The children are certainly learning quite a bit about sea life! Their aquariums are on the back wall and they have made octopuses and sea turtles and have learned many interesting facts about them both. You should ask them how many legs an octopus has and about where the sea turtle lays her eggs!
We are getting excited to go to the Aquarium on Tuesday, February 4th. More information about the trip and what the students will need will be going home the day before we go. It should be a fun trip!
We will be having our Fish Day this Friday, January 29th. Students will get to travel to all the different Kindergarten classrooms to complete various fish and other sea creature projects. We are still in need of parent volunteers from about 8:45-10:15am that morning. Please let me know if you are interested.
We enjoyed a presentation from the Burlington Science Center on Tuesday. Miss P. taught us some neat facts about the animals in Jan Brett’s The Mitten and even brought in two hedgehogs for us to observe and even touch!
We will be celebrating Valentine's Day on Friday, February 12th by passing out Valentines. Please don’t attach any candy or other edible items to the Valentines. If you would like to send something, pencils or stickers make great alternatives to food. I will send a list home with students next week for students to use to write out their valentines. Students can also bring a special snack from home to eat in the afternoon on Valentine’s Day. They will need a morning and an afternoon snack that day.
The students continue to write in their journals. We continually encourage them to write on their own in their best guess spelling and not to be afraid to make a mistake. We have started a unit on persuasive writing. The students are trying to convince me to get a class pet! We will be talking a lot about features of good persuasive writing. I plan to have them help me try to persuade Mr. Duncan that we need a minivan!
We have been practicing our letters and numbers but it never hurts to have them practice at home too. The more they write numbers 0-20, the easier and more natural they will become. The teen numbers are particularly challenging so those are great numbers to practice. We have finished a topic in math on subtraction and are now working on decomposing numbers (i.e., 7 is 3 +4, 5+2, 6+1, etc.). I will be sending home addition flash cards for you to practice with your child. Children are supposed to be fluent with these facts by the end of Kindergarten, which means they should be able to say the answers in less than 3 seconds. I will try to send those home by next week.
We started our guided reading program last week. Guided reading enables children to practice reading strategies with the teacher's support in small groups. This is just the beginning. It helps your children to become more and more comfortable with text. It’s amazing how far they have already come since September!
Progress reports will be going home on Monday. I have included an example of a guided reading book that I use with the students in the progress report folders. It will help give you an idea of the instructional level your child is reading at in case you are looking for books for them to read at home. Our next scheduled conference isn’t until March, but feel free to email or call me if you have any questions or concerns with the progress report. We can certainly set up a time to talk on the phone or meet in the classroom to talk.
Have a great weekend!
Melanie Duncan
PS...We went to the library this past week and several students had overdue books. We won’t go again until Wednesday, February 3rd but I would encourage your children to return their books as soon as they are done with them so they can take out a new book during our next visit to the library.
Wishlist items: Play dough, large brown paper bags (with and without handles), small brown paper bags, small and large paper plates, Q-tips…..Thanks!!!
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