Mrs. McCord's Kindergarten

March 28-April 1

We are off to a GREAT start with our carnival basket, thanks to our Room Mom, Claudia Ellis and Mrs. Schumacher's Room Mom!  They have gotten a big start on building a "man cave" basket, complete with tools, videos and a lot of other surprises.  It is shaping up great!  If you have access to anything that might be appropriate for it, please let me or Claudia know.

This last week before spring break we will continue talking about “spring like” things such as insects and bugs.  We will work with the letter Zz (this leaves only Qq for after spring break).  We planted some seeds early this week, hoping to see some development before next Friday, but given my green thumb (or lack of) I have already warned the kids that not all seeds grow the way we might like.

In math, we will continue with measuring, graphing and addition.  Measuring is a little tricky sometimes, but we’ll be working on it. If you let your child practice measuring things at home, they will get the hang of it much faster.

This week is Georgia’s Exceptional Children’s week.  This includes all children with a variety of disabilities.  Our class has participated in helping to make the banner that will be displayed celebrating Baker’s diversity.  Thursday will be “Baker’s True Blue” Day.  We are encouraging all students and staff to wear blue on Thursday, March 31.  Please be sure to read the blue flyer that your child brought home on Thursday for further information.

If you have not returned the signature card from your child’s report card, please do so.  The report card is yours to keep. I just need the signature card and brown envelope.

We have been doing a lot of work with “word families” and will continue with this for the remainder of the year.  Most of the kids know all their sight words by now.  With this and their increasing ability to sound out words they are really becoming good readers---and writers!  I hope you are seeing this at home.  Please keep working with them in their Phonics Notebooks and their book of “tricks”.   The more confident they become, the better they will be able to read more difficult books.  I am very proud of how well they are doing!

I hope everyone has a fun, safe spring break.  It is amazing how quickly the year is coming to a conclusion.  We still have  lot of work to do before then, but it incredible to see how far they have already come this year!

Have a great week and a wonderful, restful, spring break!

March 21-25

This week we are really doing the letter Y!  Sorry about that mix-up last week.  I guess I am getting ahead of myself--trying to bring spring break just a little faster!

I hope your child told you about the dastardly deed the mischievous leprechauns pulled on us!  It was quite upsetting (more than I knew, for some).  When we came in from recess, everyone's clip was on red!  He (they?) also messed our room up pretty badly.  The good news was that at least he left some chocolate gold coins.  It was the least he could do!  I hope nobody had similar problems at home.

We will start off spring by learning about seeds and plants and flowers.  This will be a fun unit.

In Math, we will be learning about measuring and graphing.  We have been “dabbling” in addition, and the kids are doing very well with it.  We will go into addition in more depth when we start that chapter in our math books after spring break.

Report cards will be coming home on Thursday.  Please sign the white card and return it in the brown envelope.  Please do not seal the envelope.  Look on the back of the report card to see specifically what skills your child was assessed on.

Friday is Spring Picture Day.  We will have our class picture taken, as well as individual pictures for those who pre-order.  Order forms came home Wednesday.

Have a good weekend—hopefully this beautiful weather will continue.

March 14-18

Saturday, March 19 is Senosi’s birthday!  Happy Birthday, Senosi!

This week we will be talking about the letter Y—sometimes it’s a consonant—sometimes it’s a vowel.  Tricky, huh?  We will also be talking about rainbows and leprechauns!  We’ll continue working with word families such as __un  and  __in. (sun, fun run, bun and win, bin, fin, pin etc.)  This naturally leads toward work with rhyming words.

In Math, we’ll be continuing with number words, reviewing patterns and telling time to the hour.  We have been doing some addition and it is going well, so we’ll move on to story problems.

In Science, we’ll be learning about rainbows and reviewing color words.

Looking ahead, the Spring Carnival is coming up.  Once again, they are looking for classrooms to make baskets to be raffled off. Our class will be teaming up with Mrs. Schumacher’s  Kindergarten class to make our basket.  If anyone has items that you or your place of work would be able to donate, (gift certificates, coupons for services etc.) please let me know.  We have to think of a “theme” for our basket, and if there are any large items that can be included, we might build the basket around that.

Don’t forget to “Spring Ahead” one hour this Saturday night!  Just another week of winter and then spring will be upon us!  It’s hard to believe how quickly the year is going by!

                                                              

March 7-11, 2011

This week we will be talking about the letter Xx, Windy Weather, and kites.  Since we are doing the letter X, we’ll also spend a little time talking about x-rays and bones.  In Math, we’ll continue working on coin recognition and trading pennies for nickels and dimes.   There is still a lot of confusion with nickels and quarters.

There are not a lot of "X" pictures available, so don't worry about that for this week.  Just a few more letters and their Phonics Notebooks will be complete.  I hope you are still using them each week.  It makes such a difference in their ability to sound out words if they practice with those sheets that have been coming home every Friday.

March 17 is the end of 3^rd quarter; report cards will be coming home on March 24.  Before then, I will be assessing all the kids to determine their current reading level.  We are also doing a lot more writing now.  It would help your child if they try writing a sentence or two at home sometimes.  They really enjoy trying it on the computer.  Right now our emphasis is on leaving spaces between words and starting with a capital letter and ending with a period.  They are doing very well—we just need to keep practicing.

If it is not raining, we go out every day—they need to run around!  It would be safer on the playground if everyone wore sneakers every day, not just PE days.

That's about it for this week--enjoy your weekend!