the word and make that sound. Sounding out full words is still tricky, so starting with the first letter is a great place to start.

In Phonics we have practiced stretching out words to listen to letter sounds. We practice with CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant). When we say the word slowly, we then write down the letter sounds we here to spell out the word. After we write it down, we read it again. This is a great thing to practice at home and even in the car. Think of words like hat, cat, sit, hit, etc. The class is loving it! They have already noticed words that rhyme are also spelled the same at the end 🙂

In Math we noticed that when we add number by 1, it goes in counting order. We are getting really good at counting by 5s and 10s. We continue to practice writing numbers and adding and subtracting numbers under 10.

We had so much fun at the Jingle Jog! I can’t believe how fast the kids were running! I appreciate their excitement and it was fun to have a day in pajamas 🙂

In Writing Workshop we are just introducing pattern books. These are books that each sentence starts with the same phrase such as “I like” or “I see”. We will begin writing pattern books in January.

Our Bible focus has been on the first Christmas. After completing the nativity, it was fun to retell the story. We have been enjoying different picture books that tell the story of Jesus’ birth.

Our poetry continues to build on our word wall words. The kids enjoy hunting for the word wall words in the poem and illustrating it. Here are the word wall words we have learned:

a, at, and, am, come, go, here, I, is, look, like, me, see, the this, up and we.

December 15: NO pm bus or hot lunch

December 18: Jingle Jog 9:30-10am in the ZCS gym

December 18: Kindergarten PJ day! Wear pajamas and send slippers or cozy socks but NO stuffed animal friends

December 21: 9:00am Christmas Chapel

December 22: Christmas Party in our classroom 10:15-11:45am

December 22: Christmas offering $ due (optional)

December 25-January 5: Christmas Vacation

Reminders:
Jingle Jog and PJ Day: Each year ZCS students run for 12 minutes around a gym to raise money for our sister school in the Philippines. Our class will run on Monday, December 18th from 9:30-10. This is an event that many parents love to come watch as their will be lights, music and running kiddos! We have a kindergarten tradition to run the jingle jog in our pajamas! So please send your child to school in their cozy clothes (but remember they will be running for 12 minutes!) and slippers. We will use our gym shoes while running, but your child may wear slippers in the classroom. Questions? Please ask! 🙂

Snow Clothes: The time of year has arrived! I am so thankful you sent warm clothes and boots on Thursday when the snow arrived. I have a few pointers/ideas for you:
If your child is particular about his/her snow clothes (wants their pants tucked into the boots, or gloves tucked into their coat) please work on these skills at home. You may not believe it but by Christmas break most kindergartens can dress and undress 100% independently. 🙂 Keep working with your child at home.
Please send snow clothes each morning in a reusable bag, just like what we use for our beach towels. This gives them something to put wet and dirty clothes into at the end of the day. With that, please be sure to check that bag EVERY night. Take out the pants, hats, and gloves, and let them dry out. The worst is when a child opens the bag for morning recess the next day and finds WET clothes from 2:30 pm the day before.
Unless you bring your child to school by 8:25 am, there is NO need to dress your child in their snow pants before school. They do not need them on while riding the bus… unless you are using them for an added layer of warmth. 🙂 Most children who ride the bus do not have time to play outside before the 8:40 am bell rings.
If you are going to send inside shoes to school (different from their gym shoes) please have them be slip on shoes. We take our shoes on and off at least three times a day, and unless your child knows how to tie their own shoes, this is tricky. Consider a pair of crocs, slippers with a hard sole or a velcro shoe. Thank you! 🙂

Wind Chill / Recess: We are watching the wind chill for morning recess. If the windchill is below 10 degrees, our Kindergarten class may stay in for morning recess and exercise or have some music and movement instead. We will follow the whole school’s recommendation for lunch and afternoon recess. Please continue to send snow clothes even if the weather is chilly. Thank you!

As a Kindergarten grade level we have also decided that Kindergartners will not go sledding with the whole school. We will plan our own sledding day for just Kindergarten. This helps us ensure that our little ones have fun and stay safe 🙂

Christmas Offering: ZCS decided (a few years ago) to forego the traditional gift exchange between students in the classroom. Instead, we are asked to find someone/something local to contribute to this Christmas. All kindergarten money will go to help a ZCS family in need of some basic items this Christmas. Please consider sending $2 to help with this cause. If you choose to donate just send an envelope labeled “Christmas Offering” on the front. Thanks for helping your child be a blessing this Christmas.

