Weekly News & Homework: September 2nd-6th

Weekly News: September 2-6

I hope you enjoy the three day weekend with your families! We are looking forward to a short, but busy week in kindergarten! There is a lot of information and I appreciate you taking the time to read. 

School picture day will be THIS Thursday, September 5th! Be on the look-out for a flyer being sent home soon!  

We also have our Parent Workshop this Thursday, September 5th from 6:00-7:00. We will 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.

We will begin our fun apple unit this week. We are learning about apple orchards, the life cycle of an apple, and this week we are tasting apples and writing about which apple we like the best. A sign up for apple donations is on ParentSquare if you are able to donate apples for this week.

Our very first kindergarten field trip is coming up! Our class and Mrs. Marion's class will be going to Willowbrook Apple Farm in Oak Glen on Wednesday, September 25th. We will be leaving school by bus around 8:45 for our 9:30 apple farm tour. During this tour, our students will have the opportunity to enjoy a tractor ride through the apple orchard, feed and pet the farm animals, visit the honey bee house, learn about the life cycle of an apple, and we will be pressing our own apple cider. At the end of our tour, students will get their very own caramel apple to take home and we will all enjoy snack together at the picnic tables, then be back to school in time for dismissal and electives. All of our field trips are paid for through your generous donations to our school's Dollar a Day website. We are asking for a donation of $15 for this first field trip. Here is the link to donate: Dollar A Day Link Unfortunately, if we do not receive the funding, we will not be able to go on any other field trips this year. If you would like to chaperone, we would love to have you! Chaperones can either ride the bus with the students or drive separately. If you would like to chaperone, please let me know by parent square message or email. Chaperones will need to pay an additional $12 in cash to your child's teacher. Unfortunately, siblings and little ones are not welcome on the field trip due to the safety of our kindergarten students. A permission slip will be coming home soon for our field trip, so make sure you fill that out and return it to me. We are looking forward to a great field trip together!

What Are We Learning This Week?:

Sight Words: look, here, this

Letter Team: CH (like in "cheetos") and OO (we are learning that OO can make two sounds: OO like in "look" and OO like in "pool".)

Word Family: AM - like in yam, ram, Sam, Pam, etc. 

Reading: This week, we will begin reading non-fiction and fiction books about apples, apple trees, and Johnny Appleseed. Students will continue to read little books in class that include sight words and letter teams. Some of these little books will start coming home this week. Please keep them inside your special home book box that you shared on the first week of school and practice reading them every day! As your child become a more fluent reader, more of these paper books will be coming home throughout the year to live with you - 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 will continue to learn that vowels make 2 sounds - a short sound and a long sound. Ask your child to sing you the vowel songs! We are reading and writing a new class book this week titled, "My 3D Shape Book". We will learn all about our 3D shapes as we practice reading our sight words of the week.

Writing: We have been working hard on our writing each day. Take a look at your child's August journals and celebrate your child's first attempts at becoming a writer! Some students are attempting words and sentences and some students are drawing and labeling our pictures with sounds that we hear inside our words. Every step is so exciting and worth celebrating! We are continuing to use an uppercase at the beginning of a sentence, finger spaces between our words, and a period at the end. We are also learning to use our sight words in our sentences and to listen for the sounds in all unknown words using our sound chart.

Math: This week, we are learning our 3D shapes - cone, cube, sphere, pyramid, cylinder, and rectangular prism. We will learn to describe 3D shapes by their faces and vertices. You can help at home by asking your child their shape names and attributes! We will also learn to count by ordinal numbers (first, second, third...). 

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 2-6

Turn in Homework for September: Each month we will have one turn-in homework project. This month, the project will be for your child to complete an "All About Me" circle map! We are learning all about thinking maps in kindergarten and we learned that a circle map helps us to "brainstorm what we know" or "THINK" about what we know. The circle map papers will be coming home this week. I know this is a short week, so don't worry about getting it in this week, as long as they are turned in during the month of September. In the middle of the circle map, students can either write their name or you have them glue a picture of themselves in the middle! Have them think of some things that are special about them to fill in the outer circle: what they like, what they are good at, what they look like, and who/what they love. These can either be drawn in pictures, written in words, magazine cut-outs, actual photos, etc. ANY way they want to do it! Let them have fun with it and be creative with making their maps represent them and how special they are! :) 

Flashcards: Please make flashcards for our sight words (LOOK, HERE, THIS), our letter team of the week (CH and OO) and our word family (AM - Pam, Sam, ram, 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 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." It may be a good idea to have a practice Sentence Test with your child on Thursday night. 

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.  Another part of reading homework can be RAZ-KIDS.This week, your child will begin bringing 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. 

Writing: Practice writing your name. Practice writing ABCs (both uppercase and lowercase). Practice writing sight words of the week. Practice writing a short sentence. A good idea is to keep an at-home journal and just practice writing something every day. We learn to write by writing, writing, writing! 

Math: Practice counting 1-30 or higher. Make number flashcards and have your child identify numbers out of order. Practice number writing 0-30. Have your child identify shapes and practice drawing shapes or building shapes out of sticks. Review our "Daily Math" pages coming home. Have your child play Dreambox on your computer or tablet every day. A paper was sent home at Back to School Night with log-in instructions. Our school code is X2we/inlandlcs and our class code is 33599.

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