Kindergarten News: January 2008

Dear Families,

January has been a month of many experiences in Kindergarten! The children returned from vacation anxious to see their friends and ready to work hard at school. We are encouraging children to do their own writing in their journals and other places. Some are really taking off with this and discovering where they can find words to copy and write! The writing centers in both rooms are very popular - an amazing amount of mail is being generated in there!

The children are experiencing the processes of counting and addition by building and stating “number sentences” with our math manipulatives. We have been recording our number sentences and math folders will come home as they are completed. We are also practicing writing numbers using templates. We continue to work with problem solving, patterning, estimating and categorizing.
The children were very creative with their puppet kits that they made at home over vacation. Thank you for your help with that fun project. They presented and watched the puppet shows during Friday Sharing- another great opportunity for language development and learning how to be a sympathetic audience!

We are experiencing science in our garden. We sprouted snap peas and hope to plant them this week as soon as the sun comes out. We learned about sprouts and how every seed has a baby plant inside. Our bulbs are already peeking out and we will soon plant radishes and sweet peas too. We’ve been talking about the weather and are grateful to Mother Nature for providing us with wonderful examples of clouds, wind, fog, frost, and even some nearby snow! We will continue our study of weather all year with activities and projects at various times. Some upcoming activities are: making it rain in the classroom, making a weather book and our culminating weather activity, the Weather Play .

February promises to be another busy month! We will be learning about famous presidents and celebrating 100 Day and Valentine’s Day, a favorite for all.

We’re sure you all read the note about 100 Day! We will be celebrating the 100th day of school on Tuesday, February 5th. Since we are celebrating the number 100, in addition to the 100 day collections, we would also like to collect pennies to be counted by tens to 100. As part of our Social Studies curriculum, we are learning how to be contributing members of our community. Proceeds from this penny drive will be donated to Pennies For Peace (a program that donates school supplies to schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan). We will discuss this charity with the students. You may want to encourage your child to “earn” some of the pennies they bring in. Please check your hiding places and send in any extra pennies as soon as possible. We’d like to count some pennies before 100 day.

We will celebrate Valentine’s Day on Thursday, February 14th at school. If children wish to bring Valentines to school, they should bring one for each child in their class. Unless a child can read and write all the names of the children in the class, (and really wants to do this), he/she should just sign the cards with his/her name and deliver one to each “Mail Box” on Valentine’s Day. This helps speed up our mail delivery! Please no candy in valentines.

We will also be learning about and celebrating the Lunar New Year towards the end of February. This is always a lot of fun!
On Monday, February 4th at 7:00pm there will be a Step Up to Writing workshop for Oak parents in the Oak School multi-purpose room. Alice Greiner will lead the workshop and she will explain our school’s writing program (used across all grade levels) and also give tips for helping your child at home with their writing. We hope you can make it!

To help stem the flow of germs in the classroom, we have the children wash their hands or use hand sanitizer often. It seems to be helping. We also encourage children to cover their mouth when they cough (and then wash that hand!), blow their nose as needed and throw the Kleenex into the trash after use. Please encourage these habits at home. Thank you also for keeping your child at home until she/he is well. Unless it is actually raining, we will go out for recess every day and it can be pretty chilly. Please send a jacket or sweater with your child every day.

Sincerely,

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

Important Upcoming Kindergarten Dates:
February 5th: 100th Day Party

Previous 2007 Kindergarten Newsletters:
October 2007
November 2007