Kindergarten News: November 2007

Dear Families,

The month of November has come to an end much too quickly. We are happy that so many of you were able to attend our Thanksgiving celebration. The children enjoyed performing the play for their buddies and families, as well as baking pumpkin pies and cranberry muffins for the occasion. Your assistance with the play was greatly appreciated. Thank you for practicing the lines with your child; they all did a fantastic job performing.

The theme of Thanksgiving provided many opportunities for language and math activities in the classroom. Throughout the month, we read, talked, sang and learned about Pilgrims and their difficult beginning in this country. The children were able to hear about the experiences of the children just like themselves all those years ago.

The Thanksgiving celebration allowed many math opportunities, such as patterning and counting for the necklaces as well as measuring and counting for baking. During the month of December we will begin to explore numbers in more detail.

The children continue to enjoy letter bags and it really helps when the children practice their clues before coming to school. As we highlight our seasonal poetry each week, the children demonstrate enthusiasm and continue to improve their oral participation and reciting skills. In our Houghton Mifflin reading program we have been learning to read, spell and write some high frequency words such as I, see, my, like, & to. The children are also learning about word families such as words that end with “at.”

In the area of science, we continue to notice and discuss signs of fall. The children drew our class tree in their science journals, concentrating on the changes that have occurred. In our kindergarten garden, we have planted spring bulbs and soon we will sprout seeds for sweet peas and sugar snap peas. Colorful seasonal changes inspired our fall leaf prints which are hanging up in our classroom.

Please don't forget to put names in jackets, raincoats and other items that can (and will) get left at school. Also, please be sure to send jackets or sweaters on cold days. We usually eat our snack outside.

December will be a busy month and hopefully a lot of fun. We will be talking, reading and singing about holiday traditions from around the world. We are looking forward to working with our buddies at our Cranberry Extravaganza. We will have our annual Animal Party on Thursday, December 20th (invitations to stuffed animals will come home that week). All kindergarten classes will come to school in the afternoon that day (11:00 am - 2:20 pm, or until the Holiday Sing is over). This allows everyone to experience the Animal Party as well as perform together in the school-wide Holiday Sing at 1:00 pm that afternoon. We will also have a dramatic reading of a favorite book that day. This is one of the most exciting Kindergarten days of the year.

We are collecting new and lightly used blankets this holiday season to donate to Sacred Heart Community Services Agency for families in need. If you would like to donate a blanket, please bring it to Room 1 by December 15th. Last year we collected over 50 blankets; let’s see if we can do even better!

Sincerely,

Your Kindergarten Teachers
Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. McClain, Mrs. Nolan & Mrs. Terry

Important Upcoming Kindergarten Dates:
December 20th: Animal Party

Previous 2007 Kindergarten Newsletters:
October 2007