November 28th-December 2nd

I hope you all had a nice relaxing break. I spent the long weekend in California visiting my husband's parents. I asked each kiddo to share one thing about their break today and it was great to hear some of the fun things you all did.

Reminders

This week Durham is having a Scholastic Book Sale in the library. On Wednesday I will be taking both classes to look at books and that will be their designated time to purchase books. If you'd like to send money please, send it in an envelope on Wednesday. If you'd like to look at books with your child, you can also make purchases until 3:30 PM.

Tuesday evening Durham is hosting a Family Fun Night from 6:30-8:00 PM. Each family that attends will receive a "Klutz Build a Book" and there will be stories as well as some projects for kids to make.

Scholastic flyers will go home on Friday and will be due Monday. This is a very quick turnaround, but I want to ensure that books will arrive before break for anyone who orders.

Also, I will be sending another family project home on Friday. Projects (family tradition collages) will be due December 12th.

Reading & Writing

This week I am introducing the /sh/ sound and the /z/ sound. The children are also learning how to "Stretch and Spell" so they can write down words. This is a skill necessary for writing (thinking about the sounds in a word you want to write and writing the letters that make those sounds). At this age, I encourage kids to sound out the words they want to write and I do not correct them if they don't include all the correct letters in order to spell a word conventionally. It's more important to me that they write the words they hear and continue to try to write independently rather than relying on me to tell them how to spell a word. Most of the words we write as a group are short and we "break them down" so the kiddos can write each sound. When they write on their own, however, they tend to write longer words and don't always hear all the sounds. For example, if a child wants to write horse and he/she writes down hrs, that is a completely acceptable way to spell in Kindergarten. Children may not yet hear all of the sounds in a word and there are many tricky spelling patterns in the English language that they haven't learned yet. As the year progresses, we will continue to learn more sounds and long vowel spelling patterns, but for now, please encourage your child to sound out the words he/she wants to write and let them spell the words phonetically as they hear them. As they gain more and more exposure to printed text, they will start to recognize the "correct" way to spell, but it is a developmental process and we are just beginning!

This week we are focusing on the letter N and the children will color the flag of Nepal on Wednesday. We talked about how people greet each other in Nepal by saying Namaste and bowing, so we will practice that during our greeting circle this week.

Our word of the week is "to" and we have a very fun song that goes along with it.

Last week our staff attended a fantastic training on vocabulary with Anita Archer who shared with us some great activities and strategies to promote vocabulary development. I would like to start including a math and/or science word as a vocabulary focus each week along with our letter and sight word of the week.

Math

This week we are starting chapter 2 which focuses a lot on five-groups. We are practicing the numbers 6-10 with emphasis on seeing those numbers as a five-group plus a particular number of extras. Tomorrow the kiddos will use stampy markers to show the numbers 6-10 as a five-group with extras. On Friday, you will receive a parent letter from the math program with some visuals and a description of our work with five-groups. Those sheets are important to read and hold on to because it might help explain the homework that will come home for this chapter.

I am off to get back the results of our most recent ultrasound! Let's hope everything is looking good with Baby Girl Toppel!