January 12-16

 Hello Families,

We had a wonderful week together as we had a burst of warm-ish weather, some windy days and lots of sunshine! Our "weatherperson of the day" had quite the job this week reporting all of the weather changes happening outside of our window. Being the Leader and Weatherperson of the day is a very big event in Kindergarten.

This week we learned all about the Letter M.  We can print the letter M, identify words that have an M sound at the beginning and the end and we noticed lots of letter M's in printed text.  We drew a Mouse together, and spent lots of time reading, retelling and acting out the story "The Mitten" by Jan Brett.  Children created their own animal headband and participated in a dramatic retelling "Kinder Theatre" class play together at carpet time this week. We also used animal pictures to sequence the story and retell the events that happen in the correct order.  If you haven't had a chance yet, ask your Kindergartener to tell you the story "The Mitten".  They can show their story strip too!

In Math, we learned about the number 7 and practiced representing it in different ways.  We read a story called "Mouse count" with 10 mice and a hungry snake.  We created patterned mittens and extended and created patterns using bingo dabbers.  We also continued to develop our number sense and subtilizing skills by learning and playing a new partner math game called "Ka-boom" (sort of like the card game "War), but with ten frame cards.  We are practicing identifying numbers on a ten frame and also comparing which number is bigger and which number is smaller.  We are practicing counting forwards and backwards and identifying which number comes before and which number comes after different numbers.  These are great skills to practice at home, in the car, waiting in lines, etc.  These Kindergarten students are so smart.

Throughout the rest of the week we played on the light table in our fort, played house, created obstacle courses, played in a parachute in gym class, built giant floor puzzles, made prints on the bottom of plates, wrote mini-stories and made cards, spent time with our big buddies at the park and doing a scavenger hunt and visiting the Library.   As always, it was a very eventful week.

Just a reminder- please do not send toys to school with your child,  If they bring toys to school they will need to keep them in their backpack- as many toys are being taken out to play and then lost or left behind.  We have lots of toys at school, and I have had a conversation with the class about how school toys need to stay at school and home toys need to stay at home or in a safe spot in your backpack.

Also- in the next few weeks we are going to be making a special Olympic craft- and we will need empty toilet paper rolls or paper towel rolls (tubes?)- please save some up or send some in if you don't mind.

Lastly, if there are any families that are willing or able to help make a batch or two of playdoh- please let me know- we would be so grateful! Thank you thank you thank you!

Here are some other pictures from our week together: