Week 5 Update September
8,2012
Last week we introduced several new things to our
classroom! Maybe you’ve already heard
from your child about the lizards hiding all around our room, our room labels
and our new fishing game! The kids
seemed very excited about each of these as they were introduced. It was great week for us all as we can almost
see “the light bulb” come on in different areas with different students! That’s what I love about Kindergarten!
Hide and Seek Sight Words
is our new game, where each morning I hide these cute little paper lizards with
sight words written on them. Many of
them are found early in the day as students are unpacking and getting settled
in, but some (in really good hiding places) surprise us throughout the day! The first morning it was pretty much mass
chaos as every student wanted to continue searching for lizards after the easy
ones were found! I’m trying to teach
them that we can’t turn the room upside down each morning, but that I have
hidden them in strategic places where they will be found throughout our
day. Perhaps you even heard about the
real lizard that seemed to want to join our game! He appeared on the outside of the window of
the front door of our classroom! See the
picture below. Anyway, this game is a
great way to encourage the students to study their sight word list. FYI, sight
words are common words that don’t always fit the phonics rules we are
learning and therefore cannot be “sounded out “with accuracy. They are words
that we all just know by sight like “the”, “said”, “one”. Your child has the Dolche Pre Primer list in
their Frog notebook. You may want to
make flashcards of these to help your child memorize them. When they find a lizard they are supposed to
tell me what the sight word on it is. Later
we will have students keep a log by writing them down.
The students also enjoyed finding the room labels that I placed around the room. These are just little tags with names of
items on them like: door, sink, window, rug, white board, etc. This helps connect written words with
everyday objects. They are using their
phonics skills to figure them out!
Our fishing game
consists of a blue container (our pond) and a couple of small bamboo fishing
poles with magnets on the ends that attract the paper clips on each fish. Right now we are fishing for upper and lower
case letters, matching them up and putting them order. The possibilities with this game are
endless! I’ll be switching out the
activities regularly.
On Fun Friday, we had a great time spelling sight words with
our Scrabble Cheez-Its and everyone did a great job with consonant Show and Tell!
A Peek at the New
Week
Our Sight Word for the week is “is”. Remember to work on
the sight word list in your child’s Frog Notebook at home at a pace comfortable
for your child. We are working on the
long and short sounds of the vowels and focusing on the “-at” family.
This week in Math, we will be introducing and working
with coins beginning with pennies,
nickels and dimes. Our Poetry
recitation will be the first part of the poem,
”Jingle in My Pocket” which
will help them learn the values of the different coins.
This poem is located in a plastic sleeve in your child’s Frog Notebook. We will focus on the rest of the poem at a
later date as we expand our money skills.
We are also beginning some work on telling
time. The students are excited about
our new special clock to help us with that!
For now we are focusing on the parts of a clock and telling time to the
hour.
We’re still waiting for our new handwriting materials from Handwriting Without Tears, but the
initial transition to our new paper went very well. As I stated last week, you’ll see a variety
of lined papers in our activities, but this new paper will be what we use when
we are concentrating on letter formation.
Homework Week of September 10 – 14
Monday – Read in A Beka reader through circled page with date. Return on Tuesday.
Tuesday – “at “ family worksheet
Wednesday – Math sheet 21-22
Thursday – “My Chameleon” worksheet
Poetry Recitation – “Jingle in My Pocket”
This week we are
beginning a poem/song about money that will take a while to learn. Please work on the first section at home this
week. The poem is in a sheet protector
in the Frog notebook.
The written
homework may all be turned in on Friday.
The
sight word puzzle may be kept at home.
