Hello families!
This week was a quick one in Kindergarten. Monday we were off for Labor Day, and I was not in the building on Tuesday and a substitute was in the classroom.
On Tuesday students were introduced to the five senses! They came up with words to describe each sense and they learned which body parts we use each sense for. This is a topic that we will routinely revisit throughout the school year! They also read a story called My Mouth Is A Volcano, which uses a story to tell students why it’s important why we shouldn’t interrupt others.
This week students have dived into handwriting. We worked our way through the introduction pages of our Handwriting workbooks and began working on the first letters we were introduced to this week! We are trying to get into the routine or holding the pencil correctly and having the correct posture so that we can do our best work. We also are trying to drill in the fact that letters need to stay on the bottom line instead of “floating away”.
Thursday and Friday we started our “ABC Bootcamp” with letters P and N. At this point in the year we are focused on simply recognizing the letters. We did a lot of practice cutting with scissors while also practicing sorting the letters and differentiating between uppercase and lowercase. We’ll continue to work on some more letters and eventually work on the letter sounds.
We did a lot of free reading this week, and students got a chance to relax in the cozy corner to do so! Be sure to encourage free reading at home, as this encourages a love of books. We remind students that we can pick up on what a story is about even by looking at just the pictures.
We also have been working with a lot of playdoh because I want to encourage students to work on building up those muscles in your hands. This will help make their pencil grip better and build up their fine motor skills! One way we did this was by having them make their names with playdoh. This also helps with recognizing the shapes of letters and memorizing how to spell their names! We will keep doing this until every student can do it easily!
On Friday students went to their very first Mass at school. They had a lot of questions but most of them did well for their first time there! It’s a big ask for Kindergarten to sit still and quiet for almost a whole hour, so I am proud of them for how they did and excited to see how much better they get.
We also celebrated our first birthday in the classroom – Carter’s! He turned 6 years old! Happy birthday Carter!
Students received some cut and paste homework in their folder this week to practice the letter N some more. I want them to get as much practice with scissors as they can! I also sent home a preschool workbook to review some key concepts like letters, colors, and more!
Be sure to keep checking your students folders for updates and to see student work. And feel free to reach out with any questions you might have!
Love,
Ms. V 🙂
