Mrs. Welcomer's Class News

Hello K2 Families,

We had a wonderful week in K2!

Please mark your calendar for the Springhill Winter Sing, Wed. Dec. 18th 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. 20th from 9-10. Please remember that all K students will attend school 8:15-11:45 that day! Please sign up for volunteering! 

In social emotional learning we read the book Listening with my Heart, by Gabi Garcia. This story talks about the importance of not only having empathy, kindness and compassion for others, but the importance of loving yourself. In today’s hypercompetitive world, children often internalize the message that their worth is attached to accomplishments and that messing up is something to be ashamed of, rather than simply is a normal part of life and learning. This negative thinking can lead to harsh self-talk, and children thinking that they are not good enough. Listening with my Heart, reminds us to have compassion for ourselves and that mistakes are just a setback and a part of life. Parents, you can model self-compassion at home, and remind your child that every mistake is an opportunity to model kindness and compassion for ourselves.

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 is bringing home Unit 2 Red Words for you to practice with your child at home. Please keep this list in a place where you and your child can use it as a tool for reading and spelling. Your child is also bringing home December’s reading log and reading fluency practice sheet. Please continue to work with letter sounds and names at home to develop fluency.

In math we counted by ones, fives and tens and worked on grouping large quantities of objects by groups of tens and ones. Families, please continue to practice rote counting at home, and give your child lots of opportunities to practice counting objects at home. 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 lovely and vibrant backgrounds for the picture. We learned a song about families and a new poem too! We will began 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.

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 Jennifer Lamba for wrapping all the donations, securing gift cards and delivering everything to the drop off center!!!!! Jennifer you are amazing!

Have a wonderful weekend! -Katherine