March Newsletter
Literacy
We have just a few more weeks in our Phonics and Friends program. The children will work with two more vowels and have some difficult consonants left….Z, Q, Y and W. The children can easily hear beginning sounds in most words. We are working on hearing ending sounds and medial sounds. In addition the children are practicing counting sounds that they hear in words. We know we must have at least one letter for every sound we hear. As you look at your child’s attempts at writing, you will notice that they also recognize each word must have at least one vowel. The vowel that they use is often not the correct one but we have learned one more thing about our complicated written language! The children reviewed rhyming skills through literature and written work.
In reading we have focused on our required 12 sight words. During our morning message we have worked the sight words in daily. The children continue to work in their leveled books. The extra exposure and practice the children receive during Family Read is so beneficial. We thank you for that 30 minute reading time. We know that you are seeing progress and sharing in their excitement of reading. Buddy read is still a highlight of each week for them and for us. The children continue to hear good literature from us daily. Our read-to time this month has focused on Dr. Suess books. He wrote more than 40 books and we have quite a collection here in kindergarten. On Read-Across-America day, we had several guest readers. Great literature was enjoyed all afternoon as the children moved from room to room to quest reader. It was an exciting and certainly most appropriate way to celebrate a very special author’s birthday. In addition our focus of class read-to’s has been to look at the beginning of the story, something from the end of the story and how our story ends. We have brainstormed different beginning, middles and ends to the stories we read together. We are laying the ground work for kindergarten writing workshop.
In writing the children continue to work in their journals or draft books. We have modeled very simple stories for the children and have made some lists of story ideas. Writing workshop is coming soon and we are modeling all the skills the children will be using.
Handwriting and fine motor skills are practiced daily. The correct pencil grip is still very difficult for many children. Please help us reinforce the correct grip. An incorrect grip is very difficult to break. Handwriting is so much less tiring with a correct grip and cursive writing will be so much easier to learn with the correct grip.
Math
What fun we have had with graphing. We have done more graphs than our math program requires but the children like doing graphs and it gives us much valuable practice in comparing numbers. Our birthday graph in the hall keeps changing! Come and see! The children have learned some new games and are enjoying them. We worked with our Everyday Math games in computer lab. Pattern was reviewed this last month and we will look at more complicated patterns again in March. We spent several lessons on coin recognition and value. We have now been exposed the four major coins. All children could use some practice here. We continue to count each morning and now are practicing skip counting by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. We are reverse counting from 25 to 0. We are beginning to work with oral number stories and will be introducing math sentences soon. We worked on time for several lessons and we are practicing telling time to the hour or the “o’clocks” as a kindergarten learner will tell you!
Science
We completed the Construction science unit and the assessments. The assessments will be reflected on our report card. Thank you to all who loaned us building materials for exploration in the classroom. As very special thank you to Chuck Archer, his family, his special grandson and all those at Archer Construction that provided the materials for our bird feeders. We offer another special thank you to all the parents and Shawn Henderson, our beloved custodian, who arrived with screw drivers in hand to assist our builders. Although this project was not a requirement of the unit, the hands-on building morning was magical! What interesting discoveries that children made about themselves! They were so proud of their work and so were we! Our next unit will be Sand, Dirt and Water. We hope to start this unit the first of May and coordinate it with a trip to the tide pools. We are planning to have many of the lessons outside and will be looking for some extra adult help. We would like to combine the two classrooms on a Tuesday morning and the following Wednesday afternoon for several weeks. The lessons are quite exploratory and fun!
Spanish
Hola! We have worked with Spanish now for several weeks. We have quite a vocabulary. The children enjoy Spanish 2-3 times a week. We have completed lesson 12 and have added some animal names to our vocabulary.
News from Mrs. Mildner
Many children in our room enjoyed the KCPTA family outing! We are quite the dancers. I think we had the best turnout of any grade here at KCS. Thank you for the wonderful evening and thank you Nathan for being my special partner!
Upcoming…..report cards will be going home March 21. Parent-teacher conferences will be in early April. I will send home the days and times in the Friday folders. I would like to meet with all of you! I have so much growth to report!
Madame Gaby continues with our French weekly. What a tri-lingual group I have!
Thank you, again, to all our classroom volunteers. You are so dependable and your help is so appreciated by me and the children. They love announcing that their Mom or Dad will be in to help that day. I will need some extra hands in May so get your water boots and raincoats ready. The science program will have us building clay bricks; bird nests and doing some sink and float experiments. It is going to be fun and messy!
News from Mrs. Cmaylo
Thank you, parents, for returning our paper bags, if you have opportunity to send in a couple extra, we would appreciate it. Please remember to return your child’s daily folder. Mrs. Merrill fills them with notices and homework for us.
Also, please return your child’s report card if you haven’t already done so. We reuse the envelopes all year. Upcoming…..report cards will be going home March 21. Parent-teacher conferences will be in early April. I will send home the days and times in the Friday folders. I would like to meet with all of you! I have so much growth to report!
Thank you, again, to all our classroom volunteers. You are so dependable and your help is so appreciated by me and the children. They love announcing that their Mom or Dad will be in to help that day. I will need some extra hands in May so get your water boots and raincoats ready. The science program will have us building clay bricks; bird nests and doing some sink and float experiments. It is going to be fun and messy! We will be sending along a list of materials that you can help us collect to complete this unit.
Please note that your children are learning how to use lined paper. The most difficult letters seem to be those that drop below the base line…we often have floating p’s, g’s, j’s, q’s and y’s.
Dear Parents,
We will be starting a new reading program this January 25th in our classroom from 2:00 to 2:30. We call this Family Read. The objectives are to encourage children to read aloud to adults, to build confident readers, to enhance reading skills and to enjoy reading.
You are welcome to come and listen to us read. When you come into the classroom we would like you to take a seat. The children will come to you, read four or five pages and then move on to the next adult. At 2:30 we will flash the lights as a signal that Family Read is over. At that time the children are welcome to leave with their parents after having stacked their chairs, cleaned off their tables, and packed their baggy books and folders. We will have Family Read every Friday afternoon (depending on adult support) until the end of the year.
Please help your child find and prepare, by practicing, a favorite piece. They can read any printed material (i.e. song, charts, books, their baggie books, or their own books from home). If your child is not reading yet, as many are not, they will have their baggy books which adults will read to them or with them. Students will be asked to point to the words with their fingers to help encourage beginning reading skills.
Please let your child know if you or a family member or neighbor is able to attend a day or two before each Family Read. The children will not be allowed to call to see if you are coming.
Remember! The buses arrive to take the children home at 2:45! I am dismissing at 2:30 in order to assist you in leaving before the buses block your exit.
Thank you for taking the time to come and help us learn to love reading! We hope to see you every Friday till June! Our class is excited to begin!
Thank you,
Kathy Cmaylo
Loralie Mildner