Weekly News: October 3-7

This week we will continue to read and write about Autumn. We will learn about leaves and continue to discuss our favorite fall activities. 

We are so excited about our field trip on Tuesday! Remember to send your child to school this day in a normal shirt (we will be throwing their brand new field trip t-shirt over their clothing). Students do not need to bring a folder or a snack. Thank you to all parents that have spoken to me about chaperoning and paid the chaperone fee. Chaperones will be following the bus up to Los Rios. We are so excited for you to join us! 

We are more than half way through our first trimester! I have been assessing the students on foundational skills, writing, counting and cardinality, and geometry. On Friday, your child came home with their "Goal Sheets" for Foundational Skills and Writing. Counting and Cardinality and Geometry goal sheets will come home this upcoming week. Highlighted are your child's current goals that we are working on in class. Please reinforce these at home and work with your child on these skills. Of course, we have not learned everything there is to learn yet, but I wanted you to be aware of your child's progress so far. Students have been working so hard and I am so proud of how much we have grown so far since the beginning of the year! 

Spirit Week is coming up next week! This is such a fun week where we can show your school spirit by dressing up every day! Start planning what you'd like to wear now! 

Monday, Oct. 10: Mis-Match Day (dress in clothes all mixed up and not matching! How fun!)

Tuesday, Oct. 11: Twin Day (in kindergarten, we like to wear our ILCS school shirts so that we can ALL be twins and no one is left out!)

Wednesday, Oct. 12: Superhero Day (dress as your favorite superhero)

Thursday, Oct. 13: Sports Day (dress as your favorite sports team or sport)

Friday, Oct. 14: Dress as your favorite movie character! :) 

What Are We Learning This Week?: 

Sight Words: HE, SHE, WENT, TO, PLAY.

Letter Team:  AY (like in PLAY, DAY) and ING (like in SING, RING).

Word Family:   -AY and -AM. Please help your child with word families of the week by asking them to create different words with  the word family -ay (for example: BAY, DAY, SAY, MAY, HAY) and -am (SAM, HAM, RAM, SLAM).

Reading: We will continue reading books about Autumn and leaves. We will begin a new author study as we read books by Laura Numeroff, the author of "If you Give a Mouse a Cookie". 

Writing: We are practicing using the sound chart to sound out words that we do not know how to spell. In our journals, we are working on adding details to our writing and writing more than one sentence on the same topic. Your children brought home their September journals last week. Attached to these journals were your child's current writing goals. Please go over these with your children, praising them for their efforts and discussing ways to make our writing even better.

Math: This week, I will be working with the students on their Counting and Cardinality goals and their Geometry goals. These goal sheets will be coming home on Friday so that you are aware of what skills your child needs to work on. We will also continue learning about shapes as we play games with tangrams and learn how to join shapes together to create new shapes. 

Leadership: This week, we will be discussing the last letter of our leadership, ROAR: R - RISE TO SERVANT LEADERSHIP. We will discuss ways to be a leader in and out of the classroom. Part of rising to servant leadership this year will be our community service projects. Every student will be responsible for 6-8 hours of community service this year and their projects will be due in May. We are recommending that you not wait until March or April to do these community service projects and hours, but start thinking about it now. In fact, a homework assignment coming up in November will be to write down and turn in your plan for your community service. I wanted to give you a heads up so that you can start thinking about this now as a family.

Homework: October 3-7

Please take a moment to read each section of homework. I understand this can be very overwhelming. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or concerns.

Flashcards: Make flashcards for our new sight words (HE, SHE, WENT, TO, PLAY), letter teams (AY and ING), and word family (AM). Study these flashcards (and those from previous weeks) every day. Visit our Sight Words tab for more flashcard ideas.

Phonemic Awareness: Your child's Foundational Skills goal sheet came home on Friday with his or her highlighted goals. Please refer to this sheet and work with your child on these skills that he or she still needs to master (blending, segmenting, rhyming, syllables, add/change/delete a sound, etc.) Please see our Phonemic Awareness tab for ideas and tips. 

Reading: Play Smarty Ants for 10-15 minutes each night. Read the paper books that have been coming home to live in your Home Book Box. Read the books in your book bag. Go on RAZ-Kids Online Reading. Read to your child every day and have your child read to you every day. Find sight words and letter teams in books, in the car as you are driving - we want to give you plenty of opportunities to just READ, READ, READ!

Click on the links below to access our online reading programs... 

