Highlights

We had another awesome 4 days together! We continue to build on routines and expectations. Every day I see your children able to do more and feel more comfortable. It is exciting to see them make connections and form friendships.

Important Dates

• September 9- Scholastic Book Orders Due online (see below)
• September 20- No PM bus
• September 26- Field trip to DeGraaf Nature Center 9:30-11 (plus travel)
• September 27- No School (teacher pd)
• October 1- Picture Day for our class (I’ll send a form in the red folder when the date is closer)

Reminders

• DeGraaf Nature Center: On September 26 we are heading to the nature center to continue our studies of the 5 senses. I am looking for drivers please. If you are interested, please follow this link. I will create a SignUp Genius for every field trip in hopes that every parent who would like to drive, is able to have a turn. I appreciate your willingness to drive and do my best to make it fair for everyone. This is different from preschool field trips. We all go to school like a typical day. Field trip drivers will come to the classroom at 9 and we will have a bathroom break and go over any instructions. Drivers take the children I have assigned to their vehicle and bring them to the field trip location and stay as chaperones. We have a limited number of booster seats at school, so I will often ask families that are able to leave a booster seat with their child. More details will come later!
• Scholastic book orders: I usually like to order from Scholastic three times a year. The second order will be in November (in time for Christmas) and in the spring (good time for new summer books). Please go to scholastic.com/bookclubs to look over the options. Our class code is MH4J6 . Ordering online is easy and you are able to choose from a range of reading levels. I already saw amazing books at really good prices. I wanted to also give notice that I would like to purchase María Tenía una Llama as a Christmas present for your children, so please do not order that one. 🙂 Orders are due Monday, September 9.
• Paperwork: Everyone turned in their paperwork! Thank you! If you haven’t turned in your family photo, please do so soon.
• We will have PE for the first time Monday! Please make sure your child has appropriate shoes and socks!
  

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Curriculum

Bible: We are working our way through the Fruits of the Spirit. This week we learned about love and joy. Click here for a Fruits of the Spirit song in Spanish and here for a song about finding the joy in each day God has made.

Mr. McAboy talked to all of the kindergarteners about the Bible. He reminded us that it is God’s word. By studying it we learn about God and He speaks to us through it. It is kind of like seeing the world through Bible glasses. Kindergartners are each given a Bible to use at school and they are so excited to read them! We use the Beginner’s Bible and each child has one in his/her book box.

Literacy: Our literacy block is taught through The Daily 5. Right now we are building stamina in the 1st of the Daily 5, Read to Self. The kids are working on reading the whole time, staying in 1 spot, and reading quietly. Try asking your child to model how we do these things for you. In our first round we read for 1 minute. In the next round we read for 2.5 minutes and then the 3rd day we read for 6 minutes! We are graphing our reading stamina together. For more information on The Daily 5, please see the document under the “More Resources” tab.

Our vocabulary words below come from our mentor text, a book that I read out loud and use to focus on different reading strategies.

• Reading strategy: Determining importance of text
• Read aloud: Bienvenidos a Kindergarten
• Vocabulary Words:
  • la oficina (office)
  • divertido (fun)
  • la enfermería (nurse)
  • especial (special)
  • el patio de recreo (playground)
• Phrase of the week: ¿Cómo estás? Muy bien, gracias. ¿Y tu?
• Letter of the week: What is a letter? What is a vowel? a, e, i, o, u

Book of Friends: Each kindergartener is working on a book of friends. When the project is complete they will have a page for each of the kindergarten friends in their book. Creating the pages helps us focus on our different names- how many letters? vowels or consonants? etc. It also gives us an opportunity to celebrate how God made each one of us unique as we draw a picture of the friend on that page. This week we did a page for Oliver!

Math: We read Anno’s Counting book this week. It is a book with no words, but beautiful pictures that develop as the pages go from 0 to 10. We see a country scene emerge with objects beginning with zero (nothing), then one house, one person, one tree, then two people, two trees, two houses, two ducks swimming in the pond etc. On each page we see more objects and more of each object. We took our learning outside and counted lots of objects on our playground.

We also worked in math centers, usually in the afternoon. This time our centers included puzzles, tangrams, a pattern activity, and lacing cards, (not necessarily math, but valuable learning still!)