Upcoming dates and reminders…

Monday: Please turn in library books 🙂

Monday and Tuesday: parent teacher conferences at night

Wednesday-Friday: No School Professional Development and CEA

November 1: Grandparents Day (9:10 Welcome, 9:15 Chapel, 10 Coffee 10:20-11:30 Visit Classrooms 11:30-12 Lunch with Grandchildren *sack lunch available for purchase)

This week in Kindergarten…

In Daily 5 we started adding more word work to our choices. Along with forming letters with play doh, students are sorting upper and lower case letters. It is good to see different “handwriting” as there are so many styles of print all around. We also began two rounds of Daily 5 a day instead of one. This is giving the class more opportunities to read and write.

Bible: We read the story of Isaac and Rebekah. We continue to see God keeping His promises!

In our Devotions this week we learned what devotions means-spending time with God. This helps us know him and grow closer to him. We also talked about helping others. We can do this as a school and as families as we donate food or clothing. Some times helping others is just a friendly smile. Everyone can help!

Engaging God’s World: We are beginning to learn about maps. We read the book Me on the Map and then walked around our school and found a few maps that tell us where to go.

Writing Workshop: We continue to work on labeling. We have labeled a pumpkin and are trying to apply are labeling to our stories. I hope to see more beginning sounds written by sketches and even some words.

Word Wall: This week we added the, I and a to the word wall. We talked a lot about WORDS. We recognize a and I as letters, but we wrote out sentences to help see them more clearly as words. Please practice these words at home by writing them out and asking your child to read them and having your child write them. You only need to write once or twice. Keep it fun and trying writing in shaving cream or outside with sidewalk chalk. 🙂 Remember that we are also collecting our word wall books in a ziplock bag and sending those home on Fridays. Please read with your child and send back in Mondays. We will keep our collection growing.

Math: We continue our work on counting and number recognition. We are building on counting through 20 and recognizing numbers 1-10.

Handwriting: This week we began focusing on writing letters the school way. We have practiced uppercase D, B, F and E. As we continue handwriting throughout the year, you can encourage your child to write letters “the school way” but please know that this is a process. A key part for many letters is starting at the top. If a child does not, most likely the letter will be reversed. You can ask your child to try again and show him/her where to start. We will see reversals quite a bit. It is all part of the learning process.

upcoming dates and reminders:

• Please fill out this questionnaire today for parent/teacher conferences. Thank you!
• Please turn in library books Monday
• October 17 Prospective Family Open House 7-8 Do you know someone interested in ZCS for next year? Please spread the news and invite them! 🙂
• October 21 & 22 Parent Teacher Conferences (instructions sent out in email)
• October 23-25 No School Professional Development and CEA convention
• October 29: All students will begin attending Tuesday afternoon. If you would like to add any additional afternoons, you may also do so. Please email me about any changes by October 23. Thank you!
• November 1: Grandparents day! Invitations from the office should come out soon. Please tell grandparents about this special day. It begins with chapel at 9 and continues through lunch.We will be sending home special papers for grandparents to fill out. These will be keepsakes for your child’s spiritual binders (a binder that is passed to each teacher to add to and then presented to your child at the 8th grade banquet). Please keep an eye out for the “Gifts of Being Grand.” Grandparents should fill these out and you may return to school any time.

This week in Kindergarten…

Daily 5: We added word work to our daily 5 block. We begin word work by forming letters with play doh. This has quickly become a favorite activity. While some children are doing this work, others are reading to self or doing work on writing (sketching a story that includes a beginning, middle and end.) It was amazing to see the focus and hear a quiet classroom while all of this was going on.

Literacy Centers: We wrapped up our focused study of the alphabet! As we continue to year we will cycle through the alphabet again. This next cycle with focus more on handwriting. We use Handwriting without Tears curriculum and it does a beautiful job of teaching proper strokes and letter formation. You may remind your child at home to write “the school way.”  As the alphabet focus decreases slightly, we will focus on learning words. We call them word wall words. These are words that are in the majority of books we will begin reading. My hope is that your children will begin to memorize the words. You will see word wall books coming home in a bag. I would love for these to stay together and that you would read it with your child (and soon he/she will read it to you!).

We had fun with silly x-rays on x day.

Writing Workshop: We continue to sketch stories. The class is becoming quite independent with sketching! On Friday we learned about labeling. First, we labeled ME! They all had fun with that. Then, each child was given a sticky note and labeled something in our classroom. We are beginning with writing the initial sound of the word. They did a fabulous job! If you need a fun activity at home, try asking your child to label his/her room 🙂

Math: We compared numbers this week, practiced writing numbers, looked for shapes and graphed how many we found and made patterns.

Bible: We read the story of Abraham listening to God to move to a new land. We saw how God blessed Abraham and Sarah with a son. We continue to emphasize that God keeps his promises.

Science/Engaging God’s World: We illustrated our 5 senses book by drawing pictures of things we could see, hear, taste, touch and smell.

We also took advantage of the beautiful weather Wednesday and moved our play time outside! We played duck, duck, goose, explored and ran!

Upcoming dates and reminders

• Please turn in library books Monday
• Please check extra clothes in your child’s backpack and make sure 1. they have extra pants, underwear, socks and 2. it is appropriate for fall weather
• October 11 All school chapel at 9 am
  • No PM bussing
• October 17 Prospective Family Open House 7-8 Do you know someone interested in ZCS for next year? Please spread the news and invite them! 🙂
• October 21 & 22 Parent Teacher Conferences (instructions sent out in email)
• October 23-25 No School Professional Development and CEA convention
• October 29: All students will begin attending Tuesday afternoon. If you would like to add any additional afternoons, you may also do so. Please email me about any changes by October 23. Thank you!

This week in Kindergarten…

Daily 5: We continue doing well with Read to Self. We have averaged 12-15 minutes and this is wonderful! I am starting to work with a small group on Work on Writing as the rest of the class is reading. We will continue this next week and then start to build our stamina for Word Work.

Bible: On our rainy day we read the story of Noah. Noah’s faithfulness is amazing to read! The rainy day helped us imagine ever so slightly what it would have been like on the ark. We rejoiced in God’s promise to never flood the whole earth again. We continue to learn that God keeps his promises. We also read about the Tower of Babel. We learned about our plans and God’s plans.

Math: We are adding and subtracting up to 5 through stories. We also compared squares and rectangles and looked for these shapes indoors and outdoors.

Engaging GOD’S World: We began the week using our senses of taste with an apple taste test. Thank you for the apples! We had a good mix of favorites.

We reviewed our senses at our field trip to DeGraaf. Even with a misty morning, we still enjoyed exploring nature and learning how God created animals with senses as well.

Writing: We continue to plan our stories (focusing on beginning, middle and end of a true story). After telling our story, each student sketches the story. After they sketch, they retell the story. It is amazing to watch these writers grow!

Literacy Centers: We added Rr, Ss, Tt, Uu and Vv. I am so impressed with your children practicing these letters and coming up with words that begin with the letter sound. Please continue to review the alphabet at home, distinguishing between upper and lower case letters and practicing the sounds. We will wrap up our letter focus next week and then begin learning words.