Weekly News: October 2-6

This week we will continue to read and write about Autumn. We will continue to learn about leaves and 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 on this day. Thank you to all parents that have spoken to me about chaperoning and paid the chaperone fee. Chaperones can ride the bus with us or drive separate and follow the bus. We are so excited for you to join us! 

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 continue to read our book bag books and work on our letters, sounds, and sight words every day. 

Writing: We will continue to make our own individual writing goal this week and I will begin holding special writing "conferences" with students to work on their goals. Your child will bring home his or her September journal this week. Attached to these journals will be your child's current writing goal. Please go over these with your children, praising them for their efforts and discussing ways to make our writing even better.

Math: We will keep working hard on counting goals, number writing goals, number ID goals, and shapes. Last week our focus was counting to 100 by tens. Please practice this with your child if they are still struggling. This week, our focus will be telling the number ONE MORE. You can help at home by asking your child to give you a number one more without having to go back to one to count. Example: "What is one more than 6? 7!" or "If we have ten apples and I add one more, how many apples do we have now?" The goal is for students to be quick and proficient at this skill. 

Leadership: For the month of September, our whole school will be focusing on the O of ROAR: Own Your Actions. We will talk about what that means and how we can own our actions at school. Our goal is to have students take ownership of their own behavior as we all strive to be leaders in our classroom and school. 

Homework: October 2-6

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: Keep working with your child on skills such as blending, segmenting, rhyming, syllables, and sound switch. Our Friday video focus this week is on syllables. A test your child took on syllables as well as some syllables games and worksheets will come home this week. Make sure to watch our Friday ParentSquare video - Mrs. Stanley and I will go over syllables expectations and tips for kindergarten. 

Reading: Read books, sounds, and sight words from your book bag! Book bags will come home every day and need to be returned every day. Inside of your child's book bag will be a book we are working on in class. This may be a paper book or it may be a book chosen from our classroom library. There may also be a page with letters and sounds that your child is still working on. Please have your child read these books (and pages) to you every day.  Continue to read the little paper books that come home to live in your book box at home. Continue to read TO your child every night, having conversations about the stories you are reading. Continue to log onto Smarty Ants for 10-15 at least a few times a week. 

Smarty Ants class username is: BESS and our password is: READ.

Writing: If you have not done so already, I highly recommend picking up a small notebook or journal for your at-home writing. Have your child write in this every day. All of our students have been doing a great job writing their name and ABCs. We should still be practicing our sight words each day. All students should be at the point where we are attempting to write a sentence each day with a picture to match. 

Math: Our math goal this week is ONE MORE. We are hoping students can identifying a number that is ONE MORE without having to go back to the number one to begin counting over again. Please reinforce this at home. For example, "I have the number 6. One more is... 7!" or "If there were ten apples and we got one more, how many apples would we have?" Continue to play Dreambox for 10-15 minutes each night. Continue to count to 30 (or 50 or 100!) every day, practice number flashcards out of order, practice writing your numbers to 20 or higher, practice identifying shapes and drawing shapes. Remember to also go over our "Daily Math" practice pages that we do every morning in class - take a moment to go over these practice pages to see if there is anything specific your child needs to work on. 

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Our school code for Dreambox is X2we/inlandlcs

QR Codes: Download and print those QR Codes each week from ParentSquare and have your child work on those at home!

Turn-In Project:  None this week. 

Weekly News: September 25-29

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

We are so excited about our field trip next Tuesday! Thank you to the parents who volunteered to chaperone. We gave our final head count on Friday. 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 soon 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.  

Please remember to bring your book bags to school every day. The worksheets and books inside your book bag are to be worked on every night at home and we work on them every day at school. 

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 finish our author study on 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: Students will each make their own individual writing goal this week and I will begin holding special writing "conferences" with students to work on their goals. 

Math: We will keep working hard on counting goals, number writing goals, number ID goals, and shapes. We will keep playing tens frame games and we will begin learning how to solve word problems. 

