Kindergarten  Newsletter

October 28th – November 1st 

     We are going to keep right on moving. We will celebrate Halloween and Red Ribbon Week. We will keep moving through our ABC’s. We have a couple of people that are close to mastery but that typically take at least until Christmas at the soonest. When I say mastery, I mean can fluently give the letter and the sound with no hesitation. This makes reading words much easier. It’s important to not skip this step. We’ll do another letter/sound check soon. Look out for that growth! I am so glad I made the decision to time out on the sight words. We spent last week really digesting them and I think it helped already. We will keep making sure we are have them down pat and I’ll add some more soon. J I have the new sight word cards ready to go home. I’m sorry if they don’t match the color of the previous cards. Just cut them out and put them in your toolkit. We will keep working on decoding and blending words with /a/ and /i/ right now. We’ll keep working through our math numbers to 10. We are starting to really break down our numbers to 10. This is our secret path to understanding addition later and bigger numbers very soon! I AM PROUD TO ANNOUCE THAT WE ARE GOING TO START MOVING INTO OUR TEEN NUMBERS!!!!! These numbers are hard! I teach them with the base ten concept. Basically, 11 is 1 ten and 1 one, 12 is 1 ten and 2 ones, etc. We’ll start slow and move on as we need. Now that they weather is FINALLY getting cooler, please label all jackets, coats, and sweaters! It’s SO hard to keep up with jackets in K5. Also, if you haven’t sent back your money for the pumpkin patch please do so ASAP! We won’t need any lunch for the pumpkin patch. It will be provided. Look on the backside of this newsletter for more pumpkin patch information. 

Things to work on:

•Sight Words:

      •red, orange, yellow, the, a, green, blue, is, go, purple, pink, white, black, had, I , see, brown, he, and, gray, has, you, we, of, am, it

•Letters/Sounds/Writing A-Z, rhyming words, differentiate between a letter, words, sentence, small/tall/fall letters, onset and rime, decoding and blending words, and beginning and ending sounds

•Numbers 0-15: how to write them, making numbers to 10 in different ways, more and less

Upcoming Events:

•10/27: Wear something RED

•10/28: Wear CRAZY socks

•10/30: National Candy Corn Day!!!

•10/31: Raines’ 6th Birthday!!!

•10/31: Halloween!!!!! – Halloween Party at Backyard Orchards

•No lunch needed (will be provided)

•Please NO Halloween costumes. Wear your new K5 tribe shirt with shorts/jeans and shoes that can get dirty!

•You are dismissed after the party. I will be going back to school if your kiddo needs to come back until the end of the day though.

•We will leave school at 8:15. You can come and follow me OR meet us there at 8:30.

•11/1: dress like a Hippie!

•11/1- $1 for ice cream and $1 for smash the car

•11/5: National Donut Day!!!

•11/7: Harper Lee’s 6th Birthday!!!

•11/11: No School

•11/14: National Pickle Day!!!

•Reminders:

•Don’t forget to be collecting box tops! Box tops=free money for LSC!!

•PLEASE don’t forget drinks in your kiddos lunchboxes to have a lunch time.

•If you have any gently loved uniforms that you’d like to get rid of please consider donating to the school. We have a $5 spot where anyone can come and purchase uniforms! 

•Don’t forget to send nap mats back after we wash! J

•Please sign and return those “sign and return” papers asap. I use these to guide instruction and would love to have them back. If you want/need a copy let me know! I’ll be glad to send one! J

•PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE LABEL JACKETS!

•Secret Tips:

•Don’t forget to be working with your toolkit! Especially those sight words!

•Go ahead and start using those cubes in your toolkit and starting making words! We are making words at school and they are LOVING it! This will be something we do ALL year!

•WORD GAMES!!!

•Guess my word- give your child clues to a word you are thinking of. It rhymes with  . . . It starts with . . . It would be used to describe . . .

•Beach ball words- write words on a beach ball. Toss it to your child. Have them read the word under their right thumb and toss it back.

•Magnetic letters- make words on your mini-fridge in your toolkit.

•Sock game- put word cards on the floor. Have your child stand in their socks. Call out the word and see how quickly they can step on it!

•Shaving cream- put shaving cream on a plate! Use your finger to make words.

Kindergarten Newsletter

October 20th - October 25th

Spiders, spiders, and more spiders! We are going to dig into the world of spiders this week! Kiddos always love talking about spiders even though they are creepy! J We will continue working through our ABC’s. We have a couple of people that are close to mastery but that typically take at least until Christmas at the soonest. When I say mastery, I mean can fluently give the letter and the sound with no hesitation. This makes reading words much easier. It’s important to not skip this step. I am so glad I made the decision to time out on the sight words. We spent last week really digesting them and I think it helped already. We will keep making sure we are have them down pat and I’ll add some more soon. J I have also started making new cards for your sight word boxes in your toolkits. I’ll get those home soon.. We will also keep working through our handwriting and sentence writing. They thought they were big! We started our journey decoding and blending words. It’s a skill that takes practice, practice, and practice. We are working on words with /a/ and /i/ right now. We’ll keep working through our math numbers to 10. We are starting to really break down our numbers to 10. This is our secret path to understanding addition later and bigger numbers very soon! Our pumpkin investigations were AMAZING! We cut open 6 different pumpkins. We were able to compare and contrast them which is a great skill for kindergartners to be exposed to. Now that they weather is FINALLY getting cooler, please label all jackets, coats, and sweaters! It’s SO hard to keep up with jackets in K5. Also, if you haven’t sent back your money for the pumpkin patch please do so before Wednesday!

