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

We are so happy to be your child's teacher. This kindergarten year will be a year of new beginnings, a year filled with large and small accomplishments, a year of trying new things and making new friends. Kindergarten is an important year in your child's education. It sets the foundation for future years.We are honored to be on this very memorable and special journey with you and your child! We will be updating this website weekly with our K1 Newsletter, class photos, important dates and information.

We look forward to working with you this year! 

Important Dates:

September 7 - No School Labor Day

September 18 - Fall Picnic

October 12 - Teacher workday - no school for students

October 30 - Halloween celebration - Minimum day for K all students meet 8:15-11:45

Hello Families!   

This week flew by! The children did so well adjusting to the longer day and new schedule! We are always surprised at a young child’s willingness to adapt! We appreciate everyone getting to school on time and remembering the Extended Day and Wow Wednesday schedules!  

Have you heard of the term “growth mindset”? We are talking a lot about this in kindergarten! People used to think that our intelligence was “fixed”, meaning that we were either born with smarts, or not! Now scientists and researchers have proven that our brain is like a muscle and that the more we use our brain and challenge it, the more we can learn and become a stronger student! So… each day in class we talk about giving our best effort, embracing challenges, being ok with failure, persisting through tricky things, and we tell ourselves that we might not know how to do something…YET! At home you can talk to your child about things that may have been difficult for them at school that day, how they persevered through it, or remind them that each time they fail at something, that they keep trying!  

Our kindness awareness is growing! Each day we talk about ways we can be kind and the children let me know when they see someone else show kindness through an action or words! We have a puff ball  jar in our room that gets a sparkly puff ball added to it when we see a friend doing something helpful or kind for another child. We are getting close to filling it up! The students love this positive incentive jar.

In our phonics program this week, Bridge to Reading, we continued to investigate the alphabetic principle. We explored our classroom for different prints and letters. The students are becoming experts on the concepts of print. We are learning about the structures of sentences and how letters make up words, words and spaces make up sentences. Also, every sentence begins with an uppercase letter and ends with a punctuation mark, such as a period. Please look for a handout entitled “A Peek at our Week” in your child’s Friday bag. This flier will outline our phonics lessons each week and will provide ways to practice and extend learning at home. Next week we will focus on the letters: m, s, a. 

We read the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, by Bill Martin Jr. this week. The students are creating their own special versions of this favorite book! Each day we read and sing the book and listen for the rhythm in the language! We are also learning the colors in American Sign Language. We are working on listening and following directions and building our cutting skills. The children know that when cutting, “one hand is the helping hand, and one hand is the working hand.” They also know to “always keep your thumbs on top when cutting” 

In math this week we started working on recognizing shapes by their attributes. Some of the tricky shapes include hexagon, trapezoid and triangles. We will be working on a shape book to help with our shape recognition. 

In social emotional learning this week we talked about “The Group Plan.” Having a group plan, and understanding what a group plan is, is essential for participating in society, being part of a group, being productive in a classroom, hanging out with friends, playing sports, etc. We will continue to circle back with this concept and explore and practice how a group plan may look like in different settings.  

On Wednesday, we had a visit from our fourth grade buddies. The fourth graders helped assemble the kindergarteners  painted rainbows by adding rainbow rays in rainbow color order. They also read and colored a mini Brown Bear reader focusing on color words. It was very fun! We will enjoy time together every other week during the year.

Ms. G, our “feelings teacher” gave a lesson on Zones of Regulation to our class on Tuesday. The Zones of Regulation provides an easy way to think and talk about how we feel on the inside and sorts emotions into four colored Zones, all of which are expected in life. I will be sending a handout from Mrs. G. home next week with more information. 

We are working hard to strengthen our hand muscles. Some of the fun activities we did this week to work on fine motor skills included using whole punchers, tracing letters with q tips, and various cutting activities. Fine motor skills are critical in kindergarten for enabling essential academic tasks like writing, cutting, and coloring, as well as for improving independence with daily activities like dressing and eating. 

In math this week we explored math tools that we will be using throughout our year. I asked the students to ask themselves, “What do I wonder, what do I notice?” as they explored the manipulatives. We also started Number Talks. A number talk promotes flexibility, accuracy, and efficiency in mathematical thinking through the discussion of mental math strategies. A Number Talk is a 5 to 10 minute, whole-class mental math activity where students find the solution to a math problem in their heads. They then engage in a teacher-facilitated discussion encouraging them to explain their thinking, justify their reasoning, and make sense of each other's strategies

Last week we had our first art lesson with Ms. Valyrie on Monday. The lesson focussed on different types of lines an artist might use in drawing. Our young artists had fun drawing curvy lines, wavy lines and zigzag lines while creating snakes!

Please find September’s Reading homework and phonics homework in your child’s Friday bag. Each day when you read a book to your child, they can color in a leaf. When all the leaves are colored they can return the paper and earn a trip to our prize box. Please also practice the letter naming and sound practice on the back page of the reading log each day at home. This daily practice will help your child with their emerging fluency.

Enjoy the weekend, and thanks for all the support at home! - Kathy & Stephanie