Smarty Ants Reading World

Username: Bess

Password: read

RAZ-Kids

Class Log-in: mrsbess (no spaces!)

Password: abc

Writing: Write every day in your at-home journal. Practice proper penmanship using the lines to help you. Practice writing your sight words of the week. Practice using an uppercase only at the beginning. Some students should now be working on writing one to three sentences on the same topic. Some students are still practicing writing their names, letters, and sight words. 

Math: Play Dreambox for 10-15 minutes each night. Study the 3D Shapes that came home on Friday and ask your child to name each shape and describe the attributes. (Example, "This is a cone, it has one circle face and one vertice.") Keep going over those Daily Math worksheets that go home each day to see if your child needs help with a particular skill. Remember to check the back to see our Math Talk of the day.  

Dreambox Log-in Information is below... 

DreamBox 

Our school code is: X2we/inlandlcs

Dream Box Parent Letter       Dream Box Parent Letter Spanish        

QR Codes: Our class uses a LOT of QR codes in our learning.  Mrs. Stanley has created many QR code activities for all of our kindergarten students to scan and work on at home. Each week, these will be uploaded on ParentSquare. Please print these pages for your child to work on at home each week. One great idea is to put these pages in sheet protectors and add these pages into a binder for your child to refer to all year long. 

Turn-In Homework: This week, we will be discussing the last letter of our leadership, ROAR: R - RISE TO SERVANT LEADERSHIP. Please write one sentence about how you be a leader. Draw a picture to go with your sentence. NOTE: Part of rising to servant leadership this year will be our community service projects. Every student will be responsible for 6-8 hours of community service this year and their projects will be due in May. We are recommending that you not wait until March or April to do these community service projects and hours, but start thinking about it now. In fact, a homework assignment coming up in November will be to write down and turn in your plan for your community service. I wanted to give you a heads up so that you can start thinking about this now as a family. 

Note: If you visit the following link (Sharing Paper), you'll find a great printable writing page with a spot for writing and for a picture! Feel free to print off a bunch of these pages to use for turn in writing homework each week :) 

Weekly News: September 26-30

Happy Autumn! This week we will be reading and writing all about fall. 

We are so excited about our field trip next Tuesday! Please send your child to school this day in a normal shirt (we will be throwing their brand new field trip t-shirt over their clothing) and without a snack (snack will be provided). Please keep an eye out for field trip permission slips being sent home and return them ASAP. Students will NOT BE ABLE TO GO ON THE FIELD TRIP WITHOUT A SIGNED PERMISSION SLIP :( Thank you! If you have not done so already, please do not forget to donate towards the field trip under Dollar A Day! Here is the link: Dollar A Day.  

What Are We Learning This Week?: 

Sight Words: TAKE, AN, BECAUSE, UP. 

Letter Team:  OW/OU (like in COW, FLOWER/OUCH, HOUSE) and the long OW sound (like in YELLOW SNOW).  

Word Family:  -AN. Please help your child with word families of the week by asking them to create different words with the word family -an (can, man, pan, etc.) 

Reading: This week, we will begin reading books about Autumn and leaves. We will also continue to read books by the author Mo Willems. This week, we will also learn about matter as we read a big book together about matter. We will learn that matter is anything that takes up space. In this book, we will learn that when we are reading or writing a word that begins with a vowel, we put "AN" in front of that word - for example, "an elephant" instead of "a elephant" - please reinforce this at home in writing and in speech. 

Writing: We will continue to work on our writing goals and start using "Story Starters" to help us think of topics to write about in our journal each day. 

Math: We will continue our fun unit on shapes this week as we explore that we can join shapes together to create new shapes. We will continue working with 2D flat shapes and 3D solid shapes, exploring the number of faces and the vertices of each shape. As always, we will also continue counting, identify, order, write, and count numbers to 30, learn the days of the week, months of the year, how to read and extend patterns, and identify what number comes next. 

Leadership: We will continue to discuss ways to ACT SAFELY at school and we will continue to check in on our behavior each day, making sure we are Respecting, Owning our actions, and Acting Safely. 

Homework: September 26-30

Please take a moment to read each section of homework. I understand this can be very overwhelming. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or concerns.

Flashcards: Make flashcards for our new sight words (AN, BECAUSE, TAKE, UP), letter teams (OW and OU), and word family (AN - pan, fan, man). Study these flashcards (and those from previous weeks) every day. 