Things to work on:

•Sight Words:

•red, orange, yellow, the, a, green, blue, is, go, purple, pink, white, black, had, I , see, brown, he, and, gray, has, you, we, of, am, it

•Letters/Sounds/Writing A-Z, rhyming words, differentiate between a letter, words, sentence, small/tall/fall letters, onset and rime, decoding and blending words, and beginning and ending sounds

•Numbers 0-10: how to write them, making numbers to 10 in different ways, more and less

•Upcoming Events:

•10/21: Picture retakes

•10/22: Picture orders due

•10/25: Wear HAWAIIAN!

•10/25: $1 for ice cream

•10/30: National Candy Corn Day!!!

•10/31: Raines’ 6th Birthday!!!

•10/31: Halloween!!!!! – Halloween Party at Backyard Orchards

•11/1: dress like a Hippie!

•11/5: National Donut Day!!!

•11/7: Harper Lee’s 6th Birthday!!!

•11/11: No School

•11/14: National Pickle Day!!!

•Reminders:

•Don’t forget to be collecting box tops! Box tops=free money for LSC!!

•PLEASE don’t forget drinks in your kiddos lunchboxes to have a lunch time.

•If you have any gently loved uniforms that you’d like to get rid of please consider donating to the school. We have a $5 spot where anyone can come and purchase uniforms! 

•Don’t forget to send nap mats back after we wash! J

•Please sign and return those “sign and return” papers asap. I use these to guide instruction and would love to have them back. If you want/need a copy let me know! I’ll be glad to send one! J

•PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE LABEL JACKETS!

•Secret Tips:

•Don’t forget to be working with your toolkit! Especially those sight words!

•Go ahead and start using those cubes in your toolkit and starting making words! We are making words at school and they are LOVING it! This will be something we do ALL year!

•WORD GAMES!!!

•Guess my word- give your child clues to a word you are thinking of. It rhymes with  . . . It starts with . . . It would be used to describe . . .

•Beach ball words- write words on a beach ball. Toss it to your child. Have them read the word under their right thumb and toss it back.

•Magnetic letters- make words on your mini-fridge in your toolkit.

•Sock game- put word cards on the floor. Have your child stand in their socks. Call out the word and see how quickly they can step on it!

•Shaving cream- put shaving cream on a plate! Use your finger to make words.

Kindergarten Newsletter

October 14th - October 18th

Well, here is to the middle of October. It’s wild at how fast this year is going.  We will continue working through our ABC’s. We have a couple of people that are close to mastery but that typically take at least until Christmas at the soonest. When I say mastery, I mean can fluently give the letter and the sound with no hesitation. This makes reading words much easier. It’s important to not skip this step. I have also made the executive discussion (haha- that made me giggle) to pump the brakes a little on the sight words. We are doing a fantastic job but I want to be sure that we are not getting in over our head. I’ll wait a couple of weeks before we add more to our list. J K5 children, on average, are to know around 50 sight words by the end of the year and we are well on our way already. We will also keep working through our handwriting and sentence writing. They thought they were big! We are also going to start working on something called onset and rime. This is where I give them a word like cat and they give to break it up into the beginning sound and then the rest and vise versa. Ex: c-at , b-at.  This sounds very easy but it is not for our little ones. They catch on quickly though. It’s one of the first steps in reading words. We will keep working on beginning sounds and add on ending sounds too. We will also start decoding and blending cvc words a little bit. That sounds foreign, I know. Decoding means to take it apart sound by sound and then we blend it back together. CVC means consonant, vowel, consonant words (bug, cat, dog, etc). We’ll keep working through our math numbers to 10 and begin our pumpkin investigations too. I will send home the checks that I did. Please remember that if you see a low percentage do not panic. The percentage lets me know how and when to back up and punt. Now, if the percentages do not grow that is when we need to start panic. I’ll let you know if I am worried though!! 

•Sight Words:

•red, orange, yellow, the, a, green, blue, is, go, purple, pink, white, black, had, I , see, brown, he, and, gray, has, you, we, of, am, it

•

•Letters/Sounds/Writing A-Z, rhyming words, differentiate between a letter, words, sentence, small/tall/fall letters, beginning sounds 

•Numbers 0-10 : id, writing, before/after, making 10

•Upcoming Events:

•10/17: LSC Fall Festival 5p-7p

•10/18: Wear CAMO!

•10/18: $1 for ice cream

•10/18: $8 due for pumpkin patch

•10/21: Picture retakes

•10/22: Picture orders due

•10/25: Wear HAWAIIAN!

