Dear Parents, 

 

        Our class had a wonderful Winter Holidays party as we watched a movie, played games, and we enjoyed our relaxing time together before Winter Break. Thank you to the parents who provided goody bags for our celebration! Here is an overview of what we have accomplished this month.

 

Morning Meeting: We are using different greetings to enhance social skills and the children are sharing about different topics in their lives each day. This past month, we focused on sharing about our holiday traditions. After Calendar routines, we do "Listening Games" to enhance our phonemic awareness skills; I have seen wonderful progress in this area! We have been focusing on empathy during our daily Character Strong lessons to enhance our social-emotional skills.

 

Sounds & Word Work: We have now learned the formation and sounds of all of the letters of the alphabet! We are enjoying writing these letters on whiteboards, on practice worksheets and in our writing endeavors. We will review letter formation this month and then start to learn one sight/trick word per week and have created books using these words. We will learn many CVC words and focus on rhyming in the weeks to come. We understand that letters and sounds create words, and words create sentences to express our ideas!

 

Writing: We have continued to use the process of writing as we plan, share, draw and write about our ideas. My young authors created informational  pattern books about shared class topics and personal topics that were important to us, such as our favorite holidays. We learned that book topics have subtopics, and we were able to use patterns as we learned to write sentences that matched our pictures. We are striving to do our best work with letter formation, tapping out the sounds we hear and illustrating detailed pictures for our readers. Our books about our favorite holidays will be on display on our bulletin board in the hall.

 

Reading: We continued to learn the procedures for the three parts of reading workshop (minilesson, reading to ourselves, and reading to our partners). After focusing on learning and reading poems, nursery rhymes, and songs to develop good fluency habits, we have used many reading strategies to enhance our reading fluency: pointing to words as we read, using the first and last sounds of words, looking at the pictures, listening for familiar/sight words, patterns & rhymes, using the tune or rhythm of text, and asking ourselves if our reading makes sense. I will soon be assessing my students’ reading levels and will be meeting with my students in guided reading groups to work with my readers on their instructional levels. 

 

Math: We practiced writing, finding, identifying, ordering, comparing and drawing numbers 1-10, and how to count on from a given number. We have continued to practice matching numbers with objects and objects with numbers as we understand and compare the value of numbers. We learned how to sort, count and compare groups and categories. We have played games, used manipulatives, and sang songs & raps to learn in math. Soon we will learn how to add and subtract within 5!

 

SS: During Social Studies, we focused on families, holidays and traditions this month. We learned about how families celebrate Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa, and soon will learn about upcoming Chinese New Year. We reflected and shared about our cultures through reading books, watching videos, playing games and creating crafts and symbolic decorations.  It was exciting to hear my students share about their special holidays they celebrate, and it was wonderful to make connections amongst our holiday symbols and family traditions.

 

I have many pictures of your children from our holiday celebrations and special days in our shared class pictures folder. It is a joy to teach your children every day! I look forward to the adventures that lie ahead for us this year! Thank you for your continued cooperation and support in making kindergarten a smooth and magical experience for your child! I wish you a happy new year filled with joy, peace and love with your delightful children!