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Kindergarten News
January 2009
Dear Parents,
Happy New Year! Now that the “Ice Storm of 2008” and our very busy and exciting holidays
are behind us, we are ready to begin a new year! We hope that you and your families enjoy a year
of good health and happy times.
Winter Concert
Our winter concert has been rescheduled for Friday, January 9th. We will begin at 10
a.m. doors will open at 9:45 a.m. Our holiday snack will be on Thursday, January 8th. If you
would like to take your Kindergartner home after the winter concert on Friday, please come to
our classroom to sign your child out. Thank you.
Martin Luther King Day
There will be no school on Monday, January 19th, in honor of Dr. King’s birthday.
Reminders
• Now that the winter weather is upon us, please remember to send in shoes or slippers
with your child on the days that snow boots are worn to school. Or you may choose to send in a
pair of shoes, slippers or old sneakers that your child may leave in his/her coatroom cubby.
• For safety reasons, children need to wear sneakers on Gym days. Those who do not may
need to be observers on those days to insure their safety.
• Please be reminded that children need to bring a healthy snack and a drink every day to
school. We encourage children to try to bring fruits, vegetables, granola bars, yogurt,
crackers, cheese, popcorn, pretzels and other healthy types of snacks. Thank you.
• White communication envelopes need to be signed and returned to school on Mondays.
• Please be sure to check your child’s backpack every day for school notices.
Curriculum
Science discussion topics this month will include: winter and day and night. In Social
Studies, we’ll be talking about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In Fundations, we will finish learning all alphabet letters and sounds. For our next
teaching unit, we will focus on helping children to hear individual speech sounds in words by
tapping out each sound with their fingers. We will start with simple CVC (consonant-vowel-
consonant) words. This strategy will aid in learning to spell words as well. We will use real
and nonsense words as part of our practice. Children will be taught to listen to the word and
tap out the sounds. They will also look at words and sound them out without tapping each sound.
More time will be spent on reading simple sentences using “tap-able” words, sight words and high
frequency words, which may or may not be sight words.
As children become stronger at sounding out words (decoding), they will be spending more time
spelling their own words (encoding) as they try to write stories and label pictures. They are
using their growing knowledge of phonics (letter names and sounds) and phonemic awareness
(rhyming, blending, matching sounds, segmenting sentences, words and syllables), letter
formations, punctuation, spacing and size of letters and words.
January is the month of assessments! We will be checking children on basic reading and math
skills in preparation for report cards in which will be sent home in early February. We will
also be evaluating children’s progress in reading sight/high frequency words. We will be using
Aimsweb (DIBELS) to assess letter naming fluency, phoneme segmentation fluency and nonsense word
fluency. The latter three are one-minute tests.
At the end of the month, we will launch Readers’ Workshop in Kindergarten. Our daily literacy
block will include a focus lesson, independent reading time and group share. Children will have
their own individualized reading bags to use! My aide and I will be conferring with children and
working with small groups on targeted reading skills and strategies.
Our Everyday Math activities/skills in January will include:
forming numerals 0-9; patterning; recording and interpreting data on graphs; # sense; greater
and less than; measuring with non-standard units of measure; using playing cards for number
sense games; and introduction to probability.
Since September, we have been learning to “read” the temperature on our window
thermometer and now we are going to start to graph the changing temperatures each day by using
colored Unifix cubes. The children are learning vocabulary words such as:
higher, lower, equal, pattern, mercury, temperature, thermometer and range as well as
understanding better what causes changes in temperature during the course of a day, week, month
and year. One of the first places the children go to each day as they enter the classroom is the
window thermometer to check the day’s temperature!
Handwriting and Pencil Grasp
We are continuing to stress to children how to correctly hold their pencils (and all
other writing utensils, as well as scissors) so as to ensure proper fine motor habits.
Please encourage your children to correctly form letters and numbers. If your child is
having difficulty writing letters or numbers, you might try writing them with dotted lines or
writing them with a highlighter pen for your child to trace over or “boxing” them in to help
children see how large or small the letters and numbers should be.
Responsive Classroom
Our daily Meeting time continues to be fun and a great learning experience. We are
seeing good eye contact, polite manners – both verbal and nonverbal – thoughtful questions and
comments and a community spirit of sharing, caring and helping. Meeting time offers excellent
oral language practice and listening opportunities for children which we know will benefit them
as they grow as individuals and as students who will later on be asked to use their language
skills for district and state testing programs. (Meeting time also affords us the opportunities
for short Math, Science, Social Studies and Reading practice and review lessons).
When issues come up that affect how our class functions as a “family,” we discuss them together
and try to figure out ways we can make things go more smoothly.
Please remember to consult the sharing schedule, which is sent home every two weeks, for your
child’s turn to be ready for his/her sharing time.
Thank You!
A heartfelt “thank you” goes out to all parents who have contributed to our class
celebrations and who have sent in items from our scrounge list. While I do not have time to
write a personal thank you note to each of you, please know that I appreciate your generosity.
Happy New Year!
Paula Hedlund
Jennifer Gentleman
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