Dear Room 1A Families,
We hope you are planning to attend our Learning Lunch this Friday from 11:00 – 12:00. We will learn, set up, and practice the games your child will be getting for summer learning until our regular 11:30 lunch time. Then, we will be eating lunch in the classroom from 11:30-11:50 (regular Kindergarten eating time) before ending with some recess time. If you are planning on eating hot lunch, please call the school (268-6800) by 8:45 am this Friday to let them know so they can add you to the lunch order for the day. Let me know if you have any questions about the Learning Lunch! Please carefully read, sign, and return the field trip form (green) in this Wednesday envelope and return it by this Friday. If you do not have the $4 yet, you can wait to send that, just have it here by Friday, May 18. The end of the year really flies by! I can’t believe how fast it’s all going. Please let me know if you want to chat about your almost-first grader sometime before the school year ends! :) Mrs. Knowles Dear Kindergarten Parents, Our last day, Friday June 1, is our field trip and we will need $4.00 from each student to pay to get into the Children’s Museum. Our amazing PTA has agreed to pay for all of our city bus tickets and part of the admission for the Museum for all of the Kindergarteners! If you see a PTA board member, THANK HIM OR HER!! Please sign and return the bottom of this letter, along with your $4, by Friday, May 11. The school also needs the lunch count for the last day by Friday, so decide your child’s lunch plan now. Give your permission to have your child attend the field trip and then select if he or she will be bringing a cold lunch from home or if you’d like the sack lunch option which is the “hot lunch” choice for the last day of school. (This will be charged to your child’s hot lunch account just like any other hot lunch.) Thanks! Mrs. Knowles, Mrs. Matteson, and Mrs. Dues I, _____________________, give my child, _______________________, permission to attend the Kindergarten field trip to the Children’s Museum and Gibson Park on Friday, June 1, 2018. He or she will have: ____ Cold lunch brought from home ____ “Hot lunch” sack lunch purchased from school Signed: _________________________________ Dear Room 1A Families, April 25, 2018
Our ABC Countdown begins TOMORROW with A is for America day. Kindergarteners should wear red, white, and blue and get ready to travel all across the whole United States! J Thank you to Shaniqua who brought the bubbles for our B day on Friday. Keep checking the calendar each evening so you know what is coming up the following day! We had our eggs delivered on Monday, so we are incubating a dozen hopefully-developing baby chicks! Ask your scientist about the incubation process so far. We will be talking about the development for the next 21 days while we wait for them to be ready to hatch! We’ve also studied goldfish and guppies, earthworms and redworms, and pond snails. Such a fun little zoo right in our own classroom. J Hopefully your child explained the reason I included a piece of paper in the homework folder with the book this week. He or she may write a narrative piece about a time they played or watched baseball (or any sport), or write an informative piece about any facts you know about baseball (or any sport). There should be at least 3 sentences. We will have two more weeks of homework and then wrap it up on May 11. :) Mrs. Knowles Dear Room 1A Families,
Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s always such a fun day to spend with Kindergarteners. I’m so lucky to spend my days with my 20 little Valentines! In this week’s Wednesday Envelope, you will find our YELLOW sight words! Yay! We finished another set. Add these to your pink and orange sets…we’re moving onto green words! You will also find a pink half-sheet with information about the upcoming “I Love to Read” week activities and dress up days! This is such a fun week for our whole school to celebrate a love of reading! I will have your conference time finalized this afternoon at our staff meeting and then I will attach your confirmation form to tomorrow’s Behavior Calendar. Next week there is no school on Monday the 19th and then the first night of conferences is next Thursday the 22nd! February is flying by! :) Mrs. Knowles January 3, 2018
Dear Room 1A Families, Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were relaxing and fun! I had a wonderful break and was so happy to come back to a class full of ready learners in Room 1A! We’ve had two incredible days back to school. We welcome a new student, Fay, this week and another new student Alexis next Monday. This brings the class total to 20 students. The end of the 2nd quarter comes towards the end of this month. As we wrap up the first semester of Kindergarten and move onto the second half, the curriculum becomes more and more rigorous. You can support your learner by continuing to (or beginning to if you haven’t made it a habit yet) practice sight words (both reading and writing) reading books together, and keeping up on weekly homework. Challenge your child to try some of the menu items that are more work or ones he or she hasn’t done before. This will grow him or her as a reader and writer. Continue to check and sign your child’s Behavior Calendar each Thursday night, and return it to school on Friday morning with the homework folders. This month’s book order will go home next week. As always, let me know if you have questions or concerns! Happy 2018! Mrs. Knowles January 10, 2018 Dear Room 1A Families, This week in Wednesday Envelopes you will find your child’s first pages from the math notebooks we’ve started. I really hope that he or she can explain to you what the notebooks are and what we’ve done so far. I hope they will also be able to communicate that we started with extremely simple math content so that we could learn the procedures of how to do math notebooks. These are a fun way for Kindergarteners to learn the math standards and they are a great way for you to keep track of the standards we’ve done because the “I can” statement at the top of each page is the “kid word” version of the standards. Next week, there is no school on Monday, January 15 for MLK day. There is an early out at 1:15 on Friday, January 19, as that day is the last day of the 2nd quarter! The book order I sent in homework folders is due this Friday. Also remember to support your Kindergartener with turning in the behavior calendar AND homework folder every Friday as well. As always, let me know if you have questions or concerns! Mrs. Knowles Dear Room 1A Families, You will find an extra packet of worksheets in this envelope. These can be completed if your child wishes. They are not required and should not be returned to school. If your child does not have an interest in doing them over the break, throw them away! Remember the only “homework” your child needs to do over the break is to learn and practice tying shoes (and zipping his/her coat zipper if that skill is not yet mastered). Hopefully you have at least a few chances to read and write the orange and pink sight words.