Leadership: For the month of September, our whole school will be focusing on the first R of ROAR: Respect. We will discuss ways that we can respect ourselves, others, and our school. 

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO THE HOMEWORK POST TO SEE ALL OF THE HOMEWORK FOR THE WEEK.

Homework: September 25-29

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: Keep working with your child on skills such as blending, segmenting, rhyming, syllables, and sound switch. Our Friday video this week features Mrs. Stanley and myself going over rhyming expectations. 

Reading: We began book bags last week. Book bags will come home every day and need to be returned every day. Inside of your child's book bag will be a book we are working on in class. This may be a paper book or it may be a book chosen from our classroom library. There may also be a page with letters and sounds that your child is still working on. Please have your child read these books (and pages) to you every day.  Continue to read the little paper books that come home to live in your book box at home. Continue to read TO your child every night, having conversations about the stories you are reading. Continue to log onto Smarty Ants for 10-15 at least a few times a week. 

Smarty Ants class username is: BESS and our password is: READ.

Writing: If you have not done so already, I highly recommend picking up a small notebook or journal for your at-home writing. Have your child write in this every day. All of our students have been doing a great job writing their name and ABCs. We should still be practicing our sight words each day. All students should be at the point where we are attempting to write a sentence each day with a picture to match. 

Math: Play Dreambox for 10-15 minutes each night. Count to 30 (or 50 or 100!) every day. Practice number flashcards out of order. Practice writing your numbers to 20 or higher. Practice identifying shapes and drawing shapes. Remember to also go over our "Daily Math" practice pages that we do every morning in class - take a moment to go over these practice pages to see if there is anything specific your child needs to work on. 

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Our school code for Dreambox is X2we/inlandlcs

QR Codes: Download and print those QR Codes each week from ParentSquare and have your child work on those at home!

Turn-In Project:  None this week. 

Weekly News: September 18-22

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 making 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 us in the classroom and I hope that it was informational and helpful. :) If you were not able to join us, please continue to watch our weekly videos that we post on ParentSquare - each week, we will go over a different strategy or different way to help your child at home. 

We will begin Book Bags this week. We will also have our September Turn-in Project due for homework on Friday. Please read our Homework post for more information on both of these. 

We are getting excited about our field trip on Tuesday, October 3rd 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, please email me to let me know and 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, Elaine Chronopoulos! 

Elaine is Nasia'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: 312-719-7196 and elenee76@yahoo.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 will also begin Book Bags this week. Please see the Homework tab for more information. 

Writing: Last week, we learned three of our writing goals: using a two finger space, using an uppercase at the beginning of a sentence and a name and I, and using proper punctuation at the end of the sentence. This week, we will learn three new writing goals: spelling our sight words correctly in our writing, writing complete sentences, and writing three sentences on the same topic. Please continue to work with your child on writing every night, reinforcing these strategies at home. 

Math: The students have been working hard on counting goals, number writing goals, number ID goals, and shapes. We will continue to work on these every day this week. You may have heard your child use the word SUBITIZE. This is knowing how many without having to count. We are working on subitizing with various tens frame and dice games this week. 

Leadership: For the month of September, our whole school will be focusing on the first R of ROAR: Respect. We will discuss ways that we can respect ourselves, others, and our school. 

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO THE HOMEWORK POST TO SEE ALL OF THE HOMEWORK FOR THE WEEK.

Homework: September 18-22

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: Keep working with your child on skills such as blending, segmenting, rhyming, syllables, and sound switch. We went over many of these skills at our Parent Workshop. 

Reading: We will begin book bags this week. Book bags will come home every day and need to be returned every day. Inside of your child's book bag will be a book we are working on in class. This may be another paper book or it may be a book chosen from our classroom library. There may also be a page with letters and sounds that your child is still working on. Please have your child read these books (and pages) to you every day. More detailed information about book bags will be sent home Monday.   Continue to read the little paper books that come home to live in your book box at home. Continue to read TO your child every night, having conversations about the stories you are reading. Continue to log onto Smarty Ants for 10-15 at least a few times a week. 

