This week we enjoyed winter literature by reading Jan Brett's adaptation of the Ukrainian folktale The Mitten and Shirley Neitzel's story The Jacket I Wear In The Snow. Both of these books were excellent for teaching story sequence as well as reinforcing sight words and building new vocabulary. Kindergarten standards state that students will communicate effectively when retelling stories heard. . . please have your child use the mitten/animal characters as well as the snowman slider to retell these two stories. In reading this week, we worked on identifying and using text features. The honeybees explored the use of speech & thought bubbles in text, noticed word patterns in the text, interpreted charts/maps found within a book, and used illustrations to understand stories. In phonics, students identified the initial /f/ and /d/ sounds in words and used alphabet boards to practice letter identification, letter sequence, and letter sounds. Handwriting lessons focused on the letters Ee and Ff, both of which use horizontal, vertical and backward circles.
Math instruction was on numbers 10-30. We used ten frames to help organize objects and "count on" from the number 10 (ex. 10-11, 12, 13). The children discovered that counting on from 10 is a much faster way to count a large set of objects rather than counting each individual member of the set. Using ten frames also helped with the understanding of double digit numbers. Students built numbers to see the visual representation before writing--for example, 12 (one set of 10 and 2 more) is not the same as 21 (2 sets of ten and 1 more).
Happy birthday to Marcella! She celebrated her special day earlier this week by sharing strawberry cupcakes with the class.
Congratulations to this week's Honeybee of the Week, Kyle. We enjoyed his poster and the delicious chocolate chip cookies together.
Important items to note:
- The GM Foundation will be hosting the 2012 Gala on February 4th. A Moonwalk & Munchies Party with Mrs. Hutcherson and the other Kindergarten teachers will be available for bid during the Silent Auction. Please refer to the informational postcard that was sent home earlier this week for more details.
- Thank you to our room parents, Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Fisher, for creating the on-line calendar for classroom volunteer opportunities. All Reading Parent and Computer Lab slots for the remainder of the school year have been filled. We still have a few openings for Center Time volunteers (M-TH 9:00-10:30 a.m.). Please visit the Signupgenius.com website for available times.
- The new sight words for next week will be are and come.
- Friday, 1/27 is Relay For Life Baseball Cap Day. Students may wear a baseball cap during class for a $1 donation.
- Friday is also the 100th Day of School! Look for information about the 100th Day homework project and special activity in Monday's take home folder.
- Specials next Friday will be P.E.
Happy Friday!
Janie Hutcherson
