Dear Parents, 

Here is a run-down of some things we have been working on and doing in Kindergarten for these past several days.  I will update this page every few weeks or so and will always email you the quick link to it when I do, so you won’t need to check my webpage each week looking for it.

Phonics and Reading Skills

Digraph “th” has two sounds (the voiced sound as in this, that, those,weather and the unvoiced sound as in with, thimble, thought, path)

Fun Day Friday was Earth Day Celebration and an Earth Day Nature Scavenger Hunt

Digraph “sh” as in ship, shoe, wash, and dish

Fun Day Friday was Show and Share Day and May Basket making!

Digraph “oo” has two sounds (long sound as in tooth, mood, broom, food and short sound as in book, wood, took, and stood)

Fun Day Friday was celebrating our last day with our high school TA, Taryn.  We played games with her and gave her a gift of all kinds of fun things to help send her off to college!

We also had treats that afternoon, provided by Mack!  Thank you Mack for the surprise treats to finish off our week!

Vocabulary Words we have been learning about:

close, flow, visit, study, curious, observe, care, decide, real

High Frequency and Sight Words we have been focusing on being able to read automatically:

to, a, the, I, by, see, my, am, go, at, is, no, man, and, of, off, from, here, got, has, him, his, into, in, it, lot, not, as, an, stop, sits, on, for, do, one, said, have, you

Newest set of words:  was, can, are, yes, your, would, with, who, where, when, what, were

Letters and sounds we have focused on learning so far this year:

Ll, Oo, Gg, Hh, Tt, Aa, Pp, Mm, Nn, Ii, Ss, Ff, Rr, Kk, Bb, Uu, Zz, Cc, Ee, Yy, Dd, Vv, Jj, Xx, Ww, Qq, long vowel sounds, digraph ck, digraph th, digraph sh, digraph oo

*****For the letter C, this adds the complication of trying to decide whether to use a K or a C at the beginning of words we are spelling.  A few rules we have leaned:  “what comes next after the /k/ sound??”  If it is a consonant, we will begin the word with a C.  If it is followed directly by a vowel, we will use C if the vowel is a, o, or u OR we will use a K if it is a e, i, or y.  Complicated work for kindergartners, but they are doing a great job and I have taught them some tricks to help them out. 

Examples of Phonemic awareness skills we work on each day at school are:  

Recognizing letters and saying their sounds (the letter is ___, the sound is ___)

Rhyming words (tap, map, they both say ap)

Onset fluency (bird, /b/; neck, /n/)

Blending words (water…… fall, waterfall)

Final sounds (sob, /b/, hid, /d/

Segmenting words (blackbird, black…..bird)

Counting words in sentences (I like my friends…… 4)

****You can work on reinforcing these kinds of skills at home as well.  They are crucial skills in becoming a good reader.

Math Skills and Games

Count to 100 by 1’s, 5’s, and 10’s

Graphing and data

Using and understanding 100 Charts

Length and Height Comparison

Comparing Weight of objects

Review Addition and Subtraction

Upcoming Dates :

May 13^th – Kona Ice Library Fundraiser

May 16^th – Field Trip to the Rossville Park (send your child to school with a packed lunch and a drink, NO SODA please)

May 17^th – Pizza Party in our Classroom (send $2.00 please)

May 18^th – Grade School Field Day (a note should come home soon about this, our part of the field day activities will last 1-2 hours, and the other part of the day is for the older kids)

May 18^th – Last Day of School

Birthdays, Events, and other Fun Things we have been up to:

Mr. Christopher, one of our shool board members, has been back 2 more times to visit with our class and work with the kids.  2 weeks ago he played Earth Day Concentration in small groups, and this past week, he played a spelling game called “Pop”.

2 weeks ago we celebrated Earth Day week with many various learning activities.

We had ice cream treats last week on Fun Day Friday, provided by Stockgrower’s Bank.

We celebrated Miriam’s 6^th Birthday the week following Easter.

We made May Baskets for the kids to surprise someone with on May 1^st.

We planted flowers and decorated pots, bags, and cards for our amazing Moms for Mother’s Day!