Phonemic Awareness: Please work with your child on the following Phonemic Awareness skills: rhyming, blending, segmenting, syllables, beginning/middle/ending sounds, and adding, changing and deleting sounds in words.  Please see our Phonemic Awareness tab for ideas and tips. 

Reading: Play Smarty Ants for 10-15 minutes each night. Read the paper books that have been coming home to live in your Home Book Box. Read the books in your book bag. Go on RAZ-Kids Online Reading. Read to your child every day and have your child read to you every day. Find sight words and letter teams in books, in the car as you are driving - we want to give you plenty of opportunities to just READ, READ, READ!

Click on the links below to access our online reading programs... 

Smarty Ants Reading World

Username: Bess

Password: read

RAZ-Kids

Class Log-in: mrsbess (no spaces!)

Password: abc

Writing: Write every day in your at-home journal. Practice proper penmanship using the lines to help you. Practice writing your sight words of the week. Practice using an uppercase only at the beginning. Some students should now be working on writing one to three sentences on the same topic. Some students are still practicing writing their names, letters, and sight words. 

Math: Play Dreambox for 10-15 minutes each night. Study the 3D Shapes that came home on Friday and ask your child to name each shape and describe the attributes. (Example, "This is a cone, it has one circle face and one vertice.") Keep going over those Daily Math worksheets that go home each day to see if your child needs help with a particular skill. Remember to check the back to see our Math Talk of the day.  

Dreambox Log-in Information is below... 

DreamBox 

Our school code is: X2we/inlandlcs

Dream Box Parent Letter       Dream Box Parent Letter Spanish        

QR Codes: Our class uses a LOT of QR codes in our learning.  Mrs. Stanley has created many QR code activities for all of our kindergarten students to scan and work on at home. Each week, these will be uploaded on ParentSquare. Please print these pages for your child to work on at home each week. One great idea is to put these pages in sheet protectors and add these pages into a binder for your child to refer to all year long. 

Turn-In Homework: This week, we will be reading all about fall. Write one sentence about your favorite autumn/fall activity. Draw a picture to go with your sentence.

Note: If you visit the following link (Sharing Paper), you'll find a great printable writing page with a spot for writing and for a picture! Feel free to print off a bunch of these pages to use for turn in writing homework each week :) 

Weekly News: September 19-23

We had so much fun making apple pies! Thank you for all of your donations and a special thank you to all of our fabulous parent helpers

for ALL of your help baking our pies! It would not have happened without you!  This week we will finish our unit on apples by making applesauce together! YAY!

Thank you to the families that attended our Parent Workshop last week. I really appreciate you taking the time to join me in the classroom and I hope that it was informational and helpful. :) 

We are getting excited about our field trip on Tuesday, October 4th to Los Rios Ranch in Oak Glenn. Thank you to the parents who have volunteered to chaperone - if you have volunteered or would still like to volunteer, we will need your $7 cash admission fee BY FRIDAY.  If you haven’t yet turned in your $7 to chaperone, please do so ASAP. We need to get our head count to Los Rios Ranch. The chaperone money is paid directly to your class teacher and NOT to dollar a day. You may pay me directly at dismissal, but the best way is to put your $7 into an envelope and send it to school in your child's folder. Thank you! We are so excited to have so many wonderful chaperones joining us. 

Also please do not forget to donate towards the field trip under Dollar A Day! Here is the link: Dollar A Day. For this field trip, we are asking for a $20 donation and unfortunately, we are unable to go without the proper funds. Thank you so much for your support! 

I am excited to announce our room mom for the year, Lacey Andrian! 

Lacey is Ethan's mommy and will be our room mom this year. She will be sending monthly ParentSquare updates, as well as helping in the classroom with Friday centers, and special events/parties we will have throughout the year. Her contact information is: 909-838-7645 and laceyandrian@gmail.com. I will also put her contact information in the "Room Parent" tab of our website for future reference. 

What Are We Learning This Week?:

Sight Words: COME, AT, SAID.

Letter Team: CE/CI (we are learning that the letter C can make a soft sound when it is followed by an E or I like in "cent" and "city").  

Word Family: -IN. Please help your child with word families of the week by asking them to create different words with the word family -in (bin, fin, tin, etc.) 

Reading: This week we will learn what "quotations" are. We will read a big book together every day about our silly monster friends and use "quotations" when they say something. We will continue to read books about apples and Johnny Appleseed and finish our author study on Mo Willems. Students will continue to read little books in class that include sight words and letter teams. Please keep practicing them at home! We all have "Reading Goals" that we are working on in class during our Read to Self and Word Work time. Many of our reading goals are to master our letters and sounds. Please keep working on this at home. Our classroom goal is 100% letters and sounds by November!