Smarty Ants class username is: BESS and our password is: READ.

Writing: Keep writing, writing, writing! Write your name (uppercase only at the beginning), write your sight words of the week, practice writing your ABCs, write short sentences, write in the tub with bathtub paint, write words in daddy's shaving cream all over the bathroom mirror - we learn to write by WRITING so just keep writing, writing, writing! 

Math: The students have been working hard on math goals - Our math goals in class so far include Counting to 30, Counting to 50 or Counting to 100 (depending on where the student is at), writing numbers to 20, identifying numbers out of order to 30, and recognizing, describing, and drawing shapes. Please work at home on these skills. Remember to also go over our "Daily Math" practice pages that we do every morning in class - take a moment to go over these practice pages to see if there is anything specific your child needs to work on. 

We have been working on positional words and naming shapes.  For example:  the sphere is behind the fence, the rhombus is above the lamp.  Students have an easier time with this when the positional word is given - (Draw a circle next to the tree) but when students need to describe the position themselves it becomes much more difficult.  Practice having your child tell you where things are using the following positional words:

1. *in front of
2. *behind
3. *between
4. *next to
5. *above
6. *below
7. *beside
8. *left
9. *right
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Math homework every week also includes Dreambox. My hope is that your child is logging onto Dreambox at home and playing for 10-15 minutes at least a few times a week. Our school code for Dreambox is X2we/inlandlcs

QR Codes: Download and print those QR Codes each week from ParentSquare and have your child work on those at home!

Turn-In Project:  We have a fun turn-in project to work on this week. Remember that once a month (or so) we will have a project to work on at home and bring back to school to share with the class. This can be brought to school ANY day, but must be here by Friday. Our goal is to not have 21 things to share on Friday. This week's special turn-in project is to create a shape picture/shape art/any type of shape creation. You can use 2D or 3D shapes for this project. You can draw, cut, paste, use construction paper, use items from around your house - the sky is the limit! Be as creative as you want! Here are a few fun examples... 

Weekly News: September 11-15

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 items for this event! We could not do it without you! 

Our Parent Workshop is THIS WEDNESDAY from 6:00-7:00. Please remember this is a parent-only event. We will meet in our classroom and go over all of our kindergarten standards/goals for the year, exactly what they mean, and strategies for how you can help your child with these goals at home. I hope you can make it - there is so much valuable information. 

The very first Scholastic Book order went home on Friday. If you would like to order books for your child, please visit our Book Order tab for more information on signing onto the Scholastic Website. With every order, we also get one free book for our classroom library. Place your orders by Friday, September 15th and they will be delivered to the classroom a few short weeks after that! 

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 3rd. 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 22nd, 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. Some of these little books came home on Friday. Please keep them inside your special home book box that you shared on the first week of school and practice reading them every day! More paper books will be coming home throughout the year - if they have a big star or stamp on them, that means your child has read it for me fluently and they can now keep them at home! We are reading a new class book this week titled, "The Apple Tree". We will learn all about the life cycle of an apple as we practice reading our sight words of the week.

Writing: We are continuing to write (or draw pictures) of what we know and what we love. This week, we will begin to go over each of our writing goals and start using these to help us write each day. We will go over each of these goals at our Parent Workshop as well. We will also 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!

Math: This week, we will continue learning our 3D shapes - cone, cube, sphere, pyramid, cylinder, and rectangular prism. We will learn to describe 3D shapes by their faces and vertices. We will also continue to practice number identification, number writing, days of the week, months of the year, shapes, and counting on/"Popcorn Counting".

Leadership: For the month of September, our whole school will be focusing on the first R of ROAR: Respect. We will discuss ways that we can respect ourselves, others, and our school. 

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO THE HOMEWORK POST TO SEE ALL OF THE HOMEWORK FOR THE WEEK.