​Other things we have been learning about:

We have completed our Quirkles science program.  For the remainder of the year, our science will be whatever we can fit in with our themes and topics for each week.  We have done an incredible amount of science exploration and science experimentation throughout this school year.  Between the 26+ experiments we did with the Quirkles program, the 16 experiments you each did during Superstar time, along with our random holiday themed and extra science, we have talked about more than 50 science topics and done more than 50 experiments.  I would say that is quite an amazing year of having some fun with such an exciting school subject, SCIENCE!!!

Our most recent topics and experiments:

Earth Day Science – We did an experiment where we put one bunch of celery in a vase of fresh and clean water and another bunch of celery in a vase of water with chemicals and other pollutants.  We let the celery sit over the weekend and then observed what it looked like the following week.  The fresh water celery still looked healthy and good to eat.  The polluted water celery had kind of shriveled up, turned a bit brown and crunchy on the ends, and in general looked like something you would not want to let get into your body.  Our earth day lesson from this was that sometimes the areas where our food grows can be contaminated with chemicals and other pollutants that have gotten into our earth and water and our foods may not always be grown in the most clean and ideal conditions.  We have to take care of our earth and be mindful of what makes it into our earth and water, because those things end up making it into our bodies as well.

The following week was another experiment/demonstration related in a similar way.  This experiment was about a Fish named Fred.  We read a story about how Fred lived in crystal clear water, shaded by trees, with plenty of insects to eat.  One day he decided to leave his part of the river and go on a journey.  Long story short, the areas he journeyed to, had no shade, had soil run off from construction nearby, had waste pollutants from cattle, fertilizer had gotten into the river from a nearby golf course, had salt wash off from the nearby roads, litter blown in from a nearby park, toxic pollutants from a factory, oil from a man who had dumped it into the river, etc.  It was a very messy and unhealthy part of the river and Fred was really having trouble breathing, so thankfully Fred hurried back to where he had originally been living and was able to recover fully.  

(We had a sponge in the shape of a fish and he was in nice clean water at the beginning, but after adding an assortment of items into the water to represent many parts of the story, Fred was not looking good at all and his gils were gettting all clogged up as well.  Not only is this not good for Fred, but many people eat fish for food, and if the fish are living in unhealthy environments and we eat them, then that goes into our bodies as well).

Things to do/practice at home:

We had a very successful “School to Home” reading program.  Every single student has finished their reading chart and has earned their grand prize, their certificate of achievement, and a fun trip to the office with Mrs. Pegram for a treat!  It has been a lot of fun seeing the excitement at school with the kids reading so independently and the amount of pride they had each time they earned another sticker and got nearer and nearer to filling their chart!  They were so proud of themselves and I am so proud of them too!  Thank you for helping them at home each night!

As we get nearer to summer break, I do want to encourage you to enjoy summertime fully with your children and your family, but NOT to take a 2 ½ month break from learning completely.  It would be very beneficial to keep some consistent learning going, to help them stay on target for first grade without a big backwards slide.  There is often a “summer slide”, in the wrong direction, that happens with kids during the months of June and July, and they regress from where they are at the end of a school year.  When you go from 5 days a week of full time learning to 7 days a week of nothing much in academic areas, there is no way to keep that from happening without a little effort on your part as a parent.  It does not need to be a big chore.  Just keep reading books with them (read books together while sitting on your back patio or out in the grass ), keep a little bit of writing going (buy them a summertime journal and write and draw about things they do throughout the summer), do some math in your everyday experiences (count the white cars you see while traveling to Topeka, etc), do some science (get outside and explore nature together and make sure to stop, investigate things and ask questions while you are doing it).  There are an endless amount of summer learning ideas out there available at the touch of your fingertips!  You can keep it light and fun, but just don’t do NOTHING AT ALL.  I am all about summer fun and taking breaks.  Learning with your kids should be a fun part of your everyday life all year long, summer included.  I have been amazed at the amount of progress all of your children have made, each and every one of them!  They all started at different levels and ended at different levels too, because they are individuals and are at their own place in learning, but they ALL  made huge gains!!!!!!!

This will likely be my final formal Friday Note update on my webpage.  Alll other updates for these last few days will just be through emails.  

THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR CHILDREN WITH ME THIS YEAR!  I LOVE THEM DEARLY AND WILL MISS THEM VERY MUCH!!!!!!!!