Writing: We have all made writing goals in our class. Some friends writing goals are to use proper punctuation and use finger spaces, while other friends are ready to write three sentences on one topic. We will continue to write in our journal every day, each striving to accomplish our writing goal.  

Math: We will continue working on 2D flat shapes and 3D solid shapes.  We will explore the number of faces and vertices each 3D shape. We will also continue to identify, order, write, and count numbers to 30, learn the days of the week, months of the year, how to read and extend patterns, and identify what number comes next. 

Leadership: We will continue to learn how to ROAR in the classroom. The acronym ROAR stands for Respect self, others, and property, Own your actions, Act safely, and Rise to servant leadership. This week, we will discuss the A: Act Safely. We will talk about ways that we can act safely in and out of the classroom. 

Homework: September 19-23

Please take a moment to read each section of homework. I understand this can be very overwhelming. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or concerns.

Flashcards: Make flashcards for our new sight words(COME, AT, SAID), letter teams (CE and CI), and word family (IN - bin, fin, win). Study these flashcards (and those from previous weeks) every day. 

Phonemic Awareness: Please work with your child on the following Phonemic Awareness skills: rhyming, blending, segmenting, syllables, beginning/middle/ending sounds, and adding, changing and deleting sounds in words.  Please see our Phonemic Awareness tab for ideas and tips. 

Reading: Play Smarty Ants for 10-15 minutes each night. Read the paper books that have been coming home to live in your Home Book Box. Read the books in your book bag. Go on RAZ-Kids Online Reading. Read to your child every day and have your child read to you every day. Find sight words and letter teams in books, in the car as you are driving - we want to give you plenty of opportunities to just READ, READ, READ!

Click on the links below to access our online reading programs... 

Smarty Ants Reading World

Username: Bess

Password: read

RAZ-Kids

Class Log-in: mrsbess (no spaces!)

Password: abc

Writing: Write every day in your at-home journal. Some students should now be working on writing one to three sentences on the same topic. Some students are still practicing writing their names, letters, and sight words. 

Math: Play Dreambox for 10-15 minutes each night. Continue to practice counting, identify numbers out of order (make number flashcards!), practice number writing, practice drawing shapes, identifying shapes, or even creating shapes out of play-dough and sticks. Keep going over those Daily Math worksheets that go home each day to see if your child needs help with a particular skill. Remember to check the back to see our Math Talk of the day.  

Dreambox Log-in Information is below... 

DreamBox 

Our school code is: X2we/inlandlcs

Dream Box Parent Letter       Dream Box Parent Letter Spanish        

QR Codes: Our class uses a LOT of QR codes in our learning.  Mrs. Stanley has created many QR code activities for all of our kindergarten students to scan and work on at home. Each week, these will be uploaded on ParentSquare. Please print these pages for your child to work on at home each week. One great idea is to put these pages in sheet protectors and add these pages into a binder for your child to refer to all year long. 

Turn-In Homework: This week, we will be discussing the next letter of our leadership, ROAR: A - ACT SAFELY. Please write one sentence about how you can act safely at school or at home. Draw a picture to go with your sentence. Your child may attempt to write this sentence themselves, or you may dictate the sentence your child would like to write.

Note: If you visit the following link (Sharing Paper), you'll find a great printable writing page with a spot for writing and for a picture! Feel free to print off a bunch of these pages to use for turn in writing homework each week :) 

Weekly News: September 12-16

The class had so much fun tasting apples on Friday.  This Friday, we will be making apple pie as we continue our study on apples. Thank you for signing up on ParentSquare to bring apples! We could not do it without you! 

Electives will begin Monday! If your child is participating in an elective, you may send a lunch to school with him/her on that elective day and lunch supervision will be provided for your children. Kindergarten electives are from 12:50-1:20 and the elective teachers will dismiss your children at 1:20 on the ramp. Please be aware that some electives may last until 1:30, depending on the elective.

Save the Date! We will be having a Kindergarten Parent Workshop on Monday, September 12th. I would like to invite all parents into the classroom on this date from 2:00-3:00 to learn ways to better support your child at home in the areas of foundational reading skills, writing, and math. We will go over our kindergarten goals and common core standards for the year and learn strategies to help your child at home. We will have an additional workshop on Monday, September 19th from 2:00-3:00 for Spanish speaking families with a translator. Childcare will be provided down at the playground for ILCS students on both of these dates. I hope you are able to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity! 

