Week 3 August 22-26 2016

August 22,2016

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. The kindergarten class enjoyed their first full week of learning, discovering and playing. We will continue to work on our classroom routines and procedures for the next few week. This will make our school year a success.

This week we will continue our learning through many different activities. Our focus will be on letter "Aa".

What are the parts of an apple?

If you answered that the parts of an apple are the skin, the flesh, the core, the seeds, the stem, and the leaves you are exactly right. These are the vocabulary words we are going to be focusing on during the week. We are going to be doing a lot of activities related to apples. If you have any books, or any other material that can be useful about apples we would really appreciate it if you can let us borrow them. 

 Please have your child bring in an apple to school on Monday

We would really like the kids to taste apple pie!!! Let us know if you can bring in an apple pie for the class on Friday!!

 Please help us fill up our "Treasure Chest". Please send in small toys fun pencils, erasers, balls, stamps mazes, necklaces, bracelets, etc.  
These prizes are used as incentives and rewards in our classroom.

We are going to be working with the letter Aa. The vocabulary for this letter is: apple, astronaut, ax, alligator, alphabet, ant, armadillo, angry, ankle, and anteater.

A plastic bag labeled "Show and Tell" is in tour child's folder. If you have any items at home that begin with this letter, send them in on Monday or Tuesday with your child and we will discussing them in class, We will display them on a table and we will send them home on Friday. The kids get excited to bring things from home.

Some of the books we are going to be reading this week are the following:

 

What will Abby Alligator be — an artist, an astronaut, an actor? We will find out when we read this fun story.

 

The author tells the tale of a little boy who is sure that there is an alligator under his bed. Getting no sympathy from his parents who ``never saw it,'' he forms a plan of attack. He leaves a trail of food from his bed through the house to the garage door. He then follows behind as the alligator gobbles up the goodies, fresh vegetables, fruit, and even ``the last piece of pie,'' making its way to the garage. The boy then locks the door.

 

Two young sisters watch in fascination as their apple tree changes, from bare in winter to bursting with pink blossoms in spring, and as robins build a nest. When autumn comes, the small green apples have grown big enough for picking and for pie! The words we are going to be discussing from this book are: branch, blossoms, chirp, brim, guarding and delicious.

The urban landscape will never look the same again. As Stephen T. Johnson demonstrates in a series of strikingly realistic pastels and watercolors, a simple sawhorse can contain the letter "A" — while lampposts alongside a highway can form a row of elegant, soaring Ys.This book was awarded theA 1996 Caldecott Honor book,

"Animals Should Defininitely Not Wear Clothing."..because a snake would lose it, a billy goat would eat it for lunch, and it would always be wet on a walrus! This well-loved book by Judi and Ron Barrett shows the very youngest reader why animals' clothing is perfect...just as it is.

This week we will be focusing on comparing number of words in a sentence. 

In Math we will be discussing Shapes. We will be using the vocabulary same and different.

Beginning readers use a lot of different ways to become more fluent readers. One of the most important ways to do that is to be able to read and recognize sight words. Sight words refer to the words that are most frequently used and repeated in books, which is why sight words are also sometimes referred to as “high-frequency” words. The same words are also sometimes called “popcorn words.” The phrase popcorn words refer to the fact that students should be able to just pop those words out every time they see them. We will continue with the same sight words from last week: the, I, and, a, to. Please practice them at home with your child every day.

Last week the class created our CLASSROOM AGREEMENT. These are a set of expectations we came up with that lets everyone know what  is expected from them. Each student signed it . This creates ownership and responsibility.

We also began using our CLIP CHART the students understand how it is used in our class. Everyday ask your child where he ended up at the end of the day. This is a great way to motivate great classroom behavior.

Monday

Bring in an object that begins with letter A.

Wednesday

Letter A vocabulary sheet