Bible: We began our nativity project this week! The class was so excited to finally find out what we were doing with shoe boxes and toilet paper tubes 🙂 Our first character to make was an angel. We learned that angels are special messengers from God. At the first Christmas, God sent an angel to talk to Mary, Joseph and the Shepherds to tell the news of Jesus’ birth.  We also made a shepherd. The shepherds are also one of my favorites in the Christmas story.  They were poor and plain and not highly regarded, but God used them to spread the good news! God can use us too 🙂

Our December memory verse:

“While they were there the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her first born a son. She wrapped him in strips of cloth and placed him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.” Luke 2:6-7

Phonics: beginning sounds

Word Wall Word: and

Poetry: and

Handwriting: S and A

Daily 5: I love meeting with our small groups during this time. Please make sure to send in your child’s bag if they came home with one. It is helpful to have all of these on Monday, so I can get organized and start reading new books with your children. Thank you!

Writing Workshop: We made a new list of school words. I love to see your children gain confidence in  making lists.  They often choose to write more lists during Daily 5 work on writing choices.

Math: We are continuing to practice numbers and writing them the school way. We looked at a new number chart and looked for patterns in 0-19. We could see that 10-19 had at least 10 dots next to it plus a few more.

On Friday we listened to author Glenys Nellist. She shared two beautiful books with us. We also enjoyed leading our Kindergarten (from the other classes) friends in a few Christmas songs.

December 6: Book orders for author visit due.  These forms were sent home a couple of weeks ago. I have a few more if you are interested.

December 8: Author Visit-Glenys Nellist  You can read more about Glenys  here.

December 15: NO pm bus or hot lunch

December 22: Christmas Party in our classroom 10:15-11:45am

December 25-January 5: Christmas Vacation

It was so nice to enjoy Thanksgiving Break, but it was also so wonderful to see your children again this week!  I think we all came back to reality with quite a busy week in school and lots of activities after school.  This season does not seem to slow down, but I pray that we can all take a few moments to truly enjoy the precious gift of Christmas with our families.

In class we will begin our Nativity projects this week. Thank you to all of those who have donated fabric and cut it out. I just need about 5 more shoe boxes and 5 toilet paper per student. Please send in tubes as you have them ready.  Thank you!

Daily 5: This continues to be such a fun time for me to watch your children learn.  Each day they are able to choose from 5 options.  There are times to work independently and in pairs or small groups.  I love working with guided reading groups.  We are working on beginning sounds and using the first letter and sound as a clue to reading new words.  We also continue to build word wall recognition and letter sound knowledge.  Thank you for taking some time this weekend to look through your child’s book bag!  They are excited to share books and games with you.

Bible: We have read about God giving Moses the strength to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.  This week we will learn about the ten commandments and then pause as we take the next three weeks to study the Christmas story.

Exploring God’s World: We talked about earth materials and what those are. After making a list of rocks, stones, pebbles, soil, sand and water we went outside to collect earth materials.  We worked in our table groups to put items in a bag. Once we got back to the classroom, the kids sorted their items on a chart.  They did such a great job!  This one got a little messy when I moved it, but the kids were being so careful. 🙂

Math: We had fun counting by tens as we jumped and counting by 5s while we slowly did jumping jacks.  We continue to practice number formation, addition and seeing numbers in groups.

Handwriting this week we practiced C, O, Q and G.  All of these require large curves which can be tricky to write as tall or wide as they need to be.

Phonics-We worked on listening to beginning sounds and identifying those. We drew a picture of something the begins with the same sound as our names. The class was able to guess what their classmates drew.

Writing Workshop: We learned how to make a list. This week we began by making a list of our favorite animals. This was another opportunity to listen for beginning sounds as we wrote the first letter of the animal. A highlight for me this week was seeing students continue to make lists during quiet time and play! 🙂 We brainstormed about different lists that are useful, so the next time you make a shopping list or chore list, ask you kindergartner to help!