Thank you so much for attending our Parent Teacher conferences last week. I enjoyed meeting with all of you and talking about your amazing kiddos!
This week we will be going on our first field trip of the year. We will be heading to Kruger Farms on Tuesday, Oct. 27th. Please make sure that your child brings a lunch from home that day. We'll be eating at the Pumpkin Patch. We will be loading the school bus at 8:30 and leaving school at 8:45. Looking at the weather, it is quite possible that there will be rain, please make sure that your child is dressed in rain gear. Please send extra clothes and shoes to school that day. Please let me know if you have any questions! School picture day is tomorrow, October 16th. Students will go in the morning. Class pictures will be done in the spring. Please make sure to send in your picture form tomorrow (if you haven't already)!
We'll be going to Kruger's Farm on Tuesday, October 27th. Please make sure you student has a lunch from home that day and appropriate clothing and shoes. I expect mud and rain! Feel free to send extra clothes to school for that day and boots. Please also send extra clothes to school for students to keep in their lockers. Accidents happen and there isn't extra clothing available to change into anymore. Thank you!
We are awaiting confirmation to attend a play in early November. I will send home permission slips soon! Please make sure you have done your volunteer background check if you are volunteering in the classroom and/or field trips! Other field trips this year will include: OMSI (March) and the Zoo (May). In class on Friday, we talked about where writers get their ideas for writing. We discussed how writers write about things that they care about or things that are important to them. Each student was given a paper bag where they can put objects in that holds a special memory for them. The objects are intended to help each child tell and write a story. Ideas for items include: photographs, stuffed animal or toy, postcard, seashell, or other small objects. Please make sure that the items fit in the bag and are not too valuable. Thank you for helping your writer! These can stay at school all week, (although many of them took them home today).
Here are two strategies that you can use at home to help your child with reading. Check for understanding is a great strategy to use when YOU read aloud to your child from a chapter book or picture book. This will help them work on comprehension - understanding what they read. Students work on sight words (or star words) during word work for Daily 5. Here are some ways that you can practice these words at home!
Once a month, Mr. Galati does a tie knighting for someone in our class who deserves to be recognized for being a bucket filler. A bucket filler is someone who does kind things for other people. The idea is that when you fill someone's bucket you also fill your own and when you dip out of someone's bucket, you dip out of your own.
This is a school wide program. Clara was the first student who was knighted in our classroom. I encourage all of you to talk to your child about what it means to be a bucket filler. At the end our days (most days) we take time to recognize bucket fillers in our classroom. They receive a rain drop and it goes into a school wide bucket. 10 names are drawn out of the bucket every week and these students are recognized for being bucket fillers. The sharing bag goes home with a different student every night. One student shares every day. Marvelous Me (all about me poster) comes home on Tuesday and is due back to school the following Tuesday. Curious George journal and bag comes home on Tuesday and is due back to school the following Tuesday. I sent home parent/teacher conference reminders with students today. Please let me know if there are any conflicts with our meeting time. Conferences are 20 minutes long and are scheduled on Wed. Oct. 21 and Thursday, Oct. 22. There is no school for students this Friday, Oct. 9, Wed. Oct. 21, Thursday, Oct. 22, Friday, Oct. 23 or Friday, Oct. 30. There is also a late opening on Wed. Oct. 14. This is our first week for volunteers. Please make sure that you sign in at the office and get a badge. We look forward to sharing our classroom with you! The Occupational Therapist, Kathryn Marxen-Simonson, in our building came into our classroom to give me some ideas on how to support students with fine motor activities. Here are some ideas that you can do to support your child at home.
- Use hole punch - Clothes pin games - Playdough or clay activities - Incorporating dice games, tweezers, coins, beads and clothes pins into math and literacy centers. - Complete activities that use a pincer grasp (thumb and pointer finger). - Roll towels or other objects to work on strength and opposition of the thumb - Work on pre-writing activities of making horizontal and verticle lines as well as small circles For handwriting, it is also important to look at body position (feet on floor, hips and knees at 90 degrees) and pencil grip. If you haven't sent in a family photo already, we would love to have one in the classroom! 4 x 6 works best.
We have had a great week. We have worked on letter names and sounds A-N, star words: I and am, syllables, rhyming words, characters, and setting. I started meeting with students this week to work on reading strategies an help them find good fit books for their book boxes. They have a mix of books that they can read the pictures and books that they can read the words. I sent home your child's forever books this week. Thanks for sending those in. In writer's workshop, students are working on visualizing their story (making a movie/picture) in their mind before they write. Rather than tell them how to spell words, I have been encouraging them to isolate any sounds that they hear and write them down. It has been fun to see students move away from simply writing their name to trying to sounds out their words. |
AuthorThis is my sixth year teaching Kindergarten at a wonderful school in SE Portland. Archives
April 2016
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