Friday Newsletter on Monday!

 Happy Monday, Folks!

Sorry for the Monday send, the end of the week was super full! The kids had another stellar week in our Kindergarten class. They are all growing so much, even though it has only been 2 months. They have a lot to be proud of!

We introduced 3 new words this week, see, can and a. The kids did a great job working on these words as well as their two previous words I and like. The kids will be working on a book with their new words this week as well as practicing reading their first book. As these books come home, practice having your child point to the words as they read them, one at a time. They are also using pictures to help them read unfamiliar words. You do not need to be doing this with their library and personal books at home, of course, but it is good practice when reading the short books we are writing and reading at school that do come home.  

The kids continued their great work on their new letters, too. They are practicing their new letters as well as writing their names. We are exploring the concepts of letters, sounds and words. Letters make sounds, when you put those letters together in special ways, they make words made up of sounds (with the exception of a and I). They are doing a super job!

We finished the book Quest and the kids did a super job talking about the book and thinking about questions like “what will happen next?”, “what is happening?” and “why did that happen?” We will continue our work with these questions as we read more this week. By the way, when you are reading at home, you don’t need to be mirroring these questions. I think  it is important for kids to just snuggle in and enjoy a story, too!

The kids are doing a super job in math class, too. We introduced some new games like “Toss the Chips” and putting number path tiles in order.  We continued our dot cluster practice as well as our use of tens frames. We are practicing the skill of “counting on” as well. This is an important skill as kids start to not need to count quantities they already know.

Halloween celebrations will be this Friday. You are welcome to send in your child’s costume with them. We will be putting them on after lunch and recess to ensure (as best we can) that the outfits will come home in one piece! As is the case with birthdays, we will not be doing traditional celebrations involving special Halloween treats. 

Again, the weather is a-changing! Please be sure to send in your kiddo with all of the gear that is needed to spend extended periods of time outdoors. Also, one or two extra sets of clothes at school would be great to send in. We can send home and trade out what is here. Thanks for your support on this!

Last, there is a conference sign up sheet that I am going to be sharing with you today. Because of the number of kids in our class, I am going to offer Zoom times that are outside of the conference day. If none of the offered times work for your family, please let me know and we can figure something out.

Have a great week!

Warmly, 

Ben and Honi

Conversation starters:

*What are your new words this week (a, see, can).

*What did you do with your buddy this week?

*Tell me about the book Quest

*What is your favorite part of your specials (art, music, library, guidance, Spanish, PE)?

*What did you do at recess?

*Who did you play with at Centers time?

Reminders

Class Blog

You can check out the blog here for the newsletter and resources

Pictures

The folder with class pictures can be found here. 

Picture Retakes

December 8th

Class Gear

Please remember to send in all the tools for the kiddos to be using as we go through the year (change of clothes, raingear, camp chair, etc.). Sneakers are the best daily footwear for students. If you need help getting any of those, please let us know, the school will be happy to help.

Book Order Information

 

With a $25 order, you can pick a FREE $5 Book (use code: READS).

Shop Our Class Page: https://orders.scholastic.com/XLZX8

Class Code: XLZX8

Cue Autumn?

 Hello, Everyone!

What another great week in kindergarten! Despite being underpowered with just me in the room some days because of the sub shortage and staff shifting to cover, the kids did really well! I hope you got to see in the school newsletter that we are still looking for a Student Support Specialist as well as substitute teachers. Both are positions that are really needed so if you or anyone you know are interested, please get in touch with Mary in the front office.   

The kids did a great job learning their first two words, I and like. We are almost done writing our first “I like…” books and those should go home early next week. The kids are learning the skills of pointing to each word as they read and using the pictures they drew to help them with the words they wrote. Next we’ll be working on our next book, I see a… I am so excited for you to see their hard work! 

Up to date, we have started to learn the lower case letters c, o, s, v, w, t and a. The kids have been practicing saying the letter name followed by the picture cue for the word followed by the sound. For example, we use the Fundations alphabet for the key words to cue kids to the sound of the letter, which is the first sound of the picture cue (with the exception of x - fox). Be on the lookout for these letters around the house and when you may be out and about. They’ll start to see them everywhere! 

