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:

November 23-27 - No School - Fall Break

December 9 - Winter Sing - 8:45-9:45

Dear K1 Families,

It was a shorter week but it was filled with so much learning!

Friday was Walk to School Like Ruby Bridges Day. This is an annual day of dialog to commemorate her historic steps and bravery. We read a book about Ruby Bridges and all three kindergarten classes walked around our kinder yard to remember Ruby’s legacy. 

November is Indigenous People’s Month. We started to learn about the Native Americans that lived in the Lafayette area for tens of thousands of years.They called themselves the Saclan People. We learned that many years ago they built their homes from willow branches and tuli grass. We will continue to learn about Lafayette’s First people next week. We read the book Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Smith. This lovely affirming story is about how a contemporary Native American girl from the Cree Tribe turns to her family and community to help her dance to find a voice and learn to perform the jingle dance like her grandmother and ancestors. After reading the story we watched a short informational clip of a member of the Cree Nation dance to native drums in a traditional jingle dress. We even followed along and tried to jingle dance too! Ask your child about it!

In reading this week we reviewed all our unit 1 and 2 Red words and spent lots of time reviewing all 26 letters and sounds. We will begin our 3rd phonics unit next week. The focus of this unit will be on starting to blend sounds together.

We continue to talk about how people are the same and different. Diversity activities teach young children to respect and celebrate the differences in all people. Learning about different cultural aspects offers new experiences for children. It also helps them realize that we're all humans, despite differences in how we look or dress, or what we eat or celebrate. This week we learned about Diwali. We read many books about this holiday and had classmates share how their families celebrate Diwali.

We also learned about Veteran’s Day and began talking about Thanksgiving. We talked about what kinds of family traditions we might have at Thanksgiving. We even finished our Classroom Thankful Turkey display. It is filled with 23 beautiful handmade feathers. We used a toilet paper roll as a painting tool and created colorful turkeys complete with your child's picture. Be on the look out for these cute turkeys to come home next week.

In math we began our third unit, Shapes All Around us. The children talked about how shapes can be described by their attributes; sides, vertices, curves. We discovered that shapes can still be the same even if they are turned or are smaller or larger. We read the book, Tortillas are Round, by Roseanne Thong. In this beautiful book about shapes, a girl discovers a world of shapes around her. 

Please remember we are in the rainy season now and your child will be playing outside each day unless it is continuous rain. A warm raincoat instead of an umbrella helps your child be able to play and eat snack outside.

Our students enjoy weekly music lessons powered by LPIE, and each year they share some of the pieces they’ve learned with our school community. These performances are a special tradition, and we look forward to celebrating the season with music!

• K–3 Holiday Sing: Wednesday, December 9, 8:45–9:45 a.m.

• 4th/5th Grade Holiday Performance: Thursday, December 17, 1:30–2:30 p.m.