Weekly News & Homework: September 10th-14th

The class had so much fun tasting apples on Friday.  This Friday, we will be making apple pie as we continue our study on apples. You can sign up on ParentSquare to bring items for this event! Thank you so much! We could not do it without you! 

Our Parent Workshop is THIS THURSDAY from 6:00-7:00. Please remember this is a parent-only event. We will meet in our classroom and go over all of our kindergarten standards/goals for the year, exactly what they mean, and strategies for how you can help your child with these goals at home. I hope you can make it - there is so much valuable information. 

I will be placing our first class Scholastic Book Order on Friday (the 14th)! Be sure to put your orders in online if you would like to!

We will be going on two field trips this year - in October, to Greenspot Farms and in February, to the Children's Museum of the Desert. For these field trips, we are asking each family for a one-time generous donation of $35 for the entire year. This will cover the cost of both field trip and bus expenses. Thank you so much for your support! Here is the link to donate on Dollar A Day: Dollar A Day Link

Spirit Day at ILCS is Tuesday, September 11th. Wear red, white, and blue! 

What Are We Learning This Week?:

Sight Words: YOU, AND, IT FRIEND.

Letter Team: WH (like in what and whistle).

Word Family: AT - like in bat, cat, rat, sat, hat, etc.

Reading: We will read books about apples and Johnny Appleseed. We will also read lots of funny books by Mo Willems. Students will continue to read little books in class that include sight words and letter teams. Some of these little books came home throughout the week. Please keep them inside your special home book box that you shared those first weeks of school and practice reading them every day! More paper books will be coming home throughout the year - if they have a big star or stamp on them, that means your child has read it for me fluently and they can now keep them at home! We are writing/reading a new class book this week titled, "The Apple Tree". We will learn all about the life cycle of an apple as we practice reading our sight words of the week.

Writing: We are continuing to write (or draw pictures) of what we know and what we love. We are working hard on our writing goals that we have learned so far: finger spaces, punctuation, and uppercase at the beginning. We will go over these and more of our goals at our Parent Workshop as well. Please reinforce neat penmanship when writing at home, reminding your children to write within the lines and always start at the top!

Math: This week, we will continue learning our 3D shapes - cone, cube, sphere, pyramid, cylinder, and rectangular prism. We will learn to describe 3D shapes by their faces and vertices. We will also continue to practice number identification, number writing, days of the week, months of the year, shapes, and counting on.

Leadership: For the month of September, our whole school will be focusing on the first R of ROAR: Respect. We will discuss ways that we can respect ourselves, others, and our school. 

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO THE HOMEWORK POST TO SEE ALL OF THE HOMEWORK FOR THE WEEK.

Homework: September 10-14

Flashcards: Please make flashcards for our sight words (YOU, AND, IT, FRIEND), our letter team of the week (WH) and our word family (AT - bat, cat, mat, pat, etc.) Study these flashcards every day. Have your child read the word, spell the word, read the word. I would suggest making a little flashcard box that you can add to throughout the year and reading through those flashcards a few times a day. Make a game of it. Put the sight word CD on and sing and dance to the sight words. We will have a Reading Test on these sight words. We will also have a Sentence Test on our sight words every Friday. A sentence test means we will be asking your child to write a sentence that we give them using our sight words of the week. We will not only be looking for correct spelling of our sight words, but also for an uppercase at the beginning, spaces between words, a proper punctuation at the end. An example of a sentence is, "We can see a man."  

Phonemic Awareness: Keep working with your child on skills such as blending, segmenting, rhyming, syllables, and sound switch. We will go over many of these skills at our Parent Workshop. 

Reading: Reading at home is SO IMPORTANT! My hope is that you are reading TO your child every night and discussing the stories you read. when reading with your child, have them point out the front cover, back cover, spine, title, author, illustrator, and title page. My hope is that your child is also playing on Smarty Ants for 10-15 minutes at least a few times a week. Throughout the week your child will bring home some of their little books we have been reading in class. These little books can live in your special book box that you made together. Practice reading these each night, having your child point to each word, get their mouth ready for the first sound, and look at the picture to help them. 

Writing:  Keep writing, writing, writing! Write your name (uppercase only at the beginning), write your sight words of the week, practice writing your ABCs, write short sentences, write in the tub with bathtub paint, write words in daddy's shaving cream all over the bathroom mirror - have fun and be creative! Remember, we learn to write by WRITING! 

Math: Our math goals in class so far include Counting to 30, Counting to 50 or Counting to 100 (depending on where the student is at), writing numbers to 20, identifying numbers out of order to 30, and recognizing and describing shapes. Please work at home on these skills. Remember to also go over our "Daily Math" practice pages that we do every morning in class - take a moment to go over these practice pages to see if there is anything specific your child needs to work on. 

This week, we will continue to learn 3D shapes and we will discuss positional words in relation to our shapes. For example:  the sphere is behind the fence, the cube is above the lamp.  Students have an easier time with this when the positional word is given - (Draw a circle next to the tree) but when students need to describe the position themselves it becomes much more difficult.  Practice having your child tell you where things are using the following positional words:

1. *in front of
2. *behind
3. *between
4. *next to
5. *above
6. *below
7. *beside
8. *left
9. *right
10. 
    

 Math homework every week also includes Dreambox. My hope is that your child is logging onto Dreambox at home and playing for 10-15 minutes at least a few times a week. 

Our school code for Dreambox is X2we/inlandlcs

QR Codes: Download and print those QR Codes each week from ParentSquare and have your child work on those at home!