Enjoy!
A wonderful teacher at High Bridge shared two fantatstic literacy links with the staff, and we want to pass them along to you as well. www.storylineonline.net has videos of books being read by famous actors, many of whom are familiar to young children. The videos highlight illustrations in the books, comments by the readers, and fun music and sound effects that complement the story. Watching these stories brought to life is a great way for kids to find new books that they like and add them to their collection. www.spellingcity.com is a site where you can enter kindergarten sight words, and have games and spelling tests created for your child. Some especially good features for kindergarteners are the Teach Me and Spelling Test buttons. In the Games section, try the following: Match It!, Which Word?, Unscramble, Audio Word Match, and Missing Letter. This site is a way great to help prepare your child for theme tests, and it will help them with reading.
Enjoy!
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In Kindergarten, especially during the first months, students do most of their language arts and journal writing responses by drawing pictures, or illustrations. You have seen us ask students on their homework to "use colors and details". Well, here are some real example from our classroom which show students beginning to move from the stick figure into more detailed illustrations. If your child is still making stick figures, he can learn with your guidance to add fun and important details...like clothes! Have a look. And here is a slide show you and your child can watch together. Mrs. C taught a series of lessons on landforms, like hills, valleys and mountains. At the end, we rolled up our sleeves, pulled out the flour and measuring cups, and created our own dough landscapes.
Click on the word Landforms to watch the slide show of the kids in action. Enjoy! We just finished a three-week unit on colors and color words, and the kids made lots of progress learning to read and write them. Now you can extend their learning at home with one of these fun at-home activities:
In math, we are studying numbers from one to ten. Most kindergarteners can say their numbers aloud from one to ten. Counting objects, and learning an innate sense of numbers (or mental math) can be a lot more tricky. To help your child with numbers at home, here is a fun and easy game that you can print out and play just about anywhere: If you play this game several times a week at home over the next few months, you will be shocked at how quickly your child will grasp addition and subtraction that we will introduce in the spring. If you liked doing these at-home activities, leave us a comment above and let us know how it went. We love to share fun ideas with you. Remember, you are and always will be your child's first, best
and most beloved teacher! This week, we begin a two new programs with our Kindergarteners to promote literacy and a love of reading. First, your child will receive a Pirate's Treasure reading incentive poster for October. It looks like a treasure map. As you and/or your child read a book, color in one coin on the map. Then flip to the back to write the title of the book, and whether or not your child liked the book.If your child reads 10 books and turns in the treasure map at the end of the month, they will win a prize from Pizza Hut or Dominoes Pizza. And don't worry if your child loses the form. You can always download and print another reading treasure map here. Secondly, we begin our traveling book bag program this week. Duffy the Traveling Dog (a stuffed dog, that is) will come visit the home of our Star of the Week each Friday in a special clear backpack. Instructions are inside the bag for reading and journaling activities. Also, some students will be checking out book bags from our class library. Each bag contains a book and a matching academic activity. Please ensure that all traveling bags contain all of their items and are returned promptly on Monday mornings so that other students may have a turn. If any items become lost or damaged while in your care, we do expect for you to replace those items. Did you know that you can access your child's grades online whenever you wish? It's called SchoolMAX Family Portal, located at the PGCPS website. Once you log in, you can look at grades in each subject, as well as attendance information, as soon as we put it up. You will need to get your family's log in code from the school secretary for the first log in. Once you are registered, you can follow the prompts to change the password to one that is easy for you to remember. Please contact the school secretary for more information about SchooMAX Family Portal. REMINDERS: -Scholastic Book Club orders are due on Sept. 28th. Please order online if you are able, so that our class can receive more books (and we can create more traveling book bags for the kids!) -Overall, homework is off to a great start. Just please remember to allow your child to do his or her own work as much as possible. If they cannot yet write, you could write the words they say in highlighter or yellow marker, then let them trace. Also, homework is due each Friday, and it does count for a grade. -It's not too late to turn in your "All About Me" project. Mrs. Ellie and Mrs. C have created a beautiful bulletin board with the students' pics and projects to display to all. In fact, please stop by when you can and have a look; it's so cute! Click here to see pictures of our bulletin board. Before you leave, take a look at our very first class book that the kids created during the first week of school. It's called "Here We Are". Have a great week! A bit of sad news happened in our class this week. We mourn the loss of our brown gerbil, Pudding. He was a little over one year old, and had a fun and happy life. Pudding loved to gnaw on cardboard, run and hop, and chatter with his brother Michael Jackson. We will miss you, little Pudding!!! Our Christmas gift for Pudding and Michael Jackson, our class gerbils. Now on to happier things! We have posted two new class videos. We have "The First Week of School", which highlights daily Kindergarten activities, such as Centers, lunch, and math tubs. Also, take a look at "When We Are Big", our second class book this year. The kids were asked what we can do now that we are big. Their responses were written, recorded and turned into this awesome movie. To see these movies, just scroll down a bit. And you can always watch all of our videos and classroom creations when you click on the Fun Stuff tab above. **click the arrows in the bottom-right corner to make it full-screen** In Language Arts, we are teaching a mouthful of a phrase: Environmental Print. This is simply words that are all around you. There are many words on signs, food labels, and storefronts that five year olds can already recognize and "read". We like to begin our reading curriculum by tapping into what the students already know and building on their self-confidence. We watched a powerpoint movie of environmental print, and all of the students were able to read those words. You can watch it at home too... just click here to get to Videos. We have a great online resource to share with you. The first is Scholastic Book Club Online Ordering. Each month, we will send home one or more book order magazines with your child. You can select the books you want to purchase and order them online. Just click on the link above, and then enter one-time Class Activation Code that was sent to you. Every time you order online, our class gets free books! You can also fill out the order form on the back of the magazine and send in a check if you prefer. Either way, our class builds up points to purchase books and materials for the classroom. Scholastic books are also high quality and inexpensive. We leave you for today with this thought...talk to your child each afternoon about their day using specific questions (i.e. who did you eat lunch with? Which is your favorite math tub? What did you write about in your Story Journal today? Tell me about your science experiment, etc.) Use the class schedule to help guide your questions or to get an idea of what to ask about. You may be surprised to hear all the things we do all day in K! |
Welcome!We are Mrs. Jenkins and Mrs. Koeppl, this is 123 KinderStreet, our little home away from home! Click on the pictures for more info about us. short /u/is
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