Kindergarten

2012-01-07T16:34:00.005-05:00

JANUARY 2012

Happy New Year!!!!!!!!!!!

This month will be filled with lots of exciting wintery-themed lessons!

* The girls will learn about what it means to welcome in a new year and traditions people have (ball dropping in Times Square, horns, party hats, streamers, etc.).

* They will learn how to write 2012 and the letter Yy for year.

* We will then go into a study on learning to identify the 12 months that make up a year. Through riddles, the girls will have to guess which month. We will discuss how many days are typically in a month; longer months and the shortest month. We will discuss holidays and special events in particular months as well. They will also write about which month is their favorite and why. We will then review the seven days that make up one week.

Other topics of study for this month will include:

* Learning about the season of winter (looking for signs of winter); exploring weather (learning weather words, and reading a thermometer to record the temperature inside and outside).

* We will compare/contrast clothing worn in the colder season vs. the warmer ones....through a fun retelling of The Jacket I Wear In The Snow.

* We will create a Venn Diagram on the SmartBoard to compare/contrast two very different, yet similar versions of the story, The Mitten (one by Jan Brett). Students will practice retelling both versions of the stories (beginning, middle, end....problems/solutions; characters, etc.) using a mitten prop and the corresponding animals that go with each version of the story.

* Students will learn about symmetry as they design a pair of symmetrical mittens to put on our own version of The Mitten Tree; another piece of literature we will read.

* We will learn how to use describing words to describe our mittens in detail. We will make a book on mittens that reviews opposites (old/new; clean/dirty; fancy/plain). The girls will also use pictures of winter clothing to create an intricate pattern. We will also identify our right from our left.

* We will learn about the -ING chunk as we locate it in winter words: skating, sledding, skiing, sleeping, hibernating, snowing, drinking.

* We will learn about words and word meanings as they are encountered in stories and lessons and discuss descriptive language in stories: characters, setting, problem/solution, retelling a story, identifying beginning, middle, end of a story; drawing story parts.

* We will discuss what a compound word is, as we locate the two words that make up snowman, snowflake, snowball, snowfall, snowshoes...etc.

* In learning about SNOW, the children will learn how to look for little words within a word when writing sNOw. They will learn how and why it snows; how six-sided snowflakes are all unique; how snow can be both good for us and dangerous for us as well. We will examine water in its phases as a solid, liquid, and gas. We will have some fun with snowmen as we make great books and learn some new HIGH FREQUENCY WORDS (HERE, HAVE, THAT, COME, SOME). The girls will make an edible snowman using cookies, marshmallow fluff, M&M's, chocolate chips, and pretzels. They will have to graph how many of each product they used to make their snowman. The girls will also be introduced to subtraction this month through a fun book about 5 fat snowmen who melt away because of the sun.

* We will learn about hibernation and animals that do/do not hibernate. We will learn about the deep hibernators, the torpor hibernators, and the non-hibernators. We will learn about how animals adapt and survive in the winter (hibernation, migration, camouflage), and how they get their food. We will learn about some polar animals and how they adapt to their surroundings (characteristics, habitat, survival techniques). The girls will be able to write at least one FACT about the animal.

* We will also learn about Martin Luther King Jr. The girls will learn about who he was and how he helped to change rules and laws so that all people would be treated equally and could live in peace. We will compare his teachings to those of Saint Francis DeSales.

* We will focus on reviewing vowels within words, and continue with word families, phonics/phonemic awareness skills, and begin using the Rigby Reading books in groups (in addition to the little books made in class).

* In math, we will begin simple subtraction, make six-sided snowflakes using pattern block shapes, learn about what comes in pairs (counting by two's), and begin simple and basic standard and non-standard measurement. We will also have some fun with geometric shapes: cube (ice cube); sphere (snowball); cylinder (Frosty's broom); cone shape (Frosty's carrot nose/ New Year's party hat).

2011-11-30T02:14:00.008-05:00

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas in Kindergarten!

-Here are some of the exciting things we will be doing during the month of DECEMBER!

-We will focus on symbols of Christmas: the evergreen tree, the candy cane (shaped like the shepherd's staff), reindeer (caribou), candles (symbol of light), Advent wreath (the circular shape is Jesus' never ending love for us), bells, and the legend of the poinsettia plant. We will be using literature to enhance our understanding of the meaning and importance of these symbols.

-We will explore the descriptive writing in the popular book, The Polar Express. We will compare/contrast the different versions of the stories as told by the gingerbread boy/man and the gingerbread girl. We will also explore what it means to give a gift from the heart as we read The Legend of the Poinsettia; The Crippled Lamb; The Christmas Sweater; The Innkeeper's Daughter; The Donkey's Song; The Little Drummer Boy.

-We will learn all about the first Christmas and the true meaning of the holiday....the birth of baby Jesus. As we count down the days via our Advent wreath, and the calendar with a different character for each day, we will discuss the Nativity. We will also act out the story with puppets of Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, angels, shepherds, wise men, animals, the little drummer boy, etc.

