Weekly News (Sept. 8-12)

Hope everyone is enjoying the cooler weather this weekend! Take a peek to see what we have been up to this week in kindergarten.

Math
We practiced many math skills this week. The children worked to name, describe, and sort the following shapes: circle, square, rectangle, triangle, oval, and diamond. We named the number of sides for each shape and introduced the concept of angles by counting the number of corners for each shape. We also used our interactive whiteboard to practice our graphing skills when we made a pictograph showing the different ways the children get home from school. After surveying the class and analyzing our results, we reinforced the math terms: fewest, greatest, more than, greater than, and equal. The children also did a great job using our "magic pen" to sort a collection of buttons. After listening to one of our Frog and Toad stories called The Lost Button, we sorted buttons by size, color, shape, and number of button holes. Check us out in action below!

Sorting by size

Sorting by number of button holes

Sorting by number of button holes

Wow! This one was a challenge! We sorted by size, color, and number of button holes.

Jolly Phonics

The children did a great job learning our new Jolly Phonics sounds. This week we learned the following sounds:

/i/ as in "pin"

/p/ as in "pig"

/n/ as in "noise"

I can tell the children have been using their Jolly Phonics Sound Books to practice their sounds at home. Thank you! A little extra practice with the vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, and u) is always helpful. The sounds for our short vowels can be harder to learn since there is only a subtle difference between each sound. Thank you for remembering to send your child's blue book bag to school each day too. The children have been doing a great job learning our book bag routines in class!

Literacy

This week the children learned the sight word "can" and brought home a new sight word book. Please continue to have your child practice reading their sight word books at home. Thank you so much for your support! 

Each morning we use a program called Phonemic Awareness: The Skills That They Need to Help Them Succeed. This program uses a series of quick and interactive listening games that help students lay the foundation for future reading success. The children practice a variety of skills including: naming and identifying rhyming words; identifying beginning and ending sounds; segmenting and blending compound words; adding or deleting syllables; and reading sentences to practice segmenting words and reading with expression. The children have been doing a SUPER job with these activities each morning! 

We enjoyed several read aloud stories this week including two more Pete the Cat stories--Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes and Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons. Click on the links below to hear these stories at home.

Click here to listen to Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes

Click here to listen to Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons

We also read a book together during shared reading time called Hands Can. This book not only reinforced our new sight word, it also showed different ways we can use our hands to help us learn, play, and lend a hand. The children also loved listening to a Dr. Seuss favorite, Ten Apples Up On Top, and completed a number sequencing activity to reinforce our number recognition and counting skills! Check out some of our projects below!

Reminders

Please remember to have your child wear gym shoes on Mondays and to bring their library book back to school on Tuesdays. Thank you all so much for your support at home and for helping to get this school year off to an amazing start! Hope everyone has a terrific week! :)

Storytime in the library