We are so excited to announce that our first field trip is planned! We will be going to Los Rios Ranch in Oak Glenn on Tuesday, October 4th. We will be leaving school by bus at approximately 8:30 in the morning and returning around dismissal at 12:30. The students will get to meet Johnny Appleseed, tour the apple orchards, and even make our very own apple cider! In order for our kindergarten classes to go on this field trip (and all future field trips this year), we are asking for donations to be made to our Dollar A Day program through the school. For this field trip, we are asking for a generous donation of $20 per student. This will help cover the cost of the apple farm, the bus, and the very special kindergarten field trip t-shirt that your child will wear on all field trips this year. Unfortunately, if our kindergarten team does not receive donations, we will not be able to go on this wonderful field trip :(  We are also looking for volunteers to join us and chaperone our field trip. The cost for chaperones is also $7.  If you are interested in chaperoning for our field trip on this day, please email me directly at jcbess@inlandleaders.com. The $7 chaperone fee needs to be paid in cash directly to your child's teacher, not through Dollar a Day. On Friday, September 23rd, we will need to give our final head count to Los Rios Ranch, so if you would like to chaperone, please email me by this date. We apologize for any inconvenience, but siblings and little ones are not allowed on this field trip due to the safety of our kindergarten students you will be chaperoning.  Also, be on the look-out for the field trip permission slip that will be coming home in your child's Take Home Folder as we get closer to our field trip. We are so excited for this excellent field trip with your children! 

Here is the link to donate on Dollar A Day: 

Dollar A Day Link

We will be using Dollar A Day monies for ALL field trips. Thank you so much for your support! 

What Are We Learning This Week?:

Sight Words: YOU, AND, IT FRIEND.

Letter Team: WH (like in what and whistle).

Word Family: AT - like in bat, cat, rat, sat, fat, etc.

Reading: We will continue to read books about apples and Johnny Appleseed. We will also read lots of funny books by Mo Willems. Students will continue to read little books in class that include sight words and letter teams. Many of these little books have been coming home with a stamp, which means the student has read the book to me fluently. As students practice reading fluently, these books will continue to come home. Please keep practicing them at home! Last week, we began taking Book Bags home. These will come home every day Monday-Thursday with a book (or a few books) that your child has chosen to practice reading. Please remember that Book Bags must come back to school every day. We are trying to teach the students to "Own Their Actions" and be responsible for their own supplies and homework. 

Writing: We will learn a poem this week that will help us with our penmanship: Some letters are tall, some letters are small, and some letters fall. Please reinforce neat penmanship when writing at home, reminding your children to write within the lines and always start at the top! We will continue learning to put spaces between each word, use an uppercase at the beginning of each sentence with lowercase letters throughout, and use a period at the end. We will continue to use our sight words in our sentences and use our sound chart to help us sound out the words we do not know how to write. Students will each make a writing goal this week. We will go over these writing goals at our Parent Workshop. 

Math: This week we will learn all of our 3D shapes. We will discuss attributes of these 3D solid shapes and learn how many "faces" and vertices are on each shape. Last week, each student was given a math counting and writing goal. We will work hard on these goals every day during our math rounds. We will go over these goals in more detail at our Parent Workshop on Monday. We will continue to practice number identification, number writing, days of the week, months of the year, shapes, and counting on/"Popcorn Counting". 

Leadership: At ILCS this year, we are ROARING. The acronym ROAR stands for Respect self, others, and property, Own your actions, Act safely, and Rise to servant leadership. We will continue to discuss the O in class -  OWN YOUR ACTIONS. We've been talking about being responsible for our own actions and making sure our job gets done. Our goal is to have students take ownership of their own behavior as we all strive to be leaders in our classroom and school. Your child will continue to bring home their "check in" sheets each week. Students have been “checking in” with themselves and their teacher throughout the day on their behavior at school: if they are GREEN (I am doing a great job Roaring today!), YELLOW (I am doing well, but I think I can do even better!), RED (I will choose to change my behavior). Most students have been choosing their color all by themselves and I have been so proud of their honesty and their willingness to change their behaviors throughout the day. I have also been giving away a LOT of Roar tickets. Roar tickets are received when a student is caught "Roaring" (respecting and owning their actions). Every Friday, Roar tickets are chosen to go to the treasure box.