Hello everyone!
Happy weekend! Kindergarten has accomplished a lot this week — let’s get into it.
In Reading this week, we have been buckling down on reading sentences! Most of our work in our workbook this week was reading sentences and finding the right words that were missing from the sentence, or being able to match the sentence to the appropriate picture. This shows a student’s comprehension of what the words in the sentence actually mean! We also have continued to work on building and decoding words, even if they are silly words that don’t really exist. We did this as morning work, but also incorporated this into our centers this week! Students had to build words using some special dice, and then write down all of the words they built and read on a white board.
We also have been intensifying our small group work so that students can be making larger strides in their reading progress. I’m so excited with what I’m seeing! They have really been using the different strategies that they have been taught (breaking up the word, tapping it out, stretching it out, etc.) and putting them into practice. I would urge you all at home to have them keep reading anything you have, as often as they can. They more they can practice using these strategies the better! Really encourage the process of trying to figure out the word, or praise the specific letter sounds they got right. Also, be sure to keep having them practice their letter sounds so they stay sharp! Particularly the vowel sounds. It’s easy for kids to mix up the vowel sounds, so we want to make sure that we are constantly reviewing it both at home and at school. Here’s a fun video we watched that reviews letter sounds!
Watch the Letters Get Down-Reggae Remix (2018) MISTER B-Dr. Anthony Broughton – YouTube
In Math, we have been increasing the difficulty of our subtraction problems. Students are now subtracting by 4! The vocabulary of taking things away has been most key for having students comprehend this concept! They have had lots of practice using the different strategies try to show them concrete evidence of subtraction concepts. Students love to draw pictures to help understand it, which is what we use the SmartBoard for! We are still continuing our skip counting and working on recognizing higher numbers.
We’ve continued learning about the sun and the moon, and we started this week by making our own! We looked at some real pictures taken by NASA of the sun and the moon. Students were fascinated by how they both looked so different than what we imagine them to look like. We also watched some informational videos while we made our suns and moons to help inspire them.
Some students even made their moon to be different shapes to reflect how the moon looks different depending on what phase it is in!
Here is what the windows in our classroom look like now that we have our suns and moons up! They are on either side of our lists that we made last week.
On Wednesday, as part of our celebration for good behavior, we went outside for some extra recess. But before we made our way to the playground we stopped in the lawn beside the church to have some outdoor story time! We read a beautiful book called Dear Children of the Earth, which is written in the form of a letter from the Earth to all of the people living on it asking us all to take care of our home and all the animals that live here with us. Kindergarten loved the beautiful and unique paintings in this book. They also really enjoyed the sunshine!
Students loved having a special pizza snack, and even got creative with it! It was well deserved!
We also learned this week about the meaning of Saint Patrick’s Day and where it began. We will talk about this more next week! We also will start to talk about Lent and Easter, as it gets closer and closer.
I hope you all get to enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend, stay safe!
Love,
Ms. V 🙂