Remember that Friday is the day of our Sock Exchange. The maximum is $5 to spend and your child should bring a sock gift for a child of the same gender. You can send these tomorrow if you’ve already got it ready or send it Friday morning. Please plan on having it here Friday morning, not afternoon, as we will exchange in the morning. Your child may also wear warm, school appropriate jammies. Do not plan on your child wearing slippers. We still do have PE that afternoon. I hope you’re able to enjoy some time off and time together over your child’s Christmas break. I consider myself especially lucky to spend my days with your children. I know how much they mean to you and they are so very special to me, too. Remember to check the website. I updated the “Kindergarten Spotlight” page and this newsletter is there digitally under “Newsletters.” www.knowleskindergarten.weebly.com Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays! :) Mrs. Knowles Dear Room 1A Families,
Hopefully you read the note about our Holiday celebration this year that was attached to the orange sight words with homework. Please let me know if your family needs support with the sock gift exchange. The limit is $5, but you are not required to spend that much. Remember that we will do the exchange at school on Friday morning, so please send the socks with your child that morning or Thursday if that’s better for your family. Since it’s also the last day before Christmas, we will watch Polar Express together. If your child wishes, he or she can wear warm, school appropriate pajamas to school on Friday, December 22nd. In math, we have begun a Number Bootcamp, similar to the ABC Bootcamp we did at the beginning of the year. You will not see any math papers come home until this is completed, as we are keeping them together in our work folders and will be stapling them into a set. When we finish number 10, we’ll staple them together and then they’ll go home. We started number 1 today, so we won’t actually finish until after Christmas break. The purpose of this Bootcamp is to solidify your child’s knowledge of the Counting and Cardinality standards. I’ll attach those under “Parent Page” on the website for your reference. I will not be introducing any new sight words next week. This time should be used for reading, writing, and playing with the words your child knows so far, all the pink and orange words. Message, email, or call me with any questions! :) Mrs. Knowles Dear Room 1A Families,
This week in Reading, we are learning the sight words red, orange, yellow, and of. The focus of my lessons are recognizing sequence in stories and using that to help retelling a story, fiction or nonfiction. We are also working on writing sentences using our sight words and other words we choose to make a complete message (sentence). I am teaching the Kindergarten writing standard on opinion. Ask your child what an opinion is! Your child should be very fluent at counting 1-50. If he or she isn’t, count whenever you can! Let him or her count in the bathtub, in the car, in the morning when getting dressed, etc. By the end of the year Kindergarteners need to be able to count and recognize numbers up to 120. Bonus if they can also write them. Your child should also be very confident with recognizing and naming a circle, square, triangle, rectangle, rhombus, trapezoid, hexagon, and octagon. Looking ahead to the break, your child’s “homework” is to learn how to tie his or her shoes. If he or she already knows how, then that’s great! Please take time over the break to teach and practice tying shoes with your child. If he or she is also unsure of zippers, please teach and practice that as well. With Montana winters requiring lots of cold weather gear, we need efficient coat zippers! It’s even better if you start now and your child learns these important skills soon! Remember that the Christmas music program is this coming Tuesday, the 12th at 1:00! :) Mrs. Knowles Dear Room 1A Families,
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and were able to enjoy some days off with your Kindergartener! We loved visiting my Mom and Dad for a quiet Thanksgiving in Sunburst, my hometown. Now that we are back to school, the next few weeks until Christmas break will really fly by! Our Christmas program is now less than 2 weeks away! It is Tuesday, December 12 and the Kindergarteners will perform at 1:00 pm. When it is over, you may take your child home for the day if you wish. For your information only (please do not tell your child this yet!) Each December, I turn the front bulletin board in my classroom into a “fireplace” and each student gets a stocking. Then, “Santa” comes each day and leaves a little surprise! If you are not ok with this, please let me know very soon. Otherwise, I can’t wait to share some holiday spirit with your children this month! :) Mrs. Knowles Dear Room 1A Families,
Thank you so much for your participation and donations to make our 50th day Sock Hop a success! I have some pictures to add to our website. Those should be up under Kindergarten Spotlight later this afternoon before I leave today. As we move into the 2nd quarter, you’re probably noticing more work coming home in Wednesday Envelope. It is so valuable for you to discuss these pages with your child. If he or she can reflect on what the lesson was about, tell you what the direction was, or tell how they fixed a mistake, you can tell that your child understands the information. If your child can explain it to you or “teach” you the lesson, you know he or she has a whole other level understanding, called application. Just as reflection is important for adults, it’s valuable for students as well. We have been working hard on the names and characteristics of the 2D shapes. This is another area where you can discuss learning with your child. If he or she does not know the names of a: circle, triangle, square, rectangle, hexagon, trapezoid, and rhombus, take the chance to practice those shapes and their names, how many sides, and objects in real life shaped like that. As always, I’m here for any questions or concerns you may have. I can’t believe we’re only a week away from our Thanksgiving Break! This year is flying by! :) Mrs. Knowles |
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April 2018
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