Hello Families!

We have been busy learning SO MUCH in kindergarten. In reading, the class focused on how to retell a story in sequential order--what happened in the beginning, middle, and end? Near the end of the week, we started to learn how to read a whole book and think about what the most IMPORTANT part was. Many times, kindergartners think "important" is synonymous with the word "favorite" so when they retell the most important part, they usually talk about their favorite part instead. We will be going over this reading skill again next week. Usually important parts involve a problem or conflict that gets resolved in the story or when the character has a change of heart.

Here is one of our reading assessments where students drew the main character and different parts of story.

With our word sorts, we focused on rhyming pictures and words. I teach a song called "A Hunting We Will Go..." and it goes like this...

A hunting we will go,
A hunting we will go
We'll catch a _____ 
and put him in a ______.
A hunting we will go. 

The class has to fill in the blanks with an animal name and match it with its corresponding rhyming word. For example, "We'll catch a FOX and put him a BOX" or "We'll catch a WHALE and put him in a PAIL."

I first taught the song on the Smartboard.

Then students cut out images from the song and sorted them by rhyming sounds.

A completed rhyming sort. We later glued them in our Word Sorts notebooks.

Our reading stations are all pumpkin/fall themed.

Put letters in alphabetical order

Spin and write the beginning letter sounds

Writing the popcorn word "see" and color words

Searching the room for words that begin with the letter P

Listening for the beginning letter sound in words

Matching letters to their corresponding pictures

Putting letters in order

Making words that we already know

In math, we made different repeating patterns using shape stencils. We will use our pattern place mats for our upcoming Thanksgiving Feast in two weeks. Hope to see you all there!

On Wednesday, we honored all of our veterans by wearing red, white, and blue and talking about our armed forces during social studies.

We discussed differences and similarities between the armed forces.

Students learned that veterans are people who once worked in the armed forces and helped protect our country to keep it safe. They can be younger or older. 

We had a special visit from Cameron's grandparents and cousins who came for lunch and stayed after to read us a special Thanksgiving story. The class and I are always happy to have new faces in our classroom.

Remember that conferences are next Tuesday and Thursday, and then that following Monday. I am very excited to talk with you all on the successes and growth that your child has achieved so far this year!