Week of December 2

Resources are jam packed this week!! We have: Monday-MUSIC, Tuesday-ART, Wednesday-MEDIA, Thursday-ART w/Schmidt, & Friday-P.E. Monday is the last day to send in your Mooseltoe. :) Any that are sent in after that will be returned home. Friday all monies and signed permission slips are due for Diamond D. Ranch. Money will not be accepted late, so please send it in soon! Friday is also Stuffed Animal Day!! Please make sure the item comes to school in your child's backpack. Also, Kingston is giving Fun Friday Fruit Snacks to the class. :)

**Monday, December 12 the Holiday Shoppe opens. The students that have money will go shopping after lunch. **

MATH

The students are doing great with  math right now!! There is a lot of partner and whole group work so that the students are able to discussing their thinking and use the vocabulary they are learning. This week we will review heavier and lighter, while also discussing equal weights. The students will all take turns figuring out how many pennies/ cubes/ counting bears equal the weight of an item in the room using the balance scale. (We are borrowing 10 balance scales from Ms.Thompson, so the students are really getting a hands on experience!)  We will brush on the terms volume and capacity by going outside with different items to dig and different items to fill with sand. The students will experience what it's like to fill cups and bowls of different sizes using spoons, measuring cups and shovels. 

Here is an online game your child can play that uses the words heavier and lighter. Be prepared... you may even find yourself playing the game with your child. :) Click here to visit the game. 

SAXON & SIGHT WORDS

Saxon is continuing to review the following letter names and their sounds in isolation: k, m, a, t, h, o, f, i, n, p, r and s. At this time we are only focusing on the short sounds of vowels. Also, you have probably noticed on the Reading Practice Sheets that some of the words have blends. Please make sure your child produces the blends and one sound together instead of doing two separate sounds. An example would be the st~ I need to hear /st/.  Also, we will be discussing quotation marks in books. Discuss them with your child so they don't interfere with their reading. 

Our sight words for the week are: not, has, some and they.

READING
The Kindergarten Classes are going to be taking some breaks from doing Duval Reads lessons full time. We were all in agreement that some of the standards could be better taught using real books. For example: compare and contrast characters in one story, compare and contrast characters in two different stories. Along with the standard of retelling.
So with no further adieu, lets get to it! Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday will consist of the story Little Red Hen. By Wednesday your child will call this their favorite story ever! So that you are a little more familiar with it, here is a youtube video for your child to enjoy.

On Thursday we will reread the story With a Moo, Moo Here from Duval Reads. (If you don't remember this story, check back on last week's post.) This rereading will remind the students what real cows look like, sound like and the actions they take. This will prep them for Friday's lesson on Compare and Contrast with characters in another book. (I tried finding a Youtube video, but none were just right. So you may want to go check this story out from the library. It's hilarious!! Farmer Brown falls asleep and the animals all make quite the mess in the farmhouse. haha)
Here's a picture of the book's front cover.


WRITING
This week the students will be completing a writing piece for a grade. The piece will be about the things they did over the weekend. If your child can't recall the things they did, they will make up a weekend to write about.
To earn the best grade possible, the students need to have a clear picture that consists of character/s and setting. Then they will need to write a sentence that matches their picture. With most of their sight words being spelled correctly and then sound out the other unknown words. I will also be looking for spaces in between words and punctuation at the end. The students have used periods and exclamation marks in their writing, so either is fine.