Hello everyone!
I hope this long weekend has been treating you well! It feels much needed for Kindergarten after the excitement of celebrating Valentine’s Day in Kindergarten! Let’s recap!
In reading, students have been drilling vowels. Particularly short vowel sounds! We will beginning drilling the long vowel sounds this upcoming week and practicing the silent e and the job that it does. We use the phrase “the silent e helps the vowel say it’s own name” to remind students that typically the silent e at the end of a CVCe word makes the vowel in the middle of the word long! For example, in the word came, same, rope, bike, Pete, etc.
We have added some more sight words to our word wall like “said”, “will”, “what”, and “be”. We are trying to review these as much as possible in order to make our reading and writing go smoother and quicker.
In Math we have been adding things up! Students have been kicking butt with addition – they’ve been practicing the concept using pictures and manipulatives to help them. For example we used dice to practice adding numbers together. Soon we will be practicing addition without the use of anything helping them so they can practice becoming more automatic with these problems. And later we will be introducing subtraction! We have been trying to remind students about ways to check their math was well, like reminding them that the answer to their problem should be larger than the parts they added together. We have been practicing adding with zero and the concept of adding “nothing” and how in that case, the answer would be the same as one of the parts! We also have been discussing the commutative property of addition (not in those words, to make it more developmentally appropriate), and how even when you switch the parts around the answer remains the same! For example 2 + 4 and 4 + 2 are going to be the same answers!
On Valentine’s Day students got to pass out candy and cards for each other! We also did a writing prompt about showing love to others, and then had a fun Math activity! Students were given mini M&M’s and had to separate, count, and graph each color! I usually do this activity with candy hearts, but I had no luck finding them this year! Students got to enjoy their sweet treat and review their counting! We are also practicing counting all the way up 31, which we will do more reviewing of this week as many students need to practice the transition from twenty-nine to thirty.
On Monday our new school counselor, Ms. Cook, did a lesson with Kindergarten talking about differences, opinions, and perspectives. We are practicing understanding that everyone has things that make them unique, and even if we don’t see eye to eye with someone we can still live in harmony together. Ms. Cook will be coming to our room more often for more social-emotional skill lessons.
We have been learning about black leaders in history as part of our Social Studies curriculum focusing on the future, present, and past. Students have learned about Mae Jemison, Ruby Bridges, and Rosa Parks! Looking to next week we will be learning about Jackie Robinson and Garett Morgan, the inventor of the modern day stoplight!
Wednesday was Ash Wednesday and for many students it was their first time receiving ashes, let along learning about Lent and what the ashes are from and represent. We discussed the purpose of Lent and how it is our time to prepare for Easter by making ourselves better people for Jesus. Soon, we will be having a in depth set of lessons on the story of Easter and about the sacrifice God made for us by giving us His only son.
We have a shortened week with President’s Day giving us Monday off but everything will be back to normal for the rest of the week!
As always, feel free to reach out with any questions you have!
Warmly,
Mrs. V