-We will learn briefly about other worldly celebrations as we compare them to Christmas. In addition, the girls will learn about a telling sentence and an asking sentence as they will write a question they have for Santa, in the hopes he will answer it for them. They will be making lots of great little books that continue to reinforce and/or introduce them to sight words. We will continue to work on letters and letter sounds; stretching out sounds in words; and onsets and rhymes. The girls will make some ornaments and also their very own model of the Nativity.

-We will also keep our eyes peeled for signs of winter: change in weather patterns and temperature. What is snow? and Will we get a lot of it this winter season?

-This month will be filled with a lot of excitement and anticipation! Please take note of the following reminders:

December 2nd: Half day of school (11:30 dismissal)

December 4th: Nativity Lighting / Advent Mass 6:30 PM

December 6th: Report Card Conferences (11:30 dismissal)

December 8th: Feast of the Immaculate Conception: school closed

December 9th: Chicken tender lunch

December 14th: Christmas Boutique: Dress-UP day for the girls

December 16th: Pizza lunch

December 19th: Christmas Show Dress Rehearsal

December 20th: Christmas Entertainment Show (10; 1; 7)

December 22nd: Cabaret Show 7:30 pm

December 23rd: Half day of school (11:30 dismissal)

December 24th-January 2nd: Christmas Recess - School Closed

January 3rd: Classes resume

I will keep you posted on when our holiday big sister/little sister get together will be.

*May you and your family have a most blessed Christmas season!

2011-11-03T15:30:00.003-04:00

November News!!!!!!

It is hard to believe that we are already in the third month of school! The girls are realizing how the weather is getting colder and the daylight is much shorter. They really enjoyed all the fun things we did back in October, but are now anxiously awaiting all the excitement of Thanksgiving and what's in store for this month.

The themes for this month will center around building our phonics and phonemic awareness skills; colors - recognition of and writing the color words; scarecrows; Pilgrims and Native Americans (the first Thanksgiving); and turkeys.

Lessons will include shared readings from big books pertaining to the themes, stories, songs, and even poetry! The girls will become more aware of the structure of a sentence, and they will continue to strengthen their reading readiness skills through more fun little books that we work on in class. The girls will be encouraged to continue sounding out and s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g out words when reading and also when beginning to write. We will continue to build on our inventive or phonetic spelling as we write.

Within readings of books and poems, we will discuss words we encounter and their meanings through the context in which it is used: examples include: floppy scarecrow; crops; Pilgrims; Plymouth; chores; churn butter; muck a garden; Native Americans; canoes; teepee; longhouse; wigwam; arrows; cornucopia; turkey; waddle.

We will continue to strengthen our ability to recognize and write color words through a fun study on scarecrow colors. We will review red, yellow, green, orange. Students will review looking beyond the first letter to identify blue, black, brown, purple, pink. We will use the SmartBoard to play some fun color-related matching games to reinforce their learning. The girls will also learn how to play a color word memory game, and they will make many little books on scarecrows and colors. In fact, they will even design their own scarecrow and write about all the colors of his clothing.

Fine motor skills will be practiced as the girls lace and "sew" apples and pumpkins for a Thanksgiving decoration. They will make patterned Indian corn, write about things they are thankful for, and work on a great story about the very first Thanksgiving. All of these things will be placed in a keepsake basket. We will also discuss the difference between a need and a want.....as we learn to be thankful for the things we have.

Math topics covered this month will include a continuation of numbers from ten and higher; shapes; making more intricate patterns; and interpreting graphs. We will continue counting our days in school and counting by tens.

In Science, the girls will experiment with mixing primary colors to get secondary colors. We will also learn how corn grows and all the things we can make from corn (muffins, cereal, popcorn, corn on the cob, etc.). We will also learn about many of the foods that they ate at the first Thanksgiving, and how that compares to what WE eat at our Thanksgiving table. We will also learn some interesting facts about turkeys and read some very silly stories about some very silly turkeys.

In Social Studies, the girls will learn how the Pilgrims and Native Americans lived and made use of the land and all its resources; types of houses they lived in; chores the children had; the struggles the Pilgrims had and how the Native Americans helped to teach them; tools they used; things they made; and the story of the very first Thanksgiving. We will actually dress up as Pilgrims and Native Americans and act out the story of the first Thanksgiving, concluding with a class feast.
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REMINDERS FOR THIS MONTH:

November 4th: Half day of school; Show-n-Tell day

November 7th: Wear your winter uniforms to school!

November 10th: Chicken tender day

November 11th: School closed for Veterans Day

November 15th: School Photo day!

November 17th: Pizza lunch

November 23rd: Thanksgiving Recess begins: half day of schol

November 24th and 25th: No school.....Happy Thanksgiving! May your holiday be filled with many blessings!

2011-10-04T22:23:00.002-04:00

Happy Fall!!!!!! Check out what's going on this month in OCTOBER!

October 3-7th: We will focus on using our senses to identify signs of fall. We will examine leaves and learn about how they change colors and create a blanket on the ground as they fall. We will make leaf rubbings, as well as some great little stories that will focus on simple, repetitive text and the words: I, see, the. We will begin to recognize some color words as well.

