Weekly News (Sept. 9-13)

I can't believe another week has flown by!  Here's a peek at what we have been learning this week.  Enjoy!

Math
This week the children had their first introduction to coins as we watched a video about the quarter, dime, nickel, and penny.  We will continue to revisit coins throughout the year.  To watch the video, click here.

The students also practiced counting up and back from 10 and then played a game called "Give the Next Number."  The students sat in a circle and had to listen for a number and then had to say the next number.  We talked more about measurement this week and the concept of length.  The children had to find objects in the room that were both shorter and taller than a kindergartener.  Our findings are shown below!

Morning Kindergarten

Afternoon Kindergarten

The children were also introduced to the concept of a "Ten Frame" this week (see example below).  The format of the ten frame helps children develop number sense.  For children and adults, it is easy to immediately recognize quantities less than 5, however, recognizing quantities beyond 5 is more difficult.  The ten-frame helps students visualize the numbers between 5 and 10.  The children fill the top row of the ten-frame with objects from left to right before filling the bottom row to promote recognition of "5 and some more" patterns.  For example, the ten-frame below represents the number 7---5 plus 2 more.

Jolly Phonics
This week we learned the following Jolly Phonics sounds:
Ii as in "icky"
Pp as in "pig"
Nn as in "noisy"

We reviewed all the sounds this week and watched our first Jolly Phonics video, which the children really enjoyed!  Please continue to review all of the sounds we have learned at home too.  In class, we practice naming each letter, its sound, and the motion that helps us remember the sound.  I continue to be so impressed by the students' Jolly Phonics notebooks.  It's great to see the children listening for and stretching out the sounds they hear when labeling their pictures.  It's a highlight of our day to share our pictures! 


Literacy
This week the children were introduced to Writer's Workshop, and they have been doing an amazing job.  They are feeling more comfortable with the four steps we follow during our writing time--think, draw, label, and then write--and they are gaining more and more confidence each day.  We have been using the sentence starter "I can______" for our writing this week, and the children have been doing a great job really stretching out the sounds they hear.  They are doing a nice job listening for the beginning sound and some children are hearing the ending sound too.  As we continue to practice our writing and learn more sounds, the children will eventually begin to hear those sounds in the middle as well.  

The children also received a new sight word book this week titled I Can.  We practiced reading the book together, pointing to each word as we read.  We also used the picture as a clue to read the tricky word at the end of each sentence, and we double checked the sounds in the tricky word to make sure what we said matched.  Please add this book to your child's plastic "My Books" bag at home and encourage your child to read at home with good finger pointing.

For our read aloud stories this week, the children loved listening to books written by Audrey Wood, and they were excited to learn that many of her books are illustrated by her husband Don or her son Bruce!  In The Napping House, a small little flea bites a mouse, causing a chain reaction in the napping house and wakes everyone up.  Silly Sally was a fun book about Sally who walks to town backwards and upside down--the children had a good laugh during that read aloud!  We practiced counting back from 10 in Ten Little Fish, and we solved the mystery of the missing letter "x" in Alphabet Mystery.  And finally, we finished the week learning about opposites in Audrey Wood's book Quick as a Cricket.  The children loved her stories!

We continue to practice our centers each week as well, and the children continue to do a great job working quietly so I can meet with students.  

Way to go girls!

Handwriting
We began our handwriting practice this week.  We will be following the sequence of the letters for the Handwriting Without Tears program, which introduces the letters in a sequence where the letters build off of each other.  The children learned the letter "c" this week.

Looking forward to another great week.

Thanks for reading!