Week of October 17-21

What a busy week we have had! Your students are learning so much, I hope they are coming home to share this with you. If not, here is a summary to fill in the gaps!

Animated Alphabet - Students learned two new characters this week: Farley Fox and Baby Barnaby. I still have only about 25% of students returning pictures the following day for our alphabet book. Let me know if you need help obtaining magazines and I will get some for you!
I know is seems hard to believe, but your children have already learned 16 characters! This means that there are many words that they should be able to sound out and read. Look for those words in your shared reading and have them read to you. Also, we have learned many sight words. Memorizing the sight words is an important piece to reading. A parent volunteer and myself have been working on sight word books for your child to have at home and practice with. These will be sent home next week. It would be best practice to run through these every night and until you feel they have them under control. Once they have them down, bring your cards back to school and we will check them at school. Once they know a word they will get their card punched. I am hoping this a fun motivational way to keep kids accountable for learning their sight words. Look for those next week and let me know if you have any questions.

Math - In math this week we have worked with coins (pennies and nickels). We have used coins and tiles to make addition sentences. We have also done dot-to-dots, worked on creating and naming patterns, and making up story problems to go along with pictures. Making up math story problems in your everyday life is a great way for your child to work on counting, addition and subtraction. Try this while riding in the car, or when you have some down time, like waiting rooms. You will be surprised what a difference this effort can make.

Parent-Teacher Conferences are getting closer.I still have 6 families that need to sign up for a conference time. You can do so by contacting the office anytime. If you do not pick a time, one will be assigned to you. I will also be sending reminders about your conference time soon.
Next week I will also be sending home a blank copy of the report card so you will see what kinds of things we will be assessing this trimester. I have already begun to do some of these assessments, as they are very time consuming at a kindergarten level due to the fact that most have to be done one on one.