We have also been reading the follow-up to the book Journey, Quest. The connections that the kids are making between the two books as well as within the book Quest itself has been so amazing to see. We are working on asking elbow partners questions like “What will happen next?” “What is happening?” “Why is ____ doing that?”, etc.  

We had a great week working on our number writing, dot cluster card work and counting objects using a number path. Here is a site that I saw that talks about both number lines and number paths. We are using number paths to help us count objects and practice counting objects one at a time, a skill called 1 to 1 correspondence. 

Amy Butler from VINS joined us in the woods this week and told a super story about a magical golden stick. Ask your child about it, it was a great story. They sure worked hard to find their own! We are talking about the use of sticks and show to properly and safely use them in the woods. Over the next couple of weeks we’ll collect leaves and see if we can find out what kinds of trees are in our outdoor classroom. 

Last, the weather is a-changing! Please be sure to send in your kiddo with all of the gear that is needed to spend extended periods of time outdoors. Also, one or two extra sets of clothes at school would be great to send in. We can send home and trade out what is here. Thanks for your support on this!

Have a wonderful, restful weekend!

Best,

Ben and Honi

Conversation starters:

*Tell me the story about the beavers that you heard from Amy in the forest.

*What did you do with your buddy this week?

*Tell me about the books Quest and Journey

*What is your favorite part about PE?

*What did you make in art class? How did you make it?

*Who did you play with on the playground?

*Did you try/do anything that was hard or tricky this week?

Reminders

Class Blog

You can check out the blog here for the newsletter and resources

Pictures

The folder with class pictures can be found here. 

Class Gear

Please remember to send in all the tools for the kiddos to be using as we go through the year (change of clothes, raingear, camp chair, etc.). Sneakers are the best daily footwear for students. If you need help getting any of those, please let us know, the school will be happy to help.

Book Order Information

 

With a $25 order, you can pick a FREE $5 Book (use code: READS).

Shop Our Class Page: https://orders.scholastic.com/XLZX8

Class Code: XLZX8

Foliage Time!

 Hello, Everyone!

I hope you have all gotten a chance or are thinking about making some time to get out and get into the beautiful fall weather. Seeing the kiddos in the woods on Thursday really brought this into focus for me. I know it is going to be part of my weekend plans, for sure!

I hope you all got a chance to read Nurse Bonne’s post in this week’s school newsletter. As a parent who had to wait to get a Covid test before being able to send my kiddo back to school (which is why I was out on Monday and Tuesday), it is important that you feel clear about the health guidelines so that in the event you get a call to come pick your kiddo up, you’ll understand why. Believe me, the guidelines can feel frustrating but I also know that they are in the best interest of the kids and your families.  

The kids will be working on their writing and reading skills next week, learning their first sight words. We will start with the words I, a, see and like. It is amazing how much kids can read and write knowing only these words! I am looking forward to the kiddos bringing a t least one of these home next week!

We continued our work in letters and sounds and also introduced name writing. Writing one’s name is an important step in their personal expression. You may have seen the papers your child did to practice them. I use a solid line to trace with arrows that determine which way to go and a dot that indicates where to start. These letter writing pen strokes I model are aligned with our handwriting program, Learning Without Tears (formerly Handwriting Without Tears). Helping kids learn a consistent and efficient writing motion helps them enormously as their desire to write increases as we go through the year. 

In math this week we continued our work on dot cluster cards, counting, and number writing. The kids are all working so hard! We have started to introduce the 10 frame as a way of representing numbers. Check out this blog post from another teacher. While our kiddos aren’t to this level yet, we’ll be working toward it as we go through the year. 

Amy Butler from VINS joined us in the woods this week. She introduced the brace and bit drill and the kids got to make some necklaces. Next week we’ll be exploring sticks and their many uses in the woods.

Enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend!

Best,

Ben and Honi

Conversation starters:

*What sound does “w” make?

*What was your favorite game you played at recess?

*Which kind of apple at school tasted the best?

*What did you do with your buddy this week?

*What are the letters in your name?

*Who have you been playing with at school?

Reminders

Meadowbrook Fundraiser

In order to support the amazing work of our Rumney PTO, you may have seen a fundraiser packet from Meadow Farms. If you have any questions about it, please get in touch with Honi (hbarrett@u32.org). 

