Mrs. Miller & Mrs. O'Toole's Kindergarten Class

Our week was filled with pumpkins! We learned about the life-cycle of the pumpkin, sang pumpkin songs and recited pumpkin poems. We painted pictures of pumpkins and created a K1 pumpkin patch. Next Friday we will go up to the Springhill garden and explore pumpkin science! Thank you to Sloan's parents for purchasing the pumpkins and for bringing them to school for us! It is a HUGE job and we are so appreciative of their time!

We have been doing a lot of writing in class. The children are learning to plan out their writing; by counting the words in their sentence, tapping each word as they write and remembering to use what they have learned about letters and sounds to write. They are also learning how to label their pictures to give more information and are making sure that they leave spaces between words. 

In social emotional learning we talked about flexible thinking. Flexible thinking helps us see things in new ways. If you are flexible, you are ok with changes, and your thoughts do not escalate your emotions. When you are a flexible thinker, you make people feel good, you don’t ruin the fun, and you go with the flow! We are finding daily ways to practice flexible thinking in K1!

In preparation for Halloween next Friday, please remember that All Kindergarteners will attend school 8:15-11:45.

Our kindergarten parade will be held on the lower playground at 11:00! All Families are encouraged to join us and be sure to bring your camera! Please follow Mrs. Thallaug’s costume rules. Also, have your child wear their costume to school on Halloween. Thank you for all the extra volunteers and donations for our Halloween fun. 

Thanks again for all the help at home working on nightly reading and daily letter name and sound practice. Remember that the quicker a child can recognize a letter’s sound, the easier it is to begin to read and write! Children’s reading development is dependent on their understanding of the alphabetic principle – the idea that letters and letter patterns represent the sounds of spoken language. Learning that there are predictable relationships between sounds and letters allows children to apply these relationships to both familiar and unfamiliar words, and to begin to read with fluency.

In Bridge to Reading this week we focused on the sounds /z/, /y/ and /x/. The readers are listening to words and looking at pictures and are deciding what sound they start with. We listened to the ends of words to hear the /x/ sound as in box, axe, and fix. Our red words this past week were: for and or

In math this week we used ten frames and practiced building numbers 0-10. We also have been working on estimating each week. Estimating is a fun way to develop and encourage logical thinking and number sense. We are working towards having each child estimate a reasonable guess and not a “wacky” guess in our practice.

We loved meeting families this week at parent conferences. We appreciate everyone talking about how their child is feeling about kindergarten and having you ask what you can do at home to support your child’s learning and social and emotional development. We are fortunate to have such involved and caring families!

Have a wonderful weekend! 

Kathy & Stephanie