Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Bobby was our star student this week.  He is a star because he cares for others.  





IMPORTANT!!! 
POPCORN WORDS are adding up!!! Please be sure to continue to practice popcorn words with your kindergartner.  There are quite a few now and we will be adding four words a week soon.  See ideas below...

We will need to know 94 popcorn words by the end of kindergarten

This week we learned the popcorn words come, soon, and went. Please practice popcorn words at home with your child. The popcorn words are found in the red bag in their green folder. The bag should contain the following words: I, a, it, in, like, see, big, my, up, run, is, but, can, am, did, not, we, me, on, at, on, ran, for, yes, and, little, so, go, no, the, you, down, he, she, one, two, three, be, come, went, soon, get, help, now, our, out, will, must, have, here, into, that, this and new.

Next week we will be reviewing popcorn words.  We will empty our popcorn bag and place words from this quarter into a plastic bag to make room for next quarter's words.

POPCORN WORDS: We sorted our popcorn words. The words that are in the plastic Ziploc bag are words we know: a, and, at, am, big, but, can, did, do, for, it, into, I, in, is, like, little, my, me, not, on, run, ran, see, too, to, up, we, and yes. These words are now posted on a word wall in the classroom titled "WORDS WE KNOW". Please keep both bags in your child's folder (after you've practiced with him/her daily, hopefully!). We will continue to use all the words in the classroom.

Some ideas to do with popcorn words: write them in shaving cream, rainbow write (the kids know this one), write them in rice, use magnet letters to spell the words, stamp out the word using letter stamps, play memory using the words (you will need to make two sets of each word in order to play), write using chalk, find the words in books or magazines, use letter stencils to make the words, use play dough to make the words. These are all ways to help reinforce these popcorn words.

FOCUS and LISTEN...use your attent-o-scope!!! We need to use our eyes, ears and brain when we focus attention on something. We say "Eyes are watching. Ears are listening. Bodies still. Voices off. Or Mrs. Riadi rings the bell. Or we say attent-o-scope. These are all ways we remember that it's time to FOCUS and LISTEN.

Building our social skills is also important in kindergarten!

Mrs. Will visited our classroom and worked with us on writing.  She's very impressed with how we are working very hard to be good listeners   

POSITIVE BEHAVIOR!!!

Our Good Job PAWS BIN!

Every Wednesday I will be picking three names out of the Paw Jar. These three students will be able to choose a prize from our GOOD JOB PAWS BIN! The more paws they earn the more of a chance they have of getting picked! Ask your son/daughter how he/she can earn paws!

In order to maintain a positive atmosphere at this age, we need to constantly reinforce expected behavior; therefore, I'm asking for your help to build a classroom treasure chest. I am looking for small items such as stickers, pencils, erasers, small toys (McDonald's Happy Meal toys), items that five/six years would be excited to get!



Box Tops!!!

BOX TOPS: Don't forget to send in Box Tops!!!

We started the week off  with a new poem!  It is called Practicing. We circled number words using different colors for different words.  We also noticed a couple of other popcorn words that we highlighted.  The kindergartners brainstormed things that we find on a farm and we made a list.  After reading the story, What's On a Farm, we compared our list to what we read about in the book.  We then finished the sentence I went to the farm to see....We also enjoyed a Weekly Reader called Welcome to Ireland.   We learned that Ireland is called the Emerald Isle.  We also learned that Ireland has farms, cliffs, and cities.  The kindergartners enjoyed the book Twas The Night Before St. Patrick's Day.  We talked about what the children did for St. Patrick's Day and then the kindergartners had a chance to write what they will do for St. Patrick's Day.  We will share them next week.  We also continued working on word families.  This week we focused on the -ing family. We will work on the -ip family next week.   

We are done with all of the Jolly Phonics sounds. We will continue to reinforce the sounds as we chop up words. The children will be bringing home the final three groups of letter sounds cards.

IMPORTANT...The kindergartners will need to be able to say 40 random letter sounds in one minute by the end of the year.  

***Please practice building fluency with your child. Make flashcards with the letters on them (mix uppercase and lowercase together). Time your child to see how many letters he/she can produce sounds for in one minute. Fluency with letters will eventually help with fluency in reading. We do this in the classroom so the children are familiar with this. ***

The goals in math for this quarter are adding/subtracting numbers 1-10 using objects or pictures to help solve a number sentence. The children will also be expected to count to 75. They will also be expected to recognize, write and compare numbers 11-20. The children will also be expected to know that numbers 11-19 have one ten and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones.

We are continuing to count by 1's and 10's. Keep counting at home!

We will also continue to compare numbers (greater than/less than).

Have a wonderful weekend!