Mrs. Miller's Kindergarten Class
My name is Kathy Miller and I am 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. I am honored to be on this very memorable and special journey with you and your child! I will be updating this website weekly with our K1 Newsletter, class photos, important dates and information.
I look forward to working with you this year!
Important Dates:
Wednesday, December 17 - Winter Sing - 8:45 - Multipurpose room
Friday, December 19 - Minimum Day All k students meet 8:15-11:45
Hello K1 Families,
We had a wonderful week in K1!
Please mark your calendar for the Springhill Winter Sing, Wed. Dec. 17th at 8:45 in our multi purpose room. All kinders are encouraged to wear their pajamas that day to school! Please arrive early, parking will be tricky!
Our Holiday fun workshops will be on Friday, Dec. 19th from 9-10. Please consider volunteering that morning. Remember that all K students will attend school 8:15-11:45 that day! There will be no Early and Later Friends.
In phonics/reading this week we focused on encoding and decoding short /a/ words. We built short /a/ words with our magnetic building words tool. We wrote short /a/ words on wipe boards and practiced reading short stories that focused on short /a/ word families. Next week we will focus on the letters; b,l,f and i. Our red word this week was /play/. Next week we will focus on /my/ and /by/. Your child was given Unit 2 Red Words to practice at home. Please keep this list in a place where you and your child can use it as a tool for practicing reading and spelling. Our December’s reading log and reading fluency practice sheet is coming home this week. Please continue to work with letter sounds and names at home to develop fluency.
In math we continued working with teen numbers and have started to work with numbers in the twenties. Families, please continue to practice rote counting at home, and give your child lots of opportunities to practice counting objects. One fun way at this time of year is to count Christmas lights while driving at night!
Our theme for the month of December is family and family traditions. We drew our families and then painted them with watercolors. We learned a song about families and a new poem too! We will begin creating a holiday traditions song book that will feature four holidays; Hanukkah, Christmas, Las Posadas and Kwanzaa. Other family traditions and celebrations that we have learned about include Diwali, Thanksgiving and birthdays. We will also be learning about Chinese New Year, Holi, and Ramadan in the coming months.
It is so important that even if a child does not celebrate a tradition that we are learning about, they can learn that every family has their own traditions. When children are exposed to many different traditions and beliefs, we send the message that everyone matters and nobody is more important than others. Diversity makes us unique, and education makes us more accepting and tolerant.
On Fine Motor Friday the children used tweezers to decorate felt "cookies" with a variety of toppings. We used the tweezers to work on their small hand muscles and hand control they had fun creating beautiful and festive cookies. In addition to daily fine motor practice, I try to find one fun activity each week to engage the children in this important skill set.
I want to thank everyone again who contributed to the Holiday Outreach opportunity. We were able to give a local family in need a wonderful boost! Thank you to all that donated. The students enjoyed the hot chocolate party while wrapping gifts and making cards for the family.
Have a wonderful weekend! -Kathy
