Welcome!

We are off to a great start this year thanks to your wonderful children!  This is the first of many weekly newsletters that you will receive every Friday.  I hope you will find them informative about kindergarten life. 

 

                  

Our main focus over the next few weeks is learning our classroom procedures, routines and expectations.  This will set the foundation for our year (and a great one at that!).  We are all working on coming into our classroom, hanging up backpacks, giving important papers to the teacher, putting our Kinder-Kid folder into our cubbies and starting our morning jobs.  We are also working on making our lunch choices and getting ready lunch.   After only four days of school, it’s amazing how well the children are learning the routine.


On our first day of school we went on a “Chester Chase” looking for Chester the Raccoon from the story The Kissing Hand.  Our chase/tour helped us get familiar with Hill.  We saw where a lot of things are. We also met many of the “helping adults” that are available to the kids, including Mrs. Shoemaker (school office), Mr. Kevin (building engineer), Mrs. Babcock (Media Tech), and Mrs. Brzezinski (our principal).    Our chase lead us right back to our room where Chester left us Kissing Hand mini books!            

We are also very busy creating artwork.  We have many talented artists in our room!  We have painted coconut trees based on the story, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (we loved the rhyme, repetition and rhythm of the story), Clifford from the story, Clifford’s First Day of School and Kinder-Kids.   The kid’s artwork is so wonderful.  I am hanging a majority of it up in the hall & classroom so everyone can admire it!

Math Workshop

In math we have been working with pattern blocks, links, counters and unifix cubes.  This week there was free exploration with these manipulatives.  This allowed your child to use the materials in his/her own way to discover patterns, number concepts, and classification.

          We are also working on calendar skills, counting, and number recognition.

Visible Thinking  You will be hearing a lot about our visible thinking routines this year. Visible Thinking is a broad and flexible framework for enriching classroom learning .  Here are some of its key goals:

·         Deeper understanding of content

·         Greater motivation for learning

·         Development of learners' thinking and learning abilities.

Check out our visible thinking routines at curriculum night!