Featured Links
http://www.starfall.com/n/level-a/learn-to-read/load.htm
http://www.mrcpl.org/literacy/lessons/sight/index.html (matching game 1)
Current Themes
During the month of January we read stories about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life and we discuss his vision for our country and the challenges he faced. We connect what we read to our classroom through various activities. We’ve already talked a lot about differences previously and we continue to celebrate them in our classrooms. During the week of January 9th we will learn a lot about penguins. Through stories and games, the kids will love those cute little creatures even more. We do many science experiments during January exploring the topics Sink and Float, and Solids and Liquids. The kids will really enjoy the hands on activities that we have planned and you’ll be hearing all about it. The winter months can’t go by without discussing seasonal changes. We read a lot of winter stories and engage in art activities surrounding this topic.
In February we celebrate two important things. We celebrate our friendships and we will be having a Valentine’s Day party on Tuesday, February 14th. The children may bring in valentines. Each child will make their own folder in school to collect their Valentine’s. A list of children’s names and pictures will be sent home prior to the party. To make things a bit simpler, your child can cut each name with picture and glue them onto the envelopes. The other celebration is for the 100th Day of School. There’s a special project to be completed at home to help us celebrate this special day and more information will follow.
Developmental Learning
The children have shown a great deal of growth in their phonetic spelling or “kidspell”. Developmentally, they are at different places in this writing process. Some children know the names of all the letters and their sounds while others are moving in that direction. They are encouraged to write the sounds they hear. Some may only hear a few sounds in a sentence; some may hear the first sound of words and may make strings of letters; and others may hear more sounds and may be familiar with other writing conventions like spacing between words or punctuation, etc.
In reading, the children are making tremendous progress. They enjoy learning the new sight words and they feel so confident when they can read them in a book. We continue to work on isolating sounds of a word and blending them together to make sense of the letters. As they become more secure in the letter sounds, this becomes easier and easier for them. It is so fun for us, as teachers, to watch this happen. It’s so rewarding! You can visit the websites below to practice these skills.
The kids are expanding their number sense in math. We continue to do activities to increase number recognition and provide meaning to the numbers. We play games with cards, dice, and dominoes to do this. The children are beginning to make sense of the hundreds chart by recognizing the patterns. We are also doing activities involving coins. If you have older children you probably know how difficult this is for them. At this point we are just learning to identify pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. We look at their attributes (color, size, texture of the edge) to determine which coin it is. We talk about their values, too, but just knowing their names is the objective.
Current Sight Words
I a an am my the to like come
he here this for see look you what where
do go one two me
Important Dates
January 11 Early Release-No PM K
January 16 Martin Luther King, No School
January 9 Penguin Week
January 23 Show and Tell Week
February 7 Early Release-No PM K
February 14 Valentine's Day Party
February 13 Show and Tell Week
February 20 Winter Vacation
Have a great 2012!
Mrs. Ridge, Mrs. Forestell, and Mrs. Foley