February 22, 2015
Dear Kindergarten Families,
We had a wonderful Valentine's Day celebration! The class exchanged valentines, decorated hearts, wrote messages, graphed with candy hearts, dressed up for a photo booth and decorated cookies. A special thank you to Angela Canton and her family for planning an amazing celebration for our class. She went all out for our celebration and the class had a fabulous time! Thank you to all the parents who were able to come in and help the students hand out valentines, write notes and clean up. We are trying to post pictures on shutterfly, hopefully it will work soon.
Tuesday is our 100th day of Kindergarten! I am so proud of all of them and how they have grown! We will be celebrating by counting to 100, doing different activities with 100 and drawing a portrait of our selves at 100 years old. The students will also be sharing their own personal collection of 100 things. Please help your your child put together and bring a collection of 100 things by Tuesday. The collection should fit into a gallon ziplock bag or smaller. Some ideas would be gold fish, ans, small plastic animals, pennies, legos, shells.
We have started going to art with Ms. Lynn! We are learning about line and shapes.The class drew lines and shapes with pastels and then painted their pictures with watercolors. On our way to art we get to walk through the green space. We have been looking for signs of spring ever since Groundhog's Day! We will begin to sketch the signs of spring we see in journals on our way to art.
For the past month the class has been learning how to write post cards and letters. The class wrote to their 3rd grade reading buddies, the tooth fairy, family and friends. We have also been working on writing personal narratives from small moments we remember in our lives. It is wonderful to see the growth each student has made in their writing abilities. The checklist of skills I use to evaluate their writing in winter includes: writes left to right, begins with a capital letter, use spaces between words, uses lower case letters, spells some high frequency words, uses beginning and ending consonants, adds details to drawing and writing, and incorporates character and setting. Students have been practicing to go back and check their work when they are done writing. They will learn how to independently use their own checklist and edit their work this week. They are all very proud of their journals and letters and will be choosing a favorite piece for our personal best class bulletin board!
In the last few weeks I have been of reading with every student to assess their winter reading gains. Throughout the term I have been impressed with the continued progress in decoding (sounding out) words. Almost everyone has met our district targets for winter and many children have already reached end of the year reading benchmarks. Often readers are strong at decoding words and fluently reading, but are not understanding what they have read. We are practicing retelling skills to improve our comprehension skills. When I assess for comprehension I am listening for plot, characters, setting, vocabulary, details and inference without prompting.
In Math the children are beginning our “Sea Creatures Across the Curriculum” math unit. The children will have opportunities to act out scenarios and then turn these activities into story problems. The students will be writing their own addition and subtraction story problems to match a picture they create. We are playing games with pennies and nickles, learning 3-dimensional shapes (sphere, cylinder, cone and cube), counting to 100, skip counting and writing numbers to 30.
We have many exciting activities coming in the next few weeks...
Tuesday, February 24 - We will celebrate the 100th day in school. Please help your your child put together and bring a collection of 100 things by Tuesday. The collection should fit into a gallon ziplock bag or smaller. Some ideas would be gold fish, ans, small plastic animals, pennies, legos, shells.
Monday, March 2 - Read Across America Day - Dr. Seuss' Birthday
Our Seussical Celebration will be Pajama Day in Kindergarten. Traditionally we have a pancake breakfast in class and spend the morning reading our favorite Dr. Seuss books. In order for us to have our pancake breakfast I will need parent volunteers to help cook pancakes, serve breakfast and read with small groups from 8:00-10:00. Younger siblings are welcome! This is one of our most special days in kindergarten! Please let me know if you can help.
Saturday, Feb. 28th - Red Ball - This year the Ainsworth auction will be at the Downtown Hilton. This is a wonderful event to meet other Ainsworth families and help support our amazing students.
March 18 - Late Start
March 23-27 - Spring Break
Thank you to all of our volunteers who give their time both in and outside the classroom! An extra special thank you to Alison Friday and her family for coming in and creating our class auction project. The class drew and painted watercolor owls that have been framed individually on wood. They are gorgeous! Thank you Alison!
Thank you for all you do!
Ms. Fale
