Mrs. McCord's Kindergarten

October 3-7, 2011

This week we will be working with the letter M.   Please have your child find a few pictures of things that start with M and bring them in for our dictionaries.  We will also be doing a lot of fun activities with apples this week.  Be sure to get the new page into the Phonics Notebook and keep reading them.  Please send 1 apple in on Monday.  Red, yellow, or green—the bigger the better.  We will be using them for making graphs, and comparing using the terms: “more”, “less”, “fewer” and “equal”.  We will also be exploring ordinal numbers as well as position words.  You’ll be amazed at how much we can do with apples! 

In science, we will continue to talk about the changing season, and we might also have some fun with magnets.

In social studies, we will be talking about Christopher Columbus since Columbus Day is coming up on October 10.  (Not a school holiday )

We are in the process of setting up conferences for the week of October 24-28.  A letter with your specific assigned time will come home on Friday, October 7.  If you have a preference, now is the time to let me know.  I will do my best to accommodate you.

Monday is Baker night at Sweet Tomatoes.  A form is coming home today.  You must present this form when you go Monday night in order for Baker to receive their 20% credit for your participation.

There is also a form for "Book-It" in your child's folder.  This is a program sponsored by Pizza Hut to encourage your child to read (or be read to) at home.  Our goal each month is 20 books.  Just write down the titles of the books that you and your child read together and send the completed form back at the end of the month.  If your child returns the form with 20 books listed, they will receive a coupon good for one personal pan pizza.  I will send a new form home with the calendar each month.  The program runs from October through March, 2012.

It’s hard to believe we are into a new month again! I am loving this cooler weather!  I hope everyone has a great week!

September 26-30

September 26-30

Next week we will be learning about the letter I.  It will also be the first full week of Fall, so we will be learning about and doing fun activities relating to the change of season. 

We’ve been starting to read simple 3 letter words, focusing on the letters that we have already covered.  Their Phonics Notebook provides great practice for this.  I hope everyone is doing that at home a few times a week, as well as reading together.  We have also started learning to read color words.  We’ll be doing ore of that next week.  They are doing a great job with this!.

About half of the kids have learned their address and telephone number.  Please keep working on that at home.  It is important that they learn these.

Math—more of the same: patterns and writing numbers.  We also work every day with days of the week, months of the year, seasons, as well as pennies and nickels.  We will begin talking about the concept of more and less and fewer.

It was fun to see so many of you at McDonalds Tuesday night.  That was a great fundraiser for the school.  Thank you to those of you who came out and braved the crowd.  This Tuesday is our first Sparkles Skate Night for this year.  This is a great way for the kids to see each other outside of school and burn off some energy too!

Tuesday is also Vince’s birthday!  We are hoping he will have a very special day!

 

Thank you for the toilet paper rolls that have come in.  If you wouldn’t mind saving them for a few more days, we will be using them in a Fall art project next week.

That’s about it for this week.  I hope you are as encouraged as I am about how much your child is progressing.  It’s hard to believe we have only been in school for  5 weeks—they are like old pros!

September 19-24

This is such a great class.  I am really enjoying them.  They have made friends and have really fallen into the routine.  The days are going very smoothly and we are accomplishing a lot!

I hope they all enjoyed and told you about our “P Picnic”.  It was fun—who knew so many foods begin with P!  Ask them to tell you all the “P” foods we thought about.  We also had fun this week learning about our five senses and how we use them to learn about the world around us.  We figured out that the only sense you cannot use with a cinnamon roll is hearing.  They thought that was pretty funny as we tried to listen to our cinnamon rolls.

Next week we will be working with the letter “H” and will talk about living in a community.  Please help your child learn their birthday, telephone number and address if they do not know this yet.  It is a safety issue as well as a Kindergarten Social Studies standard.

I am sending a new sheet today to be added to the Phonics Notebook.  These are words we can build with the letters we have learned: T, O, P, and now H.  I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for your child to keep up with this every week.

Math—more of the same: patterns and writing numbers.  We also work every day with days of the week, months of the year, seasons, as well as pennies and nickels.  We will begin talking about the concept of more and less and fewer.

This Tuesday, (Sept. 20) is Baker Night at the new McDonald’s on Jiles Rd.  From 5:00-8:00, part of the proceeds will go to Baker Elementary—you might also see some familiar faces behind the counter.

Fall begins this Friday!  I hope that will be the end of the 90 degree weather!  We have had some beautiful days for recess this week—the lower temperature feels so good.  Hopefully we will have a long string of nice cool weather coming up.

I hope everyone enjoys the weekend.  I’ll see them all back here on Monday! 

September 12-16, 2011

This week we will be working with the letter P.  Please send in some "P" pictures for our dictionaries.  I will be sending home their Phonics Notebooks this week.  Please keep these at home and each Friday I will send a new sheet for you to add to it.  If you can spend a few minutes at night 3 or 4 times a week going over the sounds and words in this notebook, you'll be amazed at how your child progresses with phonics and reading.  It never fails that the students who keep up with this all year progress at a faster rate than those who don't work with it each week.

In Social Studies, we will be talking about our five senses.  Soon we will start working on address, telephone number, and birthdays.  Most of the children already know when their birthday is, so please start talking about address and phone number at home.

In math, we will continue with Patterns and numeral writing.  We'll be focusing on more difficult patterns (AAB, ABC, ABB etc.) and will also be looking to find the missing piece in the middle of a pattern.  I hope to finish this chapter on Patterns this week, since most of the children are really "getting it".  For those still struggling, I will work with them individually.  We are also talking every day during our calendar time about ordinal numbers, first through tenth.  That is one of the skills I need to assess for this first quarter report card.

We have two birthdays to celebrate this week: Elijah on Thursday and  Liam on Friday!  Our first 6 year olds!

On Wednesday, WellStar will be presenting a program called “Germ Quest”.  This teaches the importance of washing their hands and how germs can get spread so quickly.

The weather is finally cooling off, which will make recess much more pleasant.  Fall is right around the corner!   Please remember it is best for your child to wear sneakers every day.

I hope it is a great week for everyone.

Week of September 6-9

Week of September 6-9,  2011

A new month and a   l  o  n  g  weekend!  Things are going very well here in Kindergarten.  I am really enjoying this class and looking forward to a wonderful year with them!

It was great to see so many of you Monday night at PTA Orientation.  I hope it helped to clear up any questions that may have come up during the past couple weeks.  If you were not able to be here, please be sure to read the information packet that came home with your child on Tuesday.  We will be able to discuss more specifics about your child at our conference in October.

This week we will be focusing on the letter O.  Please send in a few small pictures of things that begin with O for our dictionaries.  We will also be learning about opposites and reviewing some rhyming with words in the _og, _op, and _ot word families.

In math, we are going to really start working on numeral writing.  Please help by practicing at home for a few minutes each day.  We are also starting Chapter 2 in our math books, which deals with patterning.

In Social Studies we will be learning about the flags of USA and GA.  We will find similarities and differences in them and discuss the meaning of flags, as well as the Pledge of Allegiance.

Friday is Picture Day!  There will be more information about this coming  home.

Friday is also Baker's Back to School Luau Dance!  It is 6:30-8:30 here at school.  It will be a fun evening for the whole family. 

I hope everyone enjoys the long weekend.  Happy Labor Day!