Hello everyone!
I just wanted to give you all a recap and some updates on what’s been going on in Kindergarten!
The first half of the year went by quick! Kindergarten spent a lot of time working on their letter and letter sounds. First we went through the alphabet just reviewing how to identify each letter, working on one a day. After completing them all, we went through the alphabet again but with a focus on the letter sounds. Each day we had the same routine, we learned the letter sound, sang a song that helps us practice the letter sound, read a story that focuses on that letter, and made a list of all the words that we could think of that started with that letter. Students picked up on our routine quick and did a wonderful job! While learning this we also learned the difference between vowels and consonants. Currently, we are delving into the difference between long and short vowel sounds, and the concept of the silent e. We’ve been using our bodies to remind us the difference between short and long vowel sounds – taking a short step when saying the short vowel sound and a large or “long” step when saying the long vowel sound. This mind body connection gives students a fun way to retain this information!
We also have been working on isolating sounds in a word, namely the beginning and ending sounds. This has been key to helping us with rhyming, which we also have been working on. Rhyming can be difficult for many students but it is one of the easiest phonics skills to work on at home and I encourage everyone to practice rhyming at home! You can do this by singing or reading nursery rhymes together, playing rhyming games (even if you’re rhyming silly/nonsense words), or even just singing popular songs and pointing out the words that rhyme! We will begin to focus on isolating middle sounds once we get a firmer grasp on the various vowel sounds. This is the first step to working on blending sounds together, or decoding, to read words students haven’t already memorized. We have added many sight words and high-frequency words to our word wall and those are words that students are encouraged to memorize. Sight words are words that do not follow standard English phonics rules (i.e., ‘the’) and high-frequency words are words that we so often that it can slow students down to have to sound them out every time they come across them (i.e., ‘is’).
In Math we have been working on recognizing and counting higher numbers, shapes, patterns, and using Math vocabulary like “before” and “after”, “less” and “more”. Students have been using multiple methods of work to try and learn these new concepts including using blocks, cubes, and more! In the second part of the school year we have already started working on addition and subtraction concepts. We will be furthering this throughout the year, starting with addition and using words like ‘plus’ and ‘add to’! We will also be making our way up to 100 and making sure we can accurately identify and write those tricky higher numbers!
We had a lot of fun holiday celebrations in the first half of the year! Halloween was a blur, but students enjoyed celebrating with our classroom aide Ms. Patty. They did a trunk-or-treat and carved pumpkins! In November, we discussed the history of Thanksgiving and what we have to be grateful for. In December, we celebrated Christmas by learning the story of Jesus’ birth and putting on our annual Nativity Play. Kindergarten did amazing, and it was so wonderful to see all of you there! We also enjoyed a very fun Polar Express day full of many fun activities and watching the classic Christmas movie. Since we’ve returned for the New Year, we recently celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. day. Students had spent the days leading up to the holiday learning about MLK and his legacy, and how he prioritized peace over violence in order to achieve equality for all. We will be continuing learning about leaders and pioneers in black history throughout the rest of this third quarter that is just beginning, as we focus on Social Studies this quarter.
In the second quarter of the school year, we focused on Science. We learned about the seasons and how the environment and weather change, and how animals hibernate in the winter. We learned about living things and what they need to survive, including plants and how all living things have their own life cycle. We also learned about the difference between meat eaters and plant eaters, and how humans are both – along with many other types of animals!
Thank you to everyone who joined us at our Grownups with Donuts event this past Friday! We had a lovely time snacking, playing tic-tac-toe, coloring, and creating our own donuts together. Students got to enjoy the Book Fair this week and they picked out some amazing books that I hope they’ll enjoy reading at home with you all! We have started reading our first chapter book of the year! We are reading a graphic novel called El Deafo by Cece Bell which is an autobiography about how Cece Bell lost her hearing as a child and had to wear a hearing aid, and her experience being differently abled trying to make friends with others. Cece ends up creating a superhero persona for herself that helps her work through her experiences. Students are enjoying all of the pictures in the story, learning new things, and the way humor is used as a storytelling device.
Catholic Schools Week was a big success. Students looked so sweet dressed up as if they were 100 years old. We made necklaces declaring that they were 100 days smarter, and students enjoyed using their fine motor skills to thread the beads onto the strings. We also did a special two part question of the day were students got to answer what they would want 100 of and what they would NOT want 100 of. Their answers cracked me up!
Looking forward, we will be celebrating Valentine’s Day in a couple weeks. If you’d like to send in candy or cards for the class you are more than welcome to but it is not necessary. We will be having a very relaxed, lowkey “party” in our room on the day of. We have 16 students total! And please, no nut products!
Thank you again for all that you do, I hope everyone had a lovely weekend and has a great week!
Warmly,
Mrs. V 🙂