The week of Nov. 27-Dec. 1.

The weekend was beautiful for Thanksgiving!  I hope your family had a wonderful time together!

Job Day!  I have 9 volunteers to share about their jobs on Dec. 7!  Thank you to those who are able to take time off at work to share!

I am just amazed with how much the kids are learning with our new reading program!  I hope you are also noticing how much your child has progressed since the beginning of the year!  Keep working on those sight words!  Only 3 more weeks until the quarter is over!  

This week we are talking more about making our sentences more interesting with descriptive verbs.  We will learn that we add -ed to a word to make it past tense.  Then, we are going to have fun making up fun sentences with colorful adjectives and verbs!  

Sight words:  mom, in
Letter of the week:  Hard Cc and Soft Cc

Please make sure you have your child read their little readers that come home once a week at least 2-3 times to someone.  If you can cover up the pictures after reading it 1-2 times, it will challenge them to read without the pictures!

Math this week!
Topic 4:  We are learning more about what 3D solid shapes are and what they can do.  Today, we sorted objects in to their correct categories of spheres, cubes, cylinders, cones, and rectangular prisms.  We will also be sorting 2D/3D shapes and sorting different types of food into the categories.  Then we will graph our results.

Social Studies--  This week we are beginning our Economics Unit.  We will learn about needs/wants, goods/services, producers/consumers, and community helpers.  

We only have one more week for our November book-it calendar.  Please continue to fill it out if when you read to or with your child!  Have them grab paper books from their bucket to read to you!  Let them read Level 1 books with you!  They will know many of the sight words in those books.  You read a page and let them read a page.  

Istation!  Let's get back on track after the break!  Only 10 min. a day will help them get their goal of 45 min. quickly!  Each gets on it here for 15- 20 min. once a week.

Coming up!

Dec.  7              Job Day! 

Dec. 18            Winter parties  2:30-3:15

Dec. 19             1/2 day for all

Dec. 20-Jan. 3  Christmas Vacation!!

Our First Thanksgiving!

The Wampanoag Indians

Pilgrims and Indians

Holding up the year of the first Thanksgiving and feast pictures.

 Greeting the Pilgrims

 Our Feast!

What a fun Thanksgiving Feast with our Pilgrim friends from Mrs. Hanson's class!

Only two days this week!

It is crazy that Thanksgiving is so close!  We are having fun making Thanksgiving turkeys, singing songs, and learning more about Pilgrims and Indians and their first Thanksgiving Feast in 1621!

Tomorrow is our First Thanksgiving "Feast" as Indians with Mrs. Hanson's Pilgrims!  We made our Indian headdress today and will decorate a vest tomorrow!  Thank you to all the parents that have helped me prepare all that was needed for the day!  If your child doesn't have a brown shirt, they can wear a tan, gray, or neutral shirt.  

Look for pictures to come of our First Kindergarten Thanksgiving Feast!

Letter of the week!  Short O
Sight word:  on

Math this week!
The introduction of 3D solid shapes!  The shapes we will learn about and describe are:  sphere, cube, cone, and rectangular prism.  The kids will learn which ones roll, slide, and stack.

Job Day change!  I love that so many of you are able and willing to share your job on Job Day, Dec. 8.  However, I just found out that I have to go out of town and will not be here on the 8th.  Would you be able to come on the 7th?  For those of you that sent in your "Job Day Application" slip, please let me know if you are still able to share on the 7th!  So sorry for the inconvenience of the date change.  

Coming up!

Nov. 22-26      Thanksgiving Break!!

Dec.  7              Job Day!  Date Change!

Dec. 18            Winter parties  2:30-3:15

Dec. 19             1/2 day for all

Dec. 20-Jan. 3  Christmas Vacation!!

Apple Day pictures FINALLY!

Blue Day

Apple Day!!

The week of Nov. 13-16!

Wow!  We are almost half-way through 2nd quarter!  Progress reports will come home on Friday!  Please look for what your child needs to review at home or if they are right on track!  Skills will be highlighted if they aren't mastered yet.

Picture retakes are on Wednesday this week!  If you bought the first picture, but do not like it, return it on Wednesday and get retakes.  Or if your child was absent the first day, they can take it Wednesday.

We only have two days next week due to Thanksgiving Break Wed.-Fri.

Istation--I visited with the class today about making sure they weren't just getting on Istation to get their minutes.  They need to really focus and try their best and learn from their mistakes by listening to the program.  I have noticed on the reports that several are not doing very well.  If they are getting tired of it because they are stuck on a certain skill, try to sit with them and watch what they are missing.  They may need you to explain the concept to them.  We can't assume they understand all of it even if the program tells them the correct answer.  
Also, please make sure your child is logging out when they are done.  For some reason, the program doesn't like it when they don't log out and leave it idling.


Reading this week!
Our informative, nonfiction book, we are reading this week is "What do Animals Need?".  We will be looking for important details and matching labels to pictures.  We will compare/contrast last week's story, "What do Plants Need?" and this story.  

We have also been looking for the naming part and telling part of sentences.  It helps us to notice if we have a complete sentence when we write them.   

Sight words:  he, love  ( We are half way through the 2nd quarter list at school.)  Please review the sight words 5-10 min. a night until they know them.