*We will watch a great little educational clip via the SmartBoard on Christopher Columbus.

Reminder: Friday is a half-day and a Show-n-Tell day too!

October 11-14th: We will continue our brief introduction to Christopher Columbus and learn about why his discovery was so important.

-Following this, we will learn all about Fire Safety Prevention this week: October is Fire Safety Month. The girls will learn all about safety precautions, safe and unsafe things to play with, and they will become aware and educated "junior firefighters".

October 17-21st: Apples!

We will study how an apple grows. The girls will taste the 3 different kinds of apples and graph their favorite, along with a tasting of apple cider, apple juice, Apple Jacks cereal, applesauce, etc. We will measure out the ingredients to make some homemade applesauce. We will make some great books on apples, write about the star that lives inside an apple, learn the word APPLE, along with some color words: red, yellow, green.

October 24-28th: Pumpkins!

We will study how pumpkins grow. We will make little books about pumpkins that have familiar sight words; learn the word PUMPKIN through a fun game; mix red and yellow to get orange...thus learning a new color word; and we will work on pumpkin math. The girls will be put into small groups. Each group will get a small pumpkin. We will weigh them, measure how tall and wide it is, and count out the seeds ( in groups of 10). After logging our results in a book, we will find which group had the heaviest/lightest pumpkin; which had the most/least seeds; who had the tallest/shortest pumpkin.

October 31st: Halloween fun; Come to school as your best impression of Fancy Nancy and enjoy a day filled with great treats and lots of fun activities for the day!

During this month, we will continue to develop our phonics skills; work on letters and sounds; stretch out words; recognize familiar words; continue to develop reading readiness strategies and skills. In math, the girls will make observations from a graph; use pattern blocks as we learn about shapes; use unifix cubes to create patterns; play number/shape games; make number books; class graphs, weather graphs; counting on; number placement, etc. In science, we will read about some interesting things in our Science Spin and National Geographic magazines.

-I will keep you posted on a possible date for a Halloween get-together with our 8th grade "big sisters".

2011-09-08T17:56:00.019-04:00

September 2011

Welcome

I hope everyone had a restful and enjoyable summer. All of the girls had a fantastic first day of Kindergarten. They were all smiles and very excited about the fun things we will be doing this year. They enjoyed meeting our class bear named TEDDY, singing a song about him, and adding the letters of each other's names to help learn who is in our class! We jumped right into our daily routine as they were introduced to their daily math journal, and they began to use the calendar to identify the month, day of the week, number of days in school, and graph the weather.

We went on a tour of the school to familiarize everyone with where they would have certain classes such as physical education, art, and music, and also went to see the dining hall and the outside playground. We read some great stories, including Kindergarten Here I Come: The Kissing Hand; and Froggy Goes To School. We worked on story recall to identify specific details pertaining to these great pieces of literature.

This month, our focus will be centered on introducing the children to conventions of print and beginning to develop their reading readiness skills. They will also learn class rules and routines, and adapt to a fuller schedule with specials (which will begin during the first full week of school). The children will learn how to "work the room" within rotation groups, play appropriately within each of the centers, and work cooperatively within our class family.

For the month of September, we will explore our 5 senses as we focus on an All About Me self-discovery theme. The children will identify their 5 senses, as well as their physical attributes. Through hands-on experiments in our science center, we will explore our ability to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Through this theme, the children will learn more about each other as well. They will compare/contrast similarities and differences in physical attributes (eye color, hair color, etc.) Each child will have the opportunity to be the Star Child of the Day. This great honor will help the children in identifying the names of one another as well as help the girls get to know each other.

We will make numerous books that the girls will begin to "read". The children will begin reading familiar text through a study on Nursery Rhymes. The girls will learn how to use pointer finger to point under each word as they read. Within our study on nursery rhymes, we will spend a lot of time identifying rhymes, rhyming word pairs, reading familiar text, and learning some repeated sight words.

The girls will learn to identify the difference and correlation between letters, letter sounds, and words. They will become aware of the spaces in-between words, and begin to use reading strategies. We will begin to review letters and letter sounds as well. As we work on proper letter formation of upper and lowercase letters, we will learn to identify the letters within our own names, as well as the names of our classmates.

Finally, the children will learn proper grasp of a pencil when writing, and we will strengthen our fine motor skills through coloring, cutting, painting, tracing, etc. The girls will work on and practice writing their first name as they learn how to form letters correctly.

Within our math curriculum, we will begin to review shapes and numbers. The girls will make number books and learn to identify how many and write the numbers 1 to 10. We will also begin to identify simple ABAB 2 color patterns.

The curriculum will be enriched with issues of our Weekly Reader, Science Spin, and National Geographic magazine subscriptions throughout the year. I will explain more about all of this, as well as Guided Reading, Take-A-Book Home (lending library), our book/buddy journal writing experience, and our Big Sister/Little Sister program at the Open School Night.

Please take some time to read the parent/student handbook, which is now on our website. This will keep you informed on the school's policies.

I look forward to an exciting year!

Warm Regards,

Mrs. D'Addona