Class Blog

You can check out the blog here for the newsletter and resources

Pictures

The folder with class pictures can be found here. 

Class Gear

Please remember to send in all the tools for the kiddos to be using as we go through the year (change of clothes, raingear, camp chair, etc.). Sneakers are the best daily footwear for students. If you need help getting any of those, please let us know, the school will be happy to help.

Book Order Information

 

With a $25 order, you can pick a FREE $5 Book (use code: READS).

Shop Our Class Page: https://orders.scholastic.com/XLZX8

Class Code: XLZX8

Happy Autumn!

 Happy Friday, Everyone!

Another great week in Kindergarten! We got to spend some time in the woods, played rhyming games, learned some letters and sounds, learned some math games and played with our friends.

We have been working hard on learning the names of our many classmates and the kids have been doing a super job. To practice the names of our friends, we sang “Willoughby Wallaby Woo”. It has been such a hoot watching kids hear a word that rhymes with a name to help them think  about whose name I am saying (Willoughby, Wallaby Wen, and elephant sat on... Ben!) They are doing a great job!

We did a lot of work on the letters c, o and s this week. You can ask your child to trace the letters with their index and middle finger on a textured surface while saying the letter name and sound. You can also ask them where we start writing our letters (at the top!). They are working so hard on these skills. We will also start working on tracing their names next week as a morning job when they get to school. We use specific lined pages in order to consistently reinforce the formation of letters and letter size (upper and lowercase).

In the forest, we will soon have the amazing Amy Butler, our ECO coordinator joining us in the forest starting next Thursday. I am looking forward to getting to know her and learning more about what our amazing outdoor space has to offer!

In math, Matt Pelkey, our Math interventionist, has been joining us and we have been working hard on the numbers 1-6 and seeing them in a number of ways. One way is to see these numbers on pictures of hands, the dots on a dice, the numeral and on a 5 or ten frame. We also did some sorting exercises where we were thinking of ways to organize buttons (by color, size, shape, number of holes, etc.)

Ms. Honi also brought in some fun playdough to use this morning. The kids had a blast making pies, volcanoes and spaghetti, to name a few. These kinds of tactile activities help kids with their proprioceptive input, helps with fine motor skills, and encourages imaginative play.

Playdough recipe:

The Easiest Homemade Playdough Recipe {Lasts for Months!} (livingwellmom.com)

Next week we will press apples on Wednesday. If you have apples at your house that you’d like to donate, feel free to send them in using a bucket to hold them. We’ll be pasteurizing the cider here at school using the kitchen.

It was a rainy start to the day today (Friday), so be sure to send your kiddos in with rain gear and boots. There will be days we will be going out in inclimate weather and making sure that the kids have the appropriate clothing is important. If you need help finding some, be in touch.

Last, next week is Kindergarten screening day. We’ll be working to see what kids know about numbers, letters/sounds, rhyming, motor skills and speech/language. The days that we’ll be working with kids are going to be Tuesday and Wednesday. The information we collect will help with guiding our whole, small and individual group work. It will also be part of the information we talk about at parent conferences on or around November 11th. 

Conversation starters:

*What did you paint in art?

*What colors of playdough did you play with? What did you build?

*Do you get tired at school?

*What is fun to do in the forest?

*Where did you use chalk? What did you make?

*Tell me about the butterflies that hatched this week.

We hope you all have a wonderful, restful weekend.

Best,

Ben and Honi

Reminders

Meadowbrook Fundraiser

In order to support the amazing work of our Rumney PTO, you may have seen a fundraiser packet from Meadow Farms. If you have any questions about it, please get in touch with Honi (hbarrett@u32.org). 

Class Blog

You can check out the blog here for the newsletter and resources

Pictures

The folder with class pictures can be found here. 

Class Gear

Please remember to send in all the tools for the kiddos to be using as we go through the year (change of clothes, raingear, camp chair, etc.). Sneakers are the best daily footwear for students. If you need help getting any of those, please let us know, the school will be happy to help.

Book Order Information

 

With a $25 order, you can pick a FREE $5 Book (use code: READS).

 

Class Order Due Date: Thursday, Sept 9th.

Shop Our Class Page: https://orders.scholastic.com/XLZX8

Class Code: XLZX8