Letter of the week:  Pp

Social Studies!
Today we learned about totem poles being made by Native Americans to tell stories.  We watched one being carved in a video today.

We will be reading books about the Thanksgiving story, how people dressed, lived, and what they ate many years ago.

Math!
Our Topic 14 is on flat, 2D shapes.  The class is looking around our room for shapes and making pictures out of a shape each day.  We are also learning how to describe each shape which is a goal to be able to do in Kindergarten.  For instance; the description of a rectangle is: it has 2 long sides, 2 short sides, and 4 corners.  A square has 4 equal sides and 4 corners.  A circle is round with no sides or corners.  A triangle has 3 sides and 3 corners.  A hexagon has 5 sides and 5 corners.  Lastly, an oval is round, long, and no sides or corners.  Please work on the descriptions at home, as your child will have to say them at school to pass that skill.

Coming up!

Nov. 15           Picture Retakes

Nov. 22-26      Thanksgiving Break!!
Dec. 8              Job Day!  (Information coming soon!)
Dec. 18            Winter parties
Dec. 19             1/2 day for all
Dec. 20-Jan. 3  Christmas Vacation!!

What a fantastic day on our field trip!

We had so much fun today!  The kids were fabulous along with my wonderful parent helpers!  Enjoy both our rainbow cookie pictures and our field trip pictures!

We loved making our own rainbow snack!

Our first bus ride in school!

Kaleidoscope

 The Kindergarten teachers taking a break!  Whew!

Lunch Land where we ate our lunch!

 Getting ready for our movie!

 More Kaleidoscope pics!

The week of Nov. 6-10!

It has finally gotten here!  Our first kindergarten field trip is Friday!  It may be the first time riding a big bus too!  Many firsts this week!  We teachers are so excited about this field trip too!  One of the important things for you as parents to remember, is to dress your child in red, maybe a long sleeve red shirt, sweatshirt or sweater to keep warm; as we are trying to avoid taking jackets and coats.  The only times we will be outside is getting on and off the bus, and a quick walk to Kaleidoscope from the Hallmark Visitor Center.  Please make sure your child eats a big breakfast, and goes to the bathroom right before leaving home as we will be getting on the bus soon after they get here to get to our Magic Treehouse show in time.

Also, remember to pack a disposable sack lunch and disposable water bottle.  We do not want to carry any lunch bags or heavy water bottles.  Definitely have your child wear tennis shoes as we are going to walk quite a bit through the sky walk at Crown Center.  Your child will be in a group of five with a volunteer parent from our class.  Please visit with your child about staying with their designated parent at all times until we get to Kaleidoscope.  There, they will get to roam around and do fun activities!  I'll make sure to take lots of pictures to share with you!

Before we go on our field trip, we have lots to do in kindergarten this week!

Book Fair visit--We will visit the book fair during our library time Thursday!  However, we ask that parents come with their child at the times it is open to help them pick out books and purchase them.  The kindergartners will not get to shop for books during our book fair/library time as it is difficult for them to count money and know how many books they can purchase for the money they bring.  They will get to shop by themselves in first grade!  Thank you for your understanding on this.  

Reading this week!
We are reading an informative story this week called, What Do Plants Need?  On top of the basic knowledge of plants needing water, air, sunlight, and space to grow, we are also learning about  about plants using carbon dioxide in air to make sugar.  After making sugar, plants put oxygen back into the air.  It's definitely higher level thinking for a kindergartner!!

We will also learn about the naming part and telling part of a sentence, or as we learned it-the subject and predicate.  Without either, a sentence wouldn't make sense!  The class will get to circle the naming part and telling parts of sentences so they can understand the concept better.

It's amazing how much is being taught in our new Benchmark Advance reading series!  Of course, it is all just introducing the kids to the language.  It sure isn't for mastery in kindergarten!

sight words:  is, was (Look for a sight word pretest to come home this week, showing what words your child needs to work on for 2nd quarter.)

Letter of the week:  Ff

Social Studies-- We will be reading about Veteran's Day coming up on Nov. 11.  Do any of you have veterans in your family?  I'm going to send home a sheet for you to let us know if your kindergartner has a veteran for us to recognize.

Math this week!--We are finishing up our Topic 5 on numbers 11-20.  Our test will be tomorrow. It would be great if you would review those numbers at home tonight!  I'm sending home a two ten frame sheet to have your child practice writing the numbers 11-20 by filling in the blanks.  It is not homework, just a practice sheet like what we are doing at school!  Hopefully they are understanding tens and ones a little better now.  Once again, we are just introducing tens and ones in kindergarten, it's not for mastery!  But, it does help them learn how we get numbers 11-20.

Rainbow Day is Wednesday!  Your child can wear as many colors as they can find!   We talked about how tie-dye shirts are perfect to wear!  Mrs. Scott has the rainbow snack!

Coming up!
Nov. 6-10           Book Fair fun!

Nov. 8              Rainbow  Day!

Nov. 7              Skate City  6-8 pm

Nov. 10           Field trip!  Look for important information coming soon!

Nov. 15           Picture Retakes

Nov. 22-26      Thanksgiving Break!