November
Dear Families,
We have been practicing our letter formation with all “stick” letters or letters that are made with straight lines. Mrs. Richardson, our Occupational Therapist offers us a whole group lesson Tuesday afternoons. We use the terms, sky line, plane line, grass line and worm line to help the children place their letters correctly on the lined paper. Any practice you can offer your child is appreciated.
The children are working on their first vowel! We have learned that our alphabet is divided into vowels and consonants. Vowels are tricky sounds and can be influenced by other others around them. We know the short and the long sound for a. To help us remember the short sound we think of an apple. We have sorted words that start the same as apple and also sorted pictures that have the short a sound in them. The long a sound is easier for us to sort because it is so much easier to hear in words! We also worked with two sight words...."am" and "at". We learned that not only are they words that can stand alone but they might be a chunk in words we do not know. We practiced some very simple words with "at" and "am" in them and then did some trickier words with those same chunks. They are getting quite skilled at reading at and am three letter words. Please play with these words at home using magnetic letters. Your children have learned a gesture for each letter. We call this Tuckering. The children use this to help them with their writing and with decoding while reading.
I am sending home guided reading books each night in a bag or in the students’ folders. Please read these with your children a couple of times and ask your child to retell the story when you are done. This helps build comprehension skills.
In math, we will count forward and backward; count objects in a group; count-on from any number 2-20+; read numbers 0-15+; recognize and name geometric shapes; use concepts of greater and less to find a mystery number while playing the game Monster Squeeze; read and record numbers of pennies using the ¢ sign; generate, continue, and copy patterns; sort objects using various attributes; notice symmetry; create and solve number stories; and continue our daily calendar routine.
I will be sending home a schedule of conference times this week. Please call the office to schedule your conference. I look forward to meeting with each of you individually and discuss your child's progress to date.
Thank you for your continued support.
Kathy Cmaylo
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