Spring!

Oscar was our star student this week. He is a star because he is cool.  

Thank you to all the families who came out to our Open House!  We had a great turnout!  I could not have asked for a better group of families!  You are caring, dedicated and supportive.  I am truly blessed to be a part of a great district both personally and professionally! 

I would also like to thank the families who bought gift certificates for me for the Book Fair!  I was able to shop for some great new books!  Thank you!  

Fourth quarter goals:

Reading

Identify rhyming sounds

Isolate beginning, middle and ending sounds

Identify letters in random order

Connect sounds to letters

Write all letters from memory in random order

Match all uppercase letters to lowercase letters

Recognize the following popcorn words: who, what, where, there, say, away, play, they, eat, please, want, with, came, make, ate, ride, was, saw, are, well, pretty, funny, under, find, blue, yellow, red, pink, black, orange, white, brown and all

Writing

Form letters correctly

Math

Count by 1's  and 10's to 100

Read, write and compare numbers to 20

Add and subtract to 5 with fluency

Identify and describe 3d shapes: cube, cone, cylinder, sphere

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

IMPORTANT!!!

We put popcorn words from our last three quarters in the "To Be Left At Home" section of our folder. Please keep those words at home for practice. The children were given a new bag for the fourth quarter words. Please look for the words who, what, where, there, say, away, play, they, with, want, please, eat, came, make, ate, ride in the new popcorn bag. We will continue to add this quarter's popcorn words to the new bag.  

Next week's words: was, saw, are and well

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...

Words We Know (1st-3rd quarter 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, come, soon, went, two, three, be, come, went, soon, get, help, now, our, out, will, must, have, here, into, that, this , and new

Some ideas to do with popcorn words: write them in shaving cream, rainbow write, 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!

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!!!

This week we reviewed our class poem, Giraffe and highlighted the popcorn words including "they".  The last few popcorn words have been tough.  Please be sure to keep practicing at home. We also enjoyed the Weekly Ready, Too Much Trash!  in celebration of Earth Day.   The kindergartners noticed the exclamation mark in the title right away!  We talked about the different ways we can be responsible in order to keep our Earth clean.    We also listened to and watched a story (thanks to technology) called Cinnamon in the April Shower.  The kindergartners then brainstormed the different things we see in the springtime.  After brainstorming, we wrote a class acrostic poem called Spring.  We also enjoyed the book Ten Little Mice.  We noticed that on every page one mouse would go home.  So we were able to write a number sentence for each page subtracting one each time.  

The -ot and -op families were introduced to the kindergartners this week.  Thank you for sending in the -en, -et, and -ed family books.  Thank you for your continued support!  

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. ***

This week for math, we worked on understanding that the teen numbers have one ten and how ever many ones (18=1 ten and 8 ones).  The children also practiced writing these numbers.  The kindergartners were also introduced to 3-D shapes.  We also worked on subtracting facts of 5. Please continue to practice adding and subtracting on paper at home.  

We are continuing to count to 100 by 1's and 10's

Have a wonderful weekend!