•10/25: $1 for ice cream

•10/30: National Candy Corn Day!!!

•10/31: Raines’ 6th Birthday!!!

•10/31: Halloween!!!!! – Halloween Party at Backyard Orchards

•11/1: dress like a Hippie!

•11/5: National Donut Day!!!

•11/7: Harper Lee’s 6th Birthday!!!

•11/11: No School

•11/14: National Pickle Day!!!

•Reminders:

•Don’t forget to be collecting box tops! Box tops=free money for LSC!!

•PLEASE don’t forget drinks in your kiddos lunchboxes to have a lunch time.

•If you have any gently loved uniforms that you’d like to get rid of please consider donating to the school. We have a $5 spot where anyone can come and purchase uniforms! 

•Idea: Send a thermos of water for the playground. It helps to have a bottle to bring out to the playground during these HOT days!

•Don’t forget to send nap mats back after we wash! J

•Please sign and return those “sign and return” papers asap. I use these to guide instruction and would love to have them back. If you want/need a copy let me know! I’ll be glad to send one! J

•Secret Tips:

•Don’t forget to be working with your toolkit! Especially those sight words!

•Let your child explore all different types of text. Expose them to books, magazines, comics, newspapers, and much more. They LOVE finding words that they are learning. It also gives them an idea of all of the different types of texts available!

•When reading at night ask you kiddo about the story along with questions about the text features.

•The front and back of the book, the title, the author and illustrator, the spine, where to start reading and where to stop!  It’s a fun and easy way for them to be able to start recognizing these important skills. 

Here are a few questions that you can ask when reading at home:

•What do you think will happen in the story?            What might be the problem?        Where is the setting?

•What do you think will happen next?           What can you tell me about the story so far?   

• •Why do you think the characters acted a certain way?       What was your favorite/least favorite parts? 

Kindergarten Newsletter

      October 7th - October 11th  

I hope you enjoyed your 3 day weekend!! I learned a lot at our conferences in Montgomery but would have much rather been with my K5 babies!!  I feel like this year is going by wwwaaayyy too fast!  We will keep moving through our alphabet, working with some rhyming, sight words, working on handwriting, and diving deeper into our numbers to 10. We will work with things like before and after, making different ways to make 10. It’s hard to say on numbers 0-10 because it gets monotonous but I have to keep telling myself that they need a firm understanding of how to recognize, write, and manipulate these numbers to understand the bigger numbers. We will do some skill checks this week. I’m going to check sight words, letters/sounds, and a few other things. These are easy and kiddos do not even know that we are “testing”. We will continue our weather unit and talk about bats a little. It always fun to enjoy the holidays with these kiddos and they always love talking about bats. Thank you SO much for the people that have donated the pumpkins. We will do the pumpkin investigation next week. This is always so much fun because they get to see various different types of pumpkins and really get some comparing and contrasting conversations going! The past few years we have done our Halloween Party at Backyard Orchards on HWY 431N. It is always a BLAST because we get to explore the pumpkin patch (after doing our pumpkin investigations- add a level of WOW), party and then play! I LOVE getting out there with them and playing. I have a permission slip going home and need it back soon so I can get final arrangements made. Mindy and Lauran are heading up this party. A special thank you in advance for doing that for us! J 

Things to work on:

•Sight Words:

•red, orange, yellow, the, a, green, blue, is, go, purple, pink, white, black, had, I , see, brown, he, and, gray, has, you, we, of, am, it

•

•Letters/Sounds/Writing A-Z, rhyming words, differentiate between a letter, words, sentence, small/tall/fall letters, beginning sounds 

•Numbers 0-10 : id, writing, before/after, making 10 

Upcoming Events:

•10/10: JT’s 5th Birthday!

•10/11: Wear NEON!

•10/11: $1 for ice cream

•10/17: LSC Fall Festival 5p-7p

•10/18: Wear CAMO!

•10/18: $1 for ice cream

•10/21: Picture retakes

•10/25: Wear HAWAIIAN!

•10/25: $1 for ice cream

•10/30: National Candy Corn Day!!!

•10/31: Raines’ 5th Birthday!!!

•10/31: Halloween!!!!! – Halloween Party at Backyard Orchards

Reminders:

•Don’t forget to be collecting box tops! Box tops=free money for LSC!!

•PLEASE don’t forget drinks in your kiddos lunchboxes to have a lunch time.

•If you have any gently loved uniforms that you’d like to get rid of please consider donating to the school. We have a $5 spot where anyone can come and purchase uniforms! 

•Idea: Send a thermos of water for the playground. It helps to have a bottle to bring out to the playground during these HOT days!

•Don’t forget to send nap mats back after we wash! J

•Please sign and return those “sign and return” papers asap. I use these to guide instruction and would love to have them back. If you want/need a copy let me know! I’ll be glad to send one! J

Secret Tips:

•Your toolkit has a “fridge” and a container with magnetic letters. Please feel free to use those to work on letters and sounds. This is another neat way to practice.  You can just lay the letters out on the table and give your kiddos a letter sound. Have them find the letter that it matches with and